Omni's Random Video Noise

WHY'D I WATCH IT?

Omnizoa: Haven't see A Clockwork Orange.
gboodies: I would say don't bother...
Miss Vicky: Don't bother.
Sexy Celebrity: Bother.

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
I've heard a lot of crap about A Clockwork Orange.

I knew it contained some really twisted stuff and I've read about people who've had nightmares after seeing the movie.

But I watch anime. So I'm pretty used to seeing twisted **** by now.

After seeing A Clockwork Orange, I honestly feel I must reduce my score for Taxi Driver to a [Just... Bad].

Why?

Because after over 2 HOURS of this movie at least I wasn't BORED. At least there was always something HAPPENING, at least the PLOT WAS MOVING ALONG or doing something interesting.

[Meh...] is usually my rating for a competent movie that bores me, but even though Taxi Driver didn't irritate anywhere on the same levels that other movies have, what pitifully little it does spend it's time on I can poke holes in.

Travis' romance? Stupid and unrealistic.

Travis' motivations? Limp and unexplained.

The entire story? It feels like someone took the ideas of a "vigilante taxi driver" and a "hidden wrist gun" and didn't know how to combine the two for most of an entire movie. That SUCKS.

Clockwork Orange didn't bore me, but it falls into my alternate reason for giving a [Meh...] rating: What I liked about the movie is largely offset, but not overwhelmed, by what I didn't like about the movie.

Or more accurately, what I didn't like was offset by what I liked, because A Clockwork Orange starts off REALLY WEIRD.

And goofy.

And kind of appalling.

And I really cannot take their outfits any less seriously.

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Cause I'm stupid. THERE.

Okay, fine. I mentioned in my The Secretary "review" (I don't like calling these reviews) that I'd seen better stories in pornos. Well, "Nana to Kaoru" was what I was thinking of. That's when I discovered they actually made a live action movie.

WHAT'D I THINK?*SPOILERS*
Nana to Kaoru is originally an erotic comedy manga.

You can tell because it's obvious that no one involved with this movie knows how to adapt a manga to live-action.

Nana underacts, Kaoru overacts, and the whole movie HAD ONE JOB.

The basic premise is that a generally uptight and stressed out council president and her skeevy SM-geek distant friend from way back live next to each other and go to the same school. After a realistic altercation they find themselves in a platonic SM relationship which serves to relax both of their chilly personalities, build trust in each other, and eventually develop into a romantic relationship.

It SOUNDS weird, but this manga managed to gain enough traction with non-SM readers it's now published alongside Berserk, which is a cult classic grimdark fantasy series.

The concept and basis was strong enough, but the transition to live-action was terrible.

Kaoru's basically been flanderized into a stereotypical over-the-top Japanese pervert, and Kaoru couldn't act to save her life.

Inner monologue becomes outer monologue and whatever isn't mood-breaking spoken out loud isn't told to us which damages our ability to understand both character's motivations which are far deeper and more appreciable in the manga than in the movie.

Also the pissing scene. They left in the pissing scene.

I don't get that. Why is that supposed to be sexy? Jus-CUT THAT OUT! I DON'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT THAT!

Nana and Kaoru is spared an [Irredeemably Awful] from me because it managed to get a brief chuckle out of me, both intentionally and unintentionally.


Final Verdict:

[Just... Bad]

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
I quoted it in foster's Movie Quotes thread (mainly because I was thinking of David Bowie). I haven't seen it in like... over 5 years though. Reassessment time!

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
My opinion of Labyrinth has certainly improved over the years.

I think every time I've seen it I've been inclined to directly compare it to other fantasy movies of the time. Problem there is, that's not really fair, since most other fantasy movies try to have a plot, or... SOMETHING.

As I was watching through Labyrinth this time, I think I was finally clue'd off to what I've been missing: Labyrinth isn't like most fantasy movies because it isn't trying to tell a typical fantasy movie story, at least in the modern sense.

It's a more of a fable, it's a lot more like The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland. The purpose of both of these narratives is to entertain through their presentation, themes, amusing peculiarities, and occasionally insightful dialog.

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Saw it mentioned once or twice in orestb333's Your Favorite Dark Comedy Movie thread and bearing in mind that I haven't seen it for over 5 years I thought I'd give it a rewatch and see if my neutral/boring feelings towards it have changed.

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
And thus ended the only romantic comedy that's ever made me cry.

I'm SUUUPER HARD to sell on romance movies, ESPECIALLY romantic comedies, so I suppose the fact that this one got to me by approaching the general concept so unconventionally makes sense.

I hate so many things about romance movies mainly because I hate so many things about dating and "love" in real life. That **** just gets under my skin in a bad way and I hate it.

The only vague whisper of any of that is Harold's plan to marry Maude.

Say what you will, but that's a checkbox ticked on my list of "Stupid Things You're Wasting My Time With".

That part of the movie is infinitesimally small compared to everything else though.

The idea that the two love interests take a wild stab at taboos by featuring a social recluse and a criminal with an extreme age difference of at least 60 years sounds like a weak shock material. But while young Harold's obsessed with death and suicide and retreating into his own head, Maude brings a frightening counterbalance by being a 79-year-old woman high on life and living in the moment in the truest sense of the phrase.


I like how the two contrast and complement each other in their various ways, Maude to Harold moreso than Harold to Maude though, that would be a criticism of mine. Harold seems to offer Maude little more than what is probably some overlooked attention while Maude serves to enlighten Harold to the little things, small joys, and the thrill of living in the moment, rather than mulling in the distant past or the future.

Neither character is entirely respectable on their own, Harold just seems to miserably loiter around and Maude clearly jacks cars on a regular basis (with the purest of intentions of course), but the relationship, if anything, manages to even out at least one of them by the end.

The humor is so incredibly deadpan that many of the gags throughout just kinda hang (in an incredibly punny way) and while I laughed a few times, most of the humor was very very mild so while I wasn't exactly bored this time around, I didn't feel a whole lot of punch from what was onscreen.

A few scenes are exceptional of course, the scene in which Harold explains why he pretends to kill himself and the finale are very memorable. The scheme to get Harold out of the military was also memorable although for very different reasons.


Something that I noticed this time around is that this romance develops over the course of a week.

Generally I'd be inclined to call BS on an Overnight Romance, but considering that neither of these characters have anything but time, both find each other totally atypical, and Maude's live-in-the-moment philosophy is conducive to it, I'm gonna let it slide.

Not only these things, but unlike the vast majority of romcoms I've seen, both characters legitimately develop their relationship with one another throughout the movie, both by learning about each other AND sharing the same interests (even if they are funerals) without devolving to those ******* "rules" I hate so much.

Harold and Maude breaks rules, it doesn't make them.

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
I keep revisiting it so often, that I just bought it.

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Underrated sci-fi classic.

Aside from the cool premise of crashlanding on a planet where creepy crawlies come out during the eclipse, and the many many opportunities the movie takes to make Vin Diesel, Riddick, a badass without ever venturing into cheesy territory (humor is definitely intentional), a big reason I like this movie is the morally ambiguous characters.

The movie knows we want a good guy to root for, but nearly everyone with major screentime is flawed or portrayed negatively in some way which makes it difficult to ascertain everyone's intentions.

Fry's character opens the movie making the selfish decision to jettison all of the passengers of her ship to save her own life. It doesn't work, and we see her struggle to come to terms with the people grateful for saving their lives despite her concealed intentions not to.

As the movie goes on, Fry's eventually redeemed through her actions and the bigger question becomes which of the two characters, Riddick or John, his bounty hunter, can be most trusted since they clearly don't trust each other for good reason.


Riddick's motivations remain questionable nearly all the way into the final scene of the movie, but even then you've been given enough evidence to know what to expect from him by this point. Before this point, the questionability of his motivations as well as his relationship with John (which is valuably improved the Director's Cut) serve to create a constant tension throughout the movie even when there isn't any action on screen, and it's a real treat to see all of the "weak" characters make an effort to hang around one or the other in an attempt to curry favor from the two "powerful" characters even when their intentions aren't entirely transparent and doing so may get them killed.

Among my limited criticisms would be the noticeably weak CG which skates by largely because the most glaring effects are used in dark shots. By biggest complaint would be the bottled glow-worms.

Poor glow-worms. They didn't do anything to you, and yet you stuff a family of them into an old booze bottle and then just left them to die trapped in there. ********.


For the record, I would give the sequels, Chronicles of Riddick, a [Meh...] and Riddick a [Just... Bad].

Chronicles suffers by removing Riddick's ambiguity and... just generally having a weaker plot and themes (points for death by teacup though). Riddick suffers by being a carbon copy of Pitch Black except way way way way worse.


Final Verdict:

[Friggen' Awesome]

REWATCH UPDATE 1/1/2023
It has been 6 years that this movie has sat on my shelf, long awaiting an overdue review, to confirm that it truly is worthy of the lustrous prestige of sitting amidst my all-time favorite movies.

I'm honestly surprised that I rated this 5 stars.

While it's still certainly my favorite Vin Diesel movie, and still the best of the Riddick trilogy, and did not sport nearly as poor of CG as I recall, this movie falls well short of an exceptional review.

Not that it does anything particularly poorly, but it really doesn't excel in any great respect. Riddick himself is equal parts amusing and enigmatic, but the rest of the cast carries personality about on par with the guest characters of a weak Stargate episode (or Farscape, for that matter). The music is serviceable, but in no way memorable, and the monster design is quite frankly boring and unappealing.

Perhaps the biggest issue comes down to how the movie is structured. The first half takes place in the day time, during which we're hyping up the threat of Riddick, teasing at the night to come, and very minimally developing Captain Lady and Fake Cop. All of the outdoor shots are also inconsistently presented with a bright yellow or blue filter and overexposed in an effort to convey how bright it is on a planet with 3 suns. That's just not appealing to look at. This isn't the deep blue and orange saturation of Mad Max: Fury Road, it's just ugly and difficult to watch.

The second half of the movie takes place at night and they basically let the cat out of the bag in the most literal sense because when you establish that the monsters are innumerable and everywhere, and then you have them randomly pick off the characters, it really just feels like a deus ex character death.

Not so with the Archaeologist(?) character, he was so unreasonably ****ing stupid that he not only left the biggest source of light, which was the best defense the cast had against the monsters, dragging it with him, destroying it, and getting himself killed while endangering the cast. Absolute big-brained genius, no wonder the monsters took a big 'ol bite out of it.

The dialog, mainly involving Riddick creepin' on Captain Lady, still has it's moments, but it's few and far between and I feel like I disproportionately overweighted these relationships the first time I watched it because, as seems to be the case with me at times, I end up drooling over inspirational concepts. If something happens in a movie that sounds like a crazy cool idea or there's a character dynamic that plays out in a way that really appeals to me, I go all in on that, but having that first impression dulled over the course of few years and revisiting with these conceits in mind, I'm left less than impressed.

This is good solid movie, there's not a lot to actually complain about, but there's relatively little to commend it for, unless I'm trying to give a rating relative to the average sci-fi/monster movie... in which case it gets high marks.

Final Verdict:

[Good]

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
I think this is supposed to be the quintessential 50s sci-fi movie, right? Other then that, I saw the poster and how can I NOT want to see the movie after a poster like this?:

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Mmmmm.... that's some good retrofuture.

I thought it was decent. Most generously I would say I'm shocked by how ahead of it's time this movie feels considering it's over 60 YEARS OLD HOLY DAMN.

It got a few intended chuckles out of me and I'm surprised I liked the plot as much as I did despite a few inconsistencies (how'd that last guy die anyway? He just sort of keeled over offscreen.) though my main complaints would OF COURSE have to go towards the one female character.

She's... just sorta there. To tempt the male protagonists. Because apparently they've been secluded from women for over a year for some stupid reason. She's been secluded too so it's apparently a lot of horny men seeking kisses (and only kisses? man, these guys get off easy) from a woman who doesn't even get the concept of kissing.

I really liked the "Nope, I still don't get it" scene where the one guy keeps kissing her and she's not getting anything out of it. Kissing is one of those things that bothers me in romance movies (thank you, Harold & Maude), but unfortunately the movie takes all of that goodwill when the one guy asinine enough to yell at her FOR BEING A WOMAN ends up kissing her and ooooohhh I totally get that kissing thing now.

Collection Update:

Pitch Black

Glad I got the Director's Cut of Pitch Black.

Clue
Shame Clue is almost as barebones as it gets. No insert at all and special features on the back of the box include the UNRATED TRAILER and 3 SURPRISE ENDINGS. Ooooohhhh... fancy ****.

I like my DVDs with Production Commentaries, Cast Commentaries, Making Ofs, Bloopers, and Animated Screen Tests. None of this "Special Features Include: Subtitles" crap.