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the-jezman
Reviews
The Usual Suspects (1995)
The puzzle that wouldn't play fair
The Usual Suspects is a movie regarded by many as one of the best crime dramas of all time. As any crime drama it opens with a puzzle: a scene unfolds and the viewer watches tentatively, every detail potentially being the one that blows the mystery wide open. Soon we find ourselves a fly on the wall, watching an interrogation between a slimy character named "Verbal" and a rather generic law enforcer. The conversation twists and turns from hostility, to bargaining, to mutuality as angles are played on both sides to try and outsmart the other.
Verbal begins to replay his story, and we immediately mistake a point of view for objectivity. Before long a daring plan for a heist arises, as does the name "Keyser Soze", a legendary villain unphased even by murdering his own family to proclaim to the world just how much of a big bad wolf he really is. The story itself becomes harder and harder to follow, as motivations and means twist more and more. The mind strains trying to follow it all, blissfully unaware of whats to come. The film presents itself as something to be solved, and we all race to try and beat the movie at its own game.
The conclusion, argued by many as brilliant, is nothing more than a Deus Ex Machina. Its the film equivalent of "and it was all a dream", with just a little more window dressing. We discover Verbal has used his surroundings to manufacture the entire story, and even more importantly, is in fact Keyser Soze.
A stunning realization, no doubt. The more I thought about the shocking final minutes, the more I came to reason that I hadn't been fooled, I had been cheated. A plot twist makes new sense of something you've seen before, but in The Usual Suspects there's nothing to indicate we are seeing Verbals description, and not simply the past.
Think of all the movies where a person begins describing a scene, and it cuts back to that scene happening. Are we looking at what actually happened, or what the character is describing? Its difficult to say for certain, but it is hardly unreasonable to expect the former. Playing on such a fickle element of cinematography is risky business, and I was hardly sold.
So much rides on the final minutes, and many are impressed because it dares to do what few other movies consider: to make an hour long turn of events completely irrelevant. We don't see it coming, but whilst the writers were wondering if they could, they never stopped to wonder if they should.
Heroes (2006)
Painfully slow, with below average, inconsistent writing.
Heroes is, quite simply, an awful series. Its too little butter spread over too much bread, the actual plot mercilessly bogged down by irrelevant tangents and endless recaps. You would think with so little progression they could hold what remains together, but the series itself is plagued with plot holes like smoldering craters.
Its a show about people with super powers, but even on that level it fails to be internally consistent. The first and foremost problem presents itself when one of the characters is given the ability to manipulate time. This alone generates endless scenes where the solution can easily be resolved by simply going back in time and removing the first seasons threat: covered by a ridiculous "he hasn't mastered his powers" veil that is seldom justified.
Making matters worse is the character that absorbs every other characters abilities by proxy: but never makes use of time manipulation or many of the other powers he picks up. The tag line of the series is "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World". The assertion of course is that the worlds fate is tied with one of the main characters. Unfortunately in a moronic turn of events we get to see a view of the future where the apocalypse has moved into full swing, and the girl is alive anyway. Outstanding.
Even if you can shut down the part of your brain that finds all this intellectually offensive, this is not a good series by any stretch of the imagination. There are too many characters, with arching plots that are simply irrelevant to the main story. Progression of the actual story follows an abysmal precedent set by shows like Lost and Prison Break where every step forward is met by an equal step backward later along the line.
You can enjoy looking forward to 4 minutes of every episode watching whats already happened, the director actually having the audacity to replay scenes from the episode before it just in case you were hit by a bus and were struck by a nasty case of amnesia. The events are so convoluted that the show manages to completely reset itself multiple times just to keep the hours filled. The end of each episode is a cliffhanger so you absolutely must hang in there until the next one, the shows own merits aren't enough to keep you interested.
Putting all that aside, the absolute worst offense made by Heroes is that the writers are clueless. Amatuerism never rears its ugly head more than it does in the finale: when everything is left completely open out of fear of actually doing something that can't be reversed. The entire first season is a giant waste of energy, nothing of consequence over occurs.
Heroes represents everything wrong with modern drama. Its slow, poorly written, indecisive, and thrives on cliffhangers. The overall narrative would be interesting if the number of episodes was halved, the fat was trimmed and everything was rewritten to make sense, but that would would require some talent and direction.
Shows like these appeal to a certain audience, and are perhaps the hardest tests of patience ever conceived. Imagine reading a novel where every second page is identical, the start of every other page explains the last and the entire book repeats itself ad nauseam.
Thats Heroes.
Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs (2008)
This new take on the series proves to be a little underwhelming for the ongoing Futurama fan
The Beast with a Billion Backs is the second in an extension of the Futurama animated series, now being released as a fully fledged movie experience. In terms of plot the demands of a ninety minute episode are far greater, and the transition itself hasn't been entirely smooth. The humour is more forced, demanding that you laugh on the first try as opposed to sitting subtly in the background for you to discover in an off viewing.
Its this level of confidence that made the Simpsons great, but as that animated dinosaur now bludgeons the viewer with the obvious, slapstick humour one would expect of a cheesy 80's sitcom, creator Groening is letting bad trends slip into an otherwise rejuvenating series.
The beginning of Benders Big Score was painfully forced, but it soon fell into its old clever self, delivering a plot that was genuinely unexpected with patented levels of Futurama drama that never cross the line we all draw in our heads of such a series, but the Beast with a Billion Backs is, no pun intended, a very different beast.
The story itself is very much "out there", even for a show that already borders on insanity. A rift between two alternate universes appears above Earth, and immediately people assume the worst. As quickly as this major plot device is introduced, it is forgotten, and soon we find ourselves following two sub plots involving Fry's battle with the concept of polygamy and Benders childhood fantasy of an underground cult of Robots defending the very foundation of Robot ideal.
A good third into the movie our attention is once again brought unto the giant rift, where a giant tentacle eventually emerges threatening the would be Earth we all know and love. As the plot moves forward you begin to wonder just where its all heading, and without giving too much away the ending is the most ambiguous i've ever witnessed in the series.
Somewhere in the convoluted plot line lies a point. The ending would stipulate some sort of overall commentary on the concept of love, but its just not entirely clear what this commentary is. Furthermore, Benders raging jealously is simply too undeveloped to be used to drive the story forward as much as it does. Bender is a great character for humour delivery but is remarkably inconsistent, bouncing from indifference, to kill all humans, to genuine compassion in mere minutes of screen time.
Its difficult to say just how "good" this movie is. When you finish watching it you won't be sure what just happened or why, but the overall sense of purpose is very much lacking. Perhaps thats the point, but combining ham fisted comedy with philosophical wonder is going to alienate all but the most die hard of fans aching for justification between the pages.
Overall The Beast of a Billion Backs is an odd experience worthwhile to just about any Futurama fan. With all said and done Futurama at its worst (which this certainly is not) is still brilliant, indeed the series greatest enemy proves time and time again to be its former self.