Movie Appraisal: Pacific Rim (2013)

Hey everybody! So, last weekend I went to see Pacific Rim with my normal theatre viewing crew. We had planned this out for a good long while and were all looking forward to it quite a bit. We went to a midnight showing since any other time wouldn't have worked out for us, and we excitedly waited for the movie to get rolling. Also read this review at your own risk!

We had no previews in our showing, and the movie didn't quite fit the screen which was fairly disappointing. Other than those things, the movie viewing experience was amazing. It is the best of its genre, hands down. I mean, there is no other way to even compare it to other movies. The actions scenes are wonderful, the human elements are actually meaningful and fun, and the CGI is both necessary and incredibly well done.

Come on, look at how awesome this thing looks!

I loved the designs of both the Kaiju (the big goddamn monsters) and the Jaeger (the big goddamn mechs). They worked incredibly well and felt amazingly large. The sense of scale was monumental, something I haven't felt in a theatre since the first time I saw The Fellowship of the Ring and watched the huge statues in that movie go by the fellowship while they were floating by in tiny boats. This movie makes the Kaiju and the Jaegers feel realistically huge. It was so cool.

And yeah, this movie has a lot to do with being cool. It is an experience. The music, the sound, the visuals, and the human stories- they are all experiences within the movie. No, the plot is not new. It's actually pretty cliched and can be easily predicted, but that doesn't mean it hasn't perfected its story. The Kaiju are the perfect antagonists, both alien and immensely terrifying. They have both a strength and a power that a normal person cannot even hope to overcome.

I'm a big damn mech, and I'm going to punch monsters from the depths of Hell.
Pleased to meet you.

It's a story about struggle and survival in an apocalyptic situation. It's also about teamwork (since the Jaegers require two people to make them run) and about just a great time in general. It's a movie that made me smile ear-to-ear more than once. It's also a movie that made me feel a cold sting of mortality at times as well. There are some very dark moments to go with the fun of them movie. And the moments that feel immense also can feel soul-crushingly sad as well.

When the Russian and Chinese Jaeger pilots die, it is a terrible thing. I felt their deaths in a way I rarely feel the deaths of characters within a movie. And these a re characters with no speaking lines either! With a very limited amount of screen time. Guillermo del Toro is that much of a master of his craft. He can make you feel something for characters who are background at best.

The fights are superb, hitting all the right strides and all the right moments. There are enough things that both the Jaeger and the Kaiju do to shake the fights up as well. I mean, suddenly the Jaegers have swords. Suddenly the Kaiju has an EMP. Suddenly there is a rocket elbow. Suddenly the freaking Kaiju has WINGS. All these elements work to make it just a wonderfully entertaining film, full of amazing moments, cool characters, and neat set-pieces.

The background stuff is really interesting as well. I mean both the background of this universe and the scenery itself. Both tell more of the story than the dialogue and characters ever could. It just feels so awe-inspiring. Ever person who is or was a little kid at one point playing with toys and ramming them against one another to fight will understand why this movie is one of the best movies out there period.

Yes, there are negatives. The lack of female characters (although I know I'll be called out on that by someone, just give it time) and some of the sillier things of the movie were a little annoying, but for the most part it is an incredibly fun ride. Easily one of the best movies I've seen in theatres in a long time. I suggest everybody watch this big damn movie. The script, music, and everything else are so awesome that the movie deserves your money and time, it really does.

How can you not love a man who looks like this?

Also, Ron Perlman and his character of Hannibal Chau are crazy awesome. I love that character so much. Also, the two science guys are great as well, and don't even take away from the big story of mechs and monsters punching one another. Is it a dumb movie at times? Sure, I guess. But just because it's a movie about things punching other things doesn't mean it can't be brilliant as well.

Serious recommendation. If you haven't seen it, go and see it!

Also, Hannibal Chau's shoes, because the detail is awesome!

Movie Appraisal: The Dead Zone (1983)

The ICE... is gonna BREAK!

A "horror thriller film," eh? This is where I'm supposed to roll my eyes and wonder how people put movies into genres in the first place. Calling a movie a horror thriller is like calling it a thrilling suspense. It's absolutely redundant. The "horror thriller" line is from Wikipedia. Just ignore that website when it comes to most of these movies. It's a terrible website to get information from in the case of 90% of the stuff I review.

Anyway, this is a "horror" movie by absolute technicality. The director, David Cronenburg, does an absolutely fantastic job of capturing the horror of a terrible curse... or a wonderful gift... whichever you'd like to take it as. It's not precisely a horror film in the classic sense. It's never scary, never terrifying, never really all that horrific. The terror comes from what Johnny sees, and what he goes through in the course of the story. The original novel, also billed as horror, is much of the same way. There is no true horror. The realism is always there, but it is realism with a twist of the supernatural. This film is also a great adaptation of the novel, something I rarely have the chance to say.

The Dead Zone is mostly a collection of vignettes told in a rough story arc. Johnny Smith, played by Christopher Walken, gets into an accident, loses five years of his life to a coma, loses the love of his life, and loses most of his reason for living. He keeps pushing on, but as half a man, one lose to time as much as he is lost to life itself. The story very much pushes the fact that he really dies when he gets into the accident. Sure, five years later he goes on living, but it is no longer him, but a man given a gift, who is eventually told to give his life for the gift anyway.

This movie is not as fun as Graveyard Shift instead relying on serious performances rather than over-the-top ones, and sad moments rather than great lines. I don't know if this is the best adaptation of a Stephen King novel to screen, but it is damn well one of the best. The serious tone mixed with great performances by almost everybody in the film brings this movie to the forefront as a brilliant one from beginning to end. That being said, it's not precisely a horror film in execution, but rather a horror film by premise... if that makes any sense. It probably doesn't. My point is that this won't keep you up nights afraid... but it will make you wonder what you might do if you were given the "gift."

David Cronenburg is at the height of his game here. Coming in the midst of some of his greatest films of all time, and directly after Videodrome, this movie, while a more more "normal" film, does exactly what it needs to do, being both a fantastic and beautiful film as well as a depressing story of a man with a terrible gift. The little stories, all taken from the novel, are incredibly well done and well paced, with the beginning of the movie being nearly heartbreaking. Christopher Walken's performance is easily the best performance I've ever seen by him, and easily one of the most emotionally investing performances I've seen in a long time. Watching the struggle of a man trying to heal his shattered body, then trying to heal his shattered mind is both upsetting and heart-wrenching  Watching as he decides to give up his own life to the greater good is damn near hard to watch. This is a man who could do a lot of good for the world, and he does, but nobody will ever know but him.

Strangely, despite being both a huge fan of David Cronenburg and of Stephen King movie adaptations, I have never seen this movie, although I have owned it for years without watching it. I should have watched it long before now. It was a wonderful experience, and while not precisely the classic horror movie, it really does bring about a melancholic feel to me in late October, a feeling I kind of like this time of year. The Dead Zone, strangely, was one of the last non-recent Stephen King novels I read as well. Not sure why I waited so long for either, but I'm glad I finally read/watched the story unfold. It was really worth it to experience.

I don't have much else but praise for the movie. Sean Sullivan plays the perfect father to Walken's Johnny. I saw that exact man when I read the novel originally, and I felt he was perfectly cast to the role. Walken, although not precisely what I expected for Johnny, worked well here. I had kind of expected a younger man to play the role, but by the end, he really worked for me. He worked especially well after the accident. You really start to feel for him. He is a broken man, and a man who you could easily feel pity for... and so much remorse as well. He's nearly dead... maybe even should be dead, but he isn't. He keeps on living through the pain, through the problems, through losing the love of his life. He loses almost everything but keeps carrying on until he has no choice anymore but to do what needs to be done. And he is easily the most likable man in history. I was endeared to him in good-bye scene to Sarah after the carnival. He walks her to her door, she asks him inside. It starts to rain. And he says no. "Some things are worth the wait." I can't help but like him after that. And when he finally does get passionate when people might die, it's almost heart-wrenching  There are times you want to punch the people who won't listen to him in their faces. Walken and Johnny are really the centerpieces of the movie and they both pull off their jobs amazingly, with Walken acting brilliantly and Johnny being one of the best characters in a movie I have ever seen.

Saying that... Brooke Adams, playing Sarah Bracknell also worked decently, although I never really saw the chemistry between her and Walken, not as much as I thought I should see. Then again, I've never really liked her character, even if I understand her decision to marry someone else; it's still a cruddy decision for her to make. Martin Sheen plays a role he was basically meant for, a corrupt and overbearing politician, Greg Stillson, who has hopes for the White House... and even more hopes to basically destroy the damned world. He works well here, both sleazy and charismatic enough to pull off this political powerhouse of a man.

While some of the scenes happen fast and others take a long time to get anywhere at all, I do believe the movie is well-paced. I don't think a knowledge of the novel itself is needed when seeing the movie either, although in my case I definitely appreciated the background the novel provided. I do somewhat wish the movie had been slightly more fleshed out, with a little bit more added into it, maybe a little bit more establishing or something, but that is a very weak complaint, and really only says that I only truly wished for more. I guess that's why a television series of The Dead Zone existed.

I guess all I can say is that I just reviewed two excellent Stephen King movies in a row, both of which I recommend heartily despite both being completely different types of movies. While this is serious and more thrilling and suspenseful than horrific, it does have its moments. It's a good watch and probably one of the absolute best quality movies I've reviewed this October at least. Give it a watch if you haven't. It's definitely worth your time.

Movie Appraisal: Les Diaboliques (1955)

This Henri-Georges Clouzot French film really surprised me. I never would have expected it to be anywhere near as good as it is. It takes a master director to make a film even half as effective as this. Hell, I would have said before that only Alfred Hitchcock would have been able to do it, but Clouzot not only delivers, I believe he delivers better than Hitchcock would have. That's high praise.

The film is about two women who try to kill the man they share between them. Christina, his wife (played by Véra Clouzot in an absolutely brilliant performance), and Nicole, his mistress (played by Simone Signoret in a subtle and incredible performance herself) star as the two women. They both have their reasons for killing off this awful man, who is a principal of a school he seems to hate. The man, Michel Delassalle (played by Paul Meurisse), is a terrible person, who would deserve any death that the women could give him.


Over the course of the slowly paced film, Michel is killed by the two women, drowned very carefully in a bathtub, and then dumped into the school swimming pool to be found by others later. The problem is his body disappears and this very odd tale of suspense and intrigue commences, all the time with the audience wondering what is real and what isn't, and even moreso if Michel is still alive or if he is truly dead. Theories upon theories went through my head, from supernatural to someone messing with the heads of the two women. Hell, I even once thought that it might have been some kind of awful death dream from Christine, especially with such a focus on her heart condition. And yet, the ending was still both creepy and surprising despite being... well, I'm not going to spoil the ending. The movie itself asked me not to and I'll respect it.


The acting, slow pace, and subtlety really work well in this film, building the tension from beginning to end and leading to an amazing payoff. This film is equal to some of the best Hitchcock films, being very similar in both suspense and ultimate payoff. I'd like to compare the overall film to Vertigo, but both are very different films in general. I think Les Diaboliques is an almost incomparable movie, one that works on so many more levels than it ever should. Its technical quality is sometimes suspect, but the filmography is always brilliant, and despite being black-and-white, the contrast of what you are seeing is incredibly well done, very stark and very intense. 


The film, although in French, is very much a Hitchcockian film. If you've ever enjoyed Hitchcock, you will enjoy Clouzot as well, almost definitely, and I'd recommend its interesting music, its high tension, and its wonderful build-up of both plot and characters to anybody who would enjoy a movie in general. It's fantastically well done and holds up quite well even over sixty years later. I could watch the movie again and again and enjoy it more every time despite knowing the ending. It's a rare movie that adds more to it once you've seen it once.


Anyway, this is a great film, obviously a classic, and I can't say enough great things about it.