Category: 1. Jason Apuzzo

Failure to Launch: LFM Mini-Review of Apollo 18

By Jason Apuzzo. THE PITCH: Timur Bekmambetov produces a $5 million found-footage sci-fi thriller about an ‘officially’ scrubbed Apollo 18 mission that we learn was secretly launched by the Defense Department in December 1974 in search of … a mysterious presence on the Moon.

THE SKINNY: The Weinstein-distributed Apollo 18 wastes a great premise and an effective re-creation of America’s pioneering Moon landings on a listless storyline, thin characters, lame thrills, and a gratuitous cheap shot at the U.S. military that confounds the film’s own plot. NASA was wise to steer clear of this film, and so should you.

WHAT WORKS: • If you ever wanted to experience what a Moon landing might feel like from the first-person perspective of the astronauts, Apollo 18 captures that in 1970s period detail – although the film spends too much time in the claustrophobic confines of the lunar lander, and never fully stretches its legs on the Moon.

• The found-footage motif is worked nicely into the storyline, introducing (courtesy of Apple’s Final Cut Pro) a mixture of handheld Super-8mm footage and distressed analog video that gives the film visual interest and an authentic, period feel.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: • Actors Lloyd Owen and Warren Christie aren’t able to capture the stoic, tight-lipped heroism of actual astronauts. Their acting performances here are much too histrionic to be believable given the circumstances of the mission and the time period.

• ***SPOILER ALERT*** The plot hinges on the idea that the Defense Department would send U.S. astronauts to the Moon without briefing them on the basic nature of their mission, and would even leave them to die – even when rescue is possible. The film’s cynicism is ugly, and undermines the storyline’s basic believability. ***END OF SPOILERS***

• The film’s amateur attempt at ‘suspense,’ such as it is, never really achieves much of a payoff. The ‘threat’ the astronauts eventually uncover on the Moon would barely pass muster in a Roger Corman movie.

• The film lacks humor or laughs, giving it no place to go once the shock-moments wear off. As a result the movie is dull – like listening to Muzak for 90 minutes inside a 1970s photo booth.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Trying to quickly cash-in on the alien invasion and found-footage genres, Apollo 18 has the extreme misfortune of being out at the same time that a newly remastered, 3D IMAX version of Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon just arrived in theaters this past week. Since Apollo 18 is so utterly forgettable, and even contemptible in its cynicism toward the American military, my strong advice is to spend your money this weekend watching the first 10 minutes of Dark of the Moon, instead. Even if you only stay for those first few minutes, you’ll enjoy a much better experience than Apollo 18 can muster.

Misfire: from "Apollo 18."

If you haven’t seen it yet this summer, Dark of the Moon (see my review here) opens with a heroic sequence that re-creates the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing, as astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step onto the surface of the Moon and – unbeknownst to the world – secretly explore a gigantic, mysterious (and seemingly moribund) alien spacecraft. This breathtaking opening flourish, presented in 3D IMAX, is truly one of the inspired moments in the entire Transformers trilogy, and at its conclusion when I saw the film again earlier this week actually touched off a round of applause in the audience – and I will confess to having had some watery eyes, myself.

Like other such moments in Michael Bay’s films – particularly Armageddon and Pearl Harbor – the sequence summons elegiac emotions of pride in America’s bold, pioneering spirit, our legacy of achievement in pushing the boundaries of outer space, of opening new horizons through courage and innovation. That’s what America’s efforts in outer space mean, not the junk the Weinsteins are currently peddling with Apollo 18, a film destined for the bargain bin at your local gas station – tucked somewhere between other Weinstein classics like Mimic 3 and Children of the Corn 5.

If we ever get back to the Moon, or push ahead further to Mars, it certainly won’t be because films like this are inspiring us with a sense of wonder about getting there.

Posted on September 2nd, 2011 at 6:11pm.

“No Man Should Live in Chains!” LFM Mini-Review of Conan the Barbarian

By Jason Apuzzo.

Mongol General: What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

– from Conan the Barbarian (1982).

THE PITCH: Lionsgate reboots the Conan the Barbarian series – or tries to – without either Arnold Schwarzenegger or director John Milius on board. In Arnold’s place comes Jason Mamoa, buff former star of Stargate: Atlantis and the recent Game of Thrones. Pretty Rachel Nichols, not-so-pretty Stephen Lang (buried in make-up) and Rose McGowan as an insane witch with metal claws round out the cast.

THE SKINNY: As Conan says in the film, “No man should live in chains,” but also no man should confuse this new movie for the 1982 cult classic produced by Dino De Laurentiis and co-written by John Milius and Oliver Stone  – the film that effectively launched The Austrian Oak’s career as a major star. Hawaiian newcomer Jason Mamoa scowls wickedly and swings a mean sword, but he can’t match the humor and cracked intensity of Arnold’s original take on the Cimmerian warlord. This mediocre, History Channel-level Conan only beats out the original in action, gore and 3D bare breasts.

WHAT WORKS: • The 6’5” Jason Mamoa, a kind of poor man’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, manages to sell the action scenes and look formidable and athletic as Conan.

• Rose McGowan as the insane/bloodthirsty/incestuous witch Marique is arguably the only cast member at home in this type of film, as she struts around in wild headdresses – and with no eyebrows – tasting the blood of virgins by pricking their necks with metal claws. Think of her as a hellish, antediluvian Nurse Ratched. This is also a good moment to mention that this film is rated ‘R.’

• The film’s lavish production design and costumes – that effectively mix North African, Middle Eastern, Persian and Indian influences – create the distinct-yet-familiar feel of ‘The Hyborian Age’ as Robert Howard envisioned it (more or less).

Jason Momoa as Conan.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: • Again Jason Mamoa, who’s given some cool lines to deliver (“I live. I love. I slay … I am content.”) but can’t summon any humor or pizazz in doing so. As smoothly as he chops heads, Mamoa lacks the over-the-top persona required to sell this basically silly material.

• It wasn’t until the end credits were rolling that I realized that the actor buried in make-up playing the ruthless villain ‘Khalar Zym’ was actually Stephen Lang. It seems like a waste to hire somebody that good and make him totally unrecognizable to the audience.

• The movie is in desperate need of a sense of humor. Rachel Nichols’ character Tamara seems like a wasted opportunity here, as she should’ve been back-talking Conan more throughout the film – or else Conan needed a worthier sidekick, like Mako from the original film. Continue reading “No Man Should Live in Chains!” LFM Mini-Review of Conan the Barbarian

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo on Lars Larson’s National Radio Show

LFM Co-Editor Jason Apuzzo was on Lars Larson’s national radio show Friday talking about Cowboys & Aliens, Captain America, The Devil’s Double and other current releases.

Special thanks, as always, to Lars and his staff for inviting Jason on. He always has fun appearing on Lars’ show.

Lars’ show is broadcast on over 200 stations nationwide, and runs at different times across the country, so to find his show be sure to check out his website here.

Posted on August 10th, 2011 at 10:23am.

The Mercury Men @ The Syfy Channel

By Jason Apuzzo. Last summer we posted about a then-forthcoming web series called The Mercury Men. The Mercury Men (see the trailer above) is a retro-, 1940s-style adventure serial about a lowly government office drone, who finds himself trapped when deadly alien visitors from the planet Mercury seize his office building and use it as a staging ground for a nefarious plot. Aided by a daring aerospace engineer from a mysterious organization known as “The League,” the office drone must stop the invaders and their doomsday device, the Gravity Engine.

The Mercury Men received a fair amount of buzz last year, including an appearance in Sci Fi Magazine (right next to a feature about Libertas Contributor Steve Greaves) and at Comic-Con. I lost track of The Mercury Men, though, until Libertas commenter Vince (to whom I tip my hat) notified me that the series had finally been completed and picked up by The SyFy Channel as a web program. The series is currently 7 episodes in (at about 7 minutes per episode), with 3 more to go – and all episodes will be available on-line at the Syfy Channel website by the end of this week.

Since we’ve been talking a lot here lately about both superheroes and alien invasion sci-fi, this seemed like a good moment to remind everyone about this series.

Dodging an attack by The Mercury Men.

It’s important to keep an eye on the indie/low-budget world, not just because there’s a lot of creativity in that arena – but because tomorrow’s big-time directors are regularly emerging from these humble projects. For example, Joe Cornish, whose debut feature Attack the Block we just reviewed last week, is already getting buzz as the possible next director for the Die Hard series. And Gareth Edwards, director of the low-budget indie sci-fi film Monsters (see our review here), has already been tapped to direct the Godzilla reboot.

As I mentioned previously, I love the creativity of what director Chris Preksta did with The Mercury Men to evoke the atmosphere of the old adventure serials, so many of which were based around a charismatic American hero (Superman, Batman, The Green Hornet, Captain America, etc.) fighting some sort of fascist invader. It’s also quite remarkable how far low-budget VFX have come in terms of their ability to fill out the otherwise constricted universe of indie filmmaking; it’s a classic case of technology freeing up storytellers’ imaginations. Beyond that, though, I like the pizzaz the filmmakers brought to this simple project, and its old-fashioned humanistic spirit – exemplified by the great speech given by ‘Dr. Tomorrow’ in the “Men of Tomorrow” episode.  And of course it’s also interesting, once again, to see the ‘invasion of America’ theme recurring, which we’re seeing everywhere these days.

So once again, best wishes to the team behind The Mercury Men, and I hope LFM readers take time to check out this fun little series.

Posted on August 2nd, 2011 at 5:45pm.

LFM Review: Cowboys & Aliens

By Jason Apuzzo. Cowboys & Aliens is one of those movies that probably looked great on paper – like a development executive’s dream. Take a popular graphic novel that combines two of America’s most durable genres (the Western and sci-fi), cast Indiana Jones and the current James Bond, add the Iron Man director and current It-girl from Tron, plus Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard as producers – and you’ve got a sure-fire hit, right?

Right?

Alas, we all know that movies don’t work exactly that way. There’s actually something rather mysterious about what makes one film work – and a different film made by the same people, even on the same subject, fall flat. It’s a matter of what we usually call ‘chemistry’ or ‘inspiration.’

Cowboys & Aliens is not a bad film. It’s entertaining at times and works reasonably well as light summer entertainment – but it’s the cinematic equivalent of the ‘superteam’ Miami Heat, or the Lakers back when they had a roster that included Kobe, Shaq, Karl Malone and Gary Payton … and lost the title. It’s a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be, so it ends up being almost nothing. Unsatisfying as a Western, and clichéd as sci-fi – insufficient as a star vehicle, and thin as an action film – Cowboys & Aliens is a genre mash-up that never really settles on being any one thing, and left me bored and disinterested as a result.

Reluctant allies, covered in dust.

Although Cowboys boasts two big leads, it’s mostly carried by Daniel Craig as Jake Lonergan – a man who, as the film opens, awakens in the desert in Jason Bourne-like fashion, having lost his memory but not his ability to kick peoples’ teeth in. Although he fights like a UFC mixed martial artist and shoots like Wyatt Earp, Jake can’t remember who he is, or why he has a strangely cauterized wound on his side, or why a bizarre slab of metal is wrapped around his wrist – like some sort of Stone Age Casio watch.

This is where the film makes its first mistake, in the casting of Daniel Craig. It’s time we acknowledge what has become obvious: which is that Craig, for what limited ability he’s shown in playing James Bond – limited, that is, to fight scenes – has neither the charisma, nor the warmth, nor the subtlety of person to really make a compelling, big-time movie star. It’s simply not there. Daniel Craig looks and acts like a rugby player, or maybe a bouncer – the sort of person who isn’t called upon on a regular basis to show vulnerability, or a sense of humor. (Qualities, incidentally, that his co-star Harrison Ford has specialized in over the past 35 years.) Think back to what Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson were like in their prime  – and you’ll realize how dull Craig’s performances are these days. He’s Cowboys’ first and biggest problem.

Eventually Craig heads into the town of ‘Absolution’ (which is probably the sister city of ‘Obvious Metaphor’), one of those typical Western-movie towns in which everyone speaks in parables, and nobody seems to have bathed during the past year. (Was the West really like that? I doubt it.) After a series of brief fistfights and shoot-outs, none of which are especially electrifying, we learn that the town is basically run by cattle baron and former Confederate Army Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (get it? he sells cattle!), played by Harrison Ford at his most grizzled. Ford seems to be channelling John Wayne’s character Thom Dunson from Red River here, as in vengeful fits he rides roughshod over the local sheriff, his men, and most particularly his worthless son. And of everyone involved in this film – and that includes the director, and the film’s eight writers – Ford is the only one who seems at home in this material, like he’s been itching to cut loose in a Western for decades. He’s ornery and authoritative, but always with a cracked smile and a twinkle in his eye. He’s trail boss, father figure and old coot all in one – and he’s good. You’ll be wishing this wasn’t his first Western since the bizarre The Frisco Kid (with Gene Wilder?!) back in 1979. Continue reading LFM Review: Cowboys & Aliens

UPDATED: Mid-Summer Invasion Alert! Skies Falling on Cowboys, Battleships & Moscow + Ridley Scott Returns to Outer Space!

From "Cowboys & Aliens."

By Jason Apuzzo. • We’ve been through Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Super 8, Green Lantern and Falling Skies thus far this summer, and our next scheduled alien invasion comes this Friday in the form of Cowboys & Aliens. Although initially skeptical about this project, I’m now looking forward to it – largely because it looks to be more of a Western, truth be told, than a sci-fi project – and I’ve been eager to see Harrison Ford in a Western for decades. In a summer in which we’ve seen aliens demolish the downtowns of several major American cities  – usually in 3D – Cowboys & Aliens looks to offer a more modest type of spectacle, one that’s based on old-fashioned star power and earth-bound heroics rather than visual effects.

Does this mean I’m going to like Cowboys more than Transformers (easily my favorite film of the summer)? Not at all – in fact, I’d say that’s highly unlikely at this point. But I miss the Western genre – its style, values and vision of the American frontier and the people who conquered it – and if it takes an alien menace to re-animate the genre for younger audiences, I’m all for it.

This is all to say that Cowboys & Aliens is currently looking like a film that is only nominally attached to the sci-fi genre, and is leaning heavily on the romance of the Old West for its appeal – and, ironically, this is probably why the film currently isn’t tracking very well, or is at least tracking more like a Western than a major sci-fi tentpole. The film’s director, Jon Favreau, has been taking a decidedly old-school approach to promoting the film, sitting down recently for some very enjoyable conversations with Harrison Ford, and also with the film’s producers Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Favreau almost comes across like an associate professor in cinema studies during these conversations rather than a hot director with a major film to launch. I’m liking his low-key approach, though, and I hope the film turns out to be good. You’ll get my full report on that Friday!

In the meantime, take a moment to check out this major career retrospective on Cowboys & Aliens’ producer, Steven Spielberg, held at the DGA recently and featuring James Cameron and J.J. Abrams. It’s 90 minutes of Spielberg at his most engaging, talking about his career from its humble beginnings all the way to today.

• The Battleship trailer finally set sail this morning … and I loved it. Imagine a cross between Top Gun and Battle: Los Angeles, with Liam Neeson and Brooklyn Decker thrown in, and you’ve basically got the vibe of this film.

Some of the big guns on display in "Battleship."

Battleship stars Taylor Kitsch (who for obscure reasons has been tapped to carry both this film and Disney’s John Carter next year) as some kind of ‘rebellious’/Maverick-style hot shot Naval officer assigned to serve under Liam Neeson on board a battleship, while conveniently enough being engaged to Neeson’s daughter, Brooklyn Decker, who plays “a physical therapist.” I’ll bet! After a few glamor shots of Ms. Decker providing ‘physical therapy’ to her fiancé on a beach in Hawaii (is this covered under Obamacare?), we then get some beauty passes of Naval ships, etc., then head out to sea where some kind of massive alien flotilla has arrived. We get a pretty good look at the alien ships in this trailer, and the whole thing ends with Neeson ordering all guns to fire on the alien attackers.

The whole thing looks pretty entertaining, very much in the Michael Bay style – romanticizing the military lifestyle and its flashy hardware – and also like it may have something the otherwise commendable Battle: Los Angeles didn’t really have: humor. One thing I wasn’t crazy about, though: Taylor Kitsch looks completely dull in this trailer, as he does in the John Carter trailer (see below). The studios have really got to find some better young male leads these days. (I’m still stewing, btw, over how godawful Garrett Hedlund was in Tron: Legacy.) My suggestion? Outsource. Hire Brits and Aussies exclusively.

Footnote: if you look carefully, the film depicts Neeson leading what appears to be an international naval flotilla – led by America but with the Japanese featured prominently. I like that. I think it’s nice to remember who our actual allies are these days, as opposed to those who are simply our ‘trading partners.’ Hint, hint.

Battleship hits theaters in May of 2012, and I will be there. Here’s the trailer below.

Continue reading UPDATED: Mid-Summer Invasion Alert! Skies Falling on Cowboys, Battleships & Moscow + Ridley Scott Returns to Outer Space!