kustom135 Reviews

The Fourth Kind (2009)

A litmus test for the gullible.

[1/10 · 3 July 2012]

I give this a 1 out of 10 because, with the release of this film, clearly the filmmakers and distribution house had absolutely ZERO respect for their customers.

How they convinced Charlotte Milchard to play the substantial role of Abigail Tyler uncredited is the real mystery. Perhaps she was paid very handsomely.

Another mystery is just how gullible some people are to this kind of movie-making chicanery. There are people who believe this film to be a true documentary and the filmmaker and distributor took full advantage of that silly sector of the movie-going public.

'The Fourth Kind' is an egregious lie--of a new kind.

This kind of marketing, were it a person, I'd call a scumbag. I guess somebody said the same of Orson Welles way back when, though!

Goliath (2008)

Not art, not film, not anything at all except an excuse

[1/10 · 22 December 2011]

ZERO out of ten.

If so-called filmmakers continue in this mind-numbingly STUPID post-millennial vein, I'm gonna abandon the medium altogether.

Since 1998 or so we've been subjected to this kind of garbage. It seems to be derived from 'Seinfeld': film devoted to recording NOTHING but images hanging from a flimsy, even non-existent 'story' lacking in effective dialogue and narrative development.

Face it, folks. Storytelling in film died in the late 1990s. All people want to see now, and all they can handle, are empty, directionless, and plainly silly contrivances like this one.

I've tried to stay contemporary, but writers, actors, and directors today in North America are simply weak and incompetent. A film like this shows how vapid both filmmaker and watcher have become. Way to go.

Melancholia (2011)

2001: A Space Odyssey is its only analogue

[21 November 2011]

All I can say is that 'Melancholia' is on a par with '2001'.

Simply, you'll either be captivated or you won't. Some viewers of '2001' react with hostility upon the conclusion of that film. You can explain it to them over and over and they just see garbage.

'Melancholia' is to emotion as '2001' was to intellect. It forces one into the most emotional extreme there is the same way '2001' forces one to grasp a greater intellectual construct.

Those who call films like these "garbage" simply don't get it. But it's simple, really: the two films posit there may be something out there bigger than we are.

98/100

Contact (1997)

A chick-flick cartoon version of the book, and dated

[8 August 2011]

I just don't buy it.

Razor-faced Jodie Foster as a fashionably geeky young woman who is such an overachieving genius (yet who at age ten asked her dad, "can we talk to dead mom on a ham radio?"--LAFF) that she manages to discover alien signals sent "in the language of science" the night her tenure at the Very Large Array (Arroway?) is over!

Hollywood bunkum.

Palmer (spiritual pilgrim) Joss (household deity) goes from New Age sexual drifter to bestselling author and presidential spiritual consultant. 'Spiritual'--not even religious. (That's Rob Lowe's job!) The U.S. prez actually has one of those, like Picard did with Troi, AND keeps close a god-fearing zealot for good measure?

Baloney!

Vega. Vegans. Vegan. Sagan. VEGetarian saGAN? But Vega has more to do with vultures than grazers. Interesting that the Vegans depend on the remnants of an even greater race of beings (and swoop out of the sky, so to speak).

I digress.

Then another zealot (this one with long white hair so we don't confuse him with Rob Lowe) prattles on about how science is ruining everything (like insulin and air conditioning and the microphone he uses), then somehow gets a techie job at NASA so he can blow up the Machine.

Ellie (LE. Life elsewhere. EL. Extraterrestrial Life! I get it!) then finds out another Machine was secretly built on remote (?) Hokkaido Island by Esarhaddon (look it up) and suddenly we go from late-90s USA to a future with VSTOL passenger jets and bland grey attire for all.

Oh yes, the 1996 Russians on 'Mir' wouldn't have called Ellie "comrade." Come onnnnnnn.

The Machine is fired up and does something so that Mission Control can't talk to 'EL'lie but they can tell her pod's internal environment is normal. Hmmmm! (The pod specs call for NO SEATS OR RESTRAINTS--a big visual plot point--and yet EL is to be dropped, kersplash, several hundred feet into a net. Without a seatbelt. Uh huh.) About the only things that might ring true are the Japanese seeking lucrative tech rights and the US shouldering much of the development. (The Machine sorta gets built JUST LIKE THAT, hey? With 63,000+ pages of text to decode. Mmmhmm.) And we KNOW Ellie takes 18 hours to meet an alien, out there and back again, but screen time is what, 12 minutes? We didn't get to see much (that we didn't see every episode of Deep Space Nine).

Sagan and the filmmakers completely pandered to the American movie-going focus groups with this one. Young stars, old men. (The book has a FEMALE president, by the way.) Spiritualism/religion vs. science, the centuries old struggle (that's really only played out in bad TV talks shows, and movies like this 'un). Let's hope some Esarhaddon (look it up) decides to remake this as a mini-series that's faithful to Sagan's highly enjoyable and broader-minded book.

What the heck IS spiritualism, anyway?

Return to Paradise (1998)

A failure.

[3/10 · 28 November 2007]

The premise of _RtP_ is excellent, but it got into the mud at some point in its development.

Much of the film's failure rests on, yet again, REDUCED CHARACTERS. We watch our Innocent Childlike Victim take the blame for his Aloof Friends comprised of an unfeeling Don Juan and an unfeeling Man With A Future. Desperate (blonde) Victim's Sister and Hungry (black female) Reporter arrive in order to push the plot ahead. All, save Mr. Innocent, are stylishly dressed urbanites. Setting is a Faceless Asian Country Highly Critical of America.

Throw in two absolutely unnecessary sex scenes and far too much will-he-won't-he back-and-forth 'suspense' and we got a movie, baby! (The twist at the ending, too, feels Test Audience Approved.)

Had _RtP_ been done by a daring director, a hard-boiled writer, and more serious actors, what a film this could have been. As it stands, even the dumb mood music gets in the way. Three out of ten for yet another good idea shot to bits.

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Don't bother. Just more cultural filler.

[1/10 · 21 November 2007]

It's rare that I don't even get through a film. 'Dazed and Confused' is just one of two (the other being 'Fast Sofa'.) For the record, I gave myself THREE ATTEMPTS to get into this picture, and I failed each time.

I couldn't see the point of this film. Having grown up and been in school in 1976, none of the character representations even seemed familiar. I'm sure plenty of teens smoked dope, drank, rated 'Gilligan's Island' and fooled around, but that's not ALL they did. Even the costumes are just phony 1990s nostalgic idealizations of the mid-1970s.

The filmmaker could stand a lesson on how to avoid reduced characters. Awkward and thin representation of personality stereotypes is not conducive to making a strong film. (Coincidentally, I believe it was the young 'filmmakers' of the 90s who ushered us into the era of diluted screen writing. One might call it: "anything I do is good 'cuz *I* did it.") Also, the filming style is poor: colours are washed out, the lighting is wan, and the sound is thin.

I can't recommend this film to anyone as I found it unwatchable. It's not even worth a rainy Saturday afternoon (even with a hangover). 'Dazed and Confused' is just another one of those vanity projects which make you question why a production company would finance it.

The Right Stuff (1983)

An interesting comment on a certain 1968 space film.

[7/10 · 16 October 2007]

The really interesting thing about The Right Stuff is the sequence where Chuck Yeager takes his Starfighter (very telling) to the edge of the space.

Compare this sequence to 2001's Dave Bowman taking his spacecraft to the edge of . . . whatever. The filming styles in the two sequences, the tumbling, spinning sensation and freakish views, are remarkably similar and I think the TRS production is making that exact point.

Yeager, unlike Bowman, never makes it into space--witness space and stars just within his grasp, then slipping away--but in the end, he's portrayed as an indomitable and winning man. The Starfighter sequence in The Right Stuff mimics 2001's Stargate to describe what REAL flight is all about: human struggle.

No Drums, No Bugles (1972)

A man shouldn't live in a cave.

[7/10 · 16 October 2007]

I like a film like this! Absolutely no attempt is made to impress the viewer. It's just a simple, episodic story about a man who strikes out on his own and must live with the attendant isolation, loneliness, and danger. (The title sequence of my copy says 'Eagle's Wings, a film by Clyde Ware'. Apparently, it's gone under three different titles.)

There's a little humour thrown in. Sheen's character has to deal with a bear claiming squatter's rights, uppity fish, skeptical raccoons. (It's interesting how we never see the other human characters, save for a dying soldier. And I'm sure one voice-over belongs to Wayne Rogers!) Musical score provided by what sounds like the Sunday Afternoon Hippie Bluegrass Garage Band. Yet this only adds to the film's simple charm.

The IMDb commentator who could only say "ugh" about this film really should just stick to all the bloated Hollywood blockbusters he can consume.

Calendar (1993)

Whither Canada?

[7/10 · 11 October 2007]

After watching Egoyan's film several times, and being of a resident of Toronto, a city which trumpets its multi-cultural populace, I picked up on some references in Calendar which maybe others would not have.

At one point, the Driver (Adamian), says his two Armenian-descent Canadian passengers (Egoyan and Khanjian) could not properly raise children anywhere but in Armenia. It's an instant dismissal of the fact that the passengers come from a different country; in the Driver's mind, since their ancestry is Armenian, they are Armenian.

Later, the Photographer gives uncomfortable answers to his Translator wife as to why he's not moved by his subject matter--the old churches of Armenia. He states that he finds the churches interesting to the eye, but also that he feels little reverence for them culturally or historically. She seemingly cannot fathom why he would feels so; but also doesn't she seem to understand that her husband is Canadian, not Armenian.

The most telling references come the end of the film where the Photographer and his final Guest talk about living in a new country. He tells of his difficulties when he, as a child, moved to Canada from Armenia and had difficulty in learning English. The Guest sympathizes with Egoyan, implying that she went through a similar experience, saying she "considers herself Egyptian"--yet BORN and RAISED in Canada! (It's also interesting to note that Khanjian, the Translator, speaks Engish with an accent. The Photographer speaks urbane, Toronto English.)

Calendar revolves around the issue that the couple's trip to Armenia provokes a strong response in Khanjian's character, so much so that she discards her country and her husband.

Consider the final scene with the Driver: he jokingly acts like a KGB official, and takes the couple's passports.

Deterrence (1999)

The Bomb smells of baloney

[5/10 · 23 October 2006]

I sat through this dreck on a boring Friday night.

It's another one of those exercises in frustration. Does this film try to uphold American patriotic jingoism or is it a send-up? Both at once? Neither? It ain't good when a movie this overtly political only confuses the viewer with its message.

If THAT is the intent, doesn't the film fail completely?

From a dramatic standpoint, the film's setting in a remote location--a diner in a small, snowbound Colorado town--is an excellent premise, as is the de rigeur ensemble cast. (The screenplay would stand better as a stage play: few props, stark lighting.) But that's about all that can be said that's positive.

One of the craziest details of the story (among several others that are downright LAUGHABLE) is the "100-megaton" weapon dropped from a bomber aircraft on Baghdad. One hundred megatons? The former Soviet Union developed and tested a 57-megaton weapon in 1961. The weapon was so outsized that its carrier plane needed modification to its bomb bay doors just to get the thing off the ground. Furthermore, the largest weapon ever in use in the U.S. arsenal was 9 megatons, and it has been phased out for smaller bombs.

So, yes, the bomb sure went off on this one. Don't bother.

Pitch (1997)

Pitch is just what it says it is.

[8/10 · 18 October 2006]

This film is exactly what its title describes--an attempt to get you to buy into what the writers have to offer.

First, it's kinda fun to see the 1996-style Toronto I remember with all its silly haircuts, sunglasses, clothes, and attitude. It really hasn't changed any; just a nice, safe, cheap, provincial little urban backwater that makes a great meeting place for international film types! It's also amusing to see Kenny and Spenny head to L.A. and find out that it's Toronto all over again, only with a strange assortment of beach bums, musicians, fortune tellers, and yet more uppity film types.

I don't see Pitch as a film to be enjoyed; it's not entertainment unless the viewer enjoys watching someone's aspirations being trampled. I take Pitch as a warning that power and money is really held by studio execs and production houses. Would-be (and "successful") writers, musicians, and actors are still mere transients even when they reach the Big Time.

So, Kenny and Spenny are trying to sell you a warning. Buy it or don't, but the message is still there.

Kelly's Heroes (1970)

It was hard to get through at first ...

[8/10 · 12 January 2006]

... and I fell asleep a few times. But, once I watched it straight through, I found _Kelly's Heroes_ an enjoyable romp.

My favourite aspect of the film is its characters. Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland play theirs to the hilt. It's always a treat to see diametrically opposed characters verbally duking it out! Clint Eastwood is the film's straight man, almost out of place, but he adds tone and restraint. I don't think he cracks one smile.

Don Rickles as an enlisted man stretches credibility. He's often annoying and seems to ape Savalas' work. Ernest Borgnine might've worked better, or a surly Warren Oates.

Of course, the story is implausible, but it looked like everyone had a good time making the film, and that always shows. So, the only flaws are in the film's premise. Just get over that and enjoy it!

Alien Attack (1976 TV Movie)

Nice try ...

[5/10 · 4 January 2006]

... but it wasn't really necessary. Or that good. ITC seems to have taken two Space: 1999 episodes and linked them to make a 'movie'. Problem is, we get choppy edits and re-used scenes! (I counted two shots which were recycled.) The stiffly-acted, hastily-contrived backstory (which vanishes after the first hour) feels so tacked-on that you wonder what the motive was for this project. A quick buck? The opening and closing music sounds like something from The Benny Hill Show--one of the discotheque skits! The version I saw even eschews the 1999 setting. Here, we're boosted forward to the year "two thousand, one hundred." Hmmm. Shoulda left well enough alone.

Real Life (1979)

YOU spend the winter in Wisconsin!

[9/10 · 4 January 2006]

In _Real Life_, Albert Brooks makes fun of just about anything: the movie industry, the 'nuclear family', intellectuals, horse owners, furniture refinishing, urine testing, technology, Wisconsin ...

This film is a gem. Every character is played so transparently that someone could be fooled into thinking Charles Grodin really is a disoriented and bumbling father and husband. Albert Brooks plays 'himself' to the point where he must have needed therapy after making this film.

Vanity projects are usually tedious. This turns the 'vanity' genre (yeah, there is one!) on its ear. And it's probably one of the most 'American' films I've ever seen. Great stuff!

The Astronaut's Wife (1999)

*sigh* Yet another sci-fi botch-up!

[5/10 · 28 December 2005]

Ol' Hollywood makes another mess of the 'science' fiction genre. The fun, creepy premise of a cute young married woman getting' preggo by an astronaut husband who, after routine Shuttle repair mission, is NOT what he seems ... well, how can you go wrong? Ha.

Well, first, you cast a thirtyish actor as a thirtyish astronaut. I didn't know NASA selected greenhorns and then let them fly right-seat--let alone go EVA! (Hey, Neil "one giant leap" Armstrong was 38 when he walked on the Moon; Buzz Aldrin, 39; Alan Shepard was 47!).

Then you name the Shuttle 'Victory'. Nice, gung-ho, jingoist touch, that. Guess you gotta call it 'Victory', though, 'cause the Shuttle's got lasers and photon torpedoes, right? (Note to Hollywood writers: horror films are made more creepy when they come on realistically. Use real Shuttle names--if you're allowed.) I guess I'm supposed to suspend my disbelief, but a parasitic alien which crosses the gulf of space and then selects as hosts two astronauts who just happen to be outside their spacecraft, and then alters them physically in two minutes ... nooooo, that's not 'science' fiction. That's a plot with a garage-sized hole.

Finally, we see poor, frightened, alien-impregnated Gillian confronting her not-husband and exorcising the alien thing which took him over. Turns out it's like, wow, this big, squealing sheet of mucus. Then it's HER turn to be visited. So she's gonna zap the gooey alien, but leave its spawn gestating away inside her? Jeesh, Gillian! So the alien waits until astronaut Spencer went into orbit and got outside, gloms him, jumps poor Spencer's wife, then gloms Gillian anyway? Jeesh, alien! Jeesh, Hollywood! It seems there's a hybridization of _Alien_, Star Wars_, and _2001_ taking place in a lot of current 'science' fiction films. It's as if even a stab at scientific accuracy would somehow compromise the film. No, it wouldn't. A malevolent twist on reality is far more effective horror, I think.

And ... dump the glitzy, rich-folk settings! The silly soundtrack music! The stylized hospitals! The overblown characters! Quit trying to be hip, current, and flashy. Better yet, stop beating the audience over the head with your excesses.

Growf. Until the next Hollywood sci-fi goof-up ...

The Core (2003)

Why watch _The Core_?

[5/10 · 28 December 2005]

'Cause Hilary Swank is in it, and she's so guileless and fresh and smart and wiry and spends half the movie grimy, sweaty, and somewhat unsure of herself! That's the kind of female lead I like to see--tenacious, ambitious, but not necessarily tough or naturally capable as a leader. She learns as she goes along--and then wants a shower when the adventure's over.

Also, for such a silly story, the writers were smart enough not to allow their lead couple to get romantically or lustily involved with each other. We see them sort of getting' close at the end ... but, seems they just go their separate ways. And why not? But--that's about the most realistic touch in the film. It's not a BAD movie, but it stretches science until it snaps. And please, the Earth as a blowtorched peach? Yipes.

The Arrival (1996)

Another failed sci-fi flick ... with a poisonous message

[5/10 · 27 December 2005]

Yep, just another study of how Hollywood writers, directors, and producers can futz up a perfectly good notion. Zane Zaminski (cool first name, geeky last name) sports horn-rimmed glasses (geek!) and a goatee (cool!), has a muscle-bound physique (cool!), and is a radio astronomer looking for alien signals (geek!). He's tough, however (cool!), but paranoid (geek!).

That's the fundamental flaw in _Arrival_. It tries so hard to present scientific research as something hip, trendy, cool, with-it--when real researchers don't care about image. Conversely, the film also suggests scientific research is for the delusional and deludes the public. It also falls prey to the current Hollywood fashion of a seemingly weak, shallow male lead character supported by a wise, insightful, somewhat superior woman.

The plot comes off as a James Bond piece--minus 007--but with ET as the villain! Aliens bent on world domination. Silly ways of killing off nosy people who discover the aliens' plan (scorpions? Bathtubs?).

The writers also wove in some silly subplot whereby NASA is deliberately making missions fail. The _Galileo_ probe's antenna mishap is cited, as is the initial problem with the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA solved these problems several years before this movie was even filmed. At least the writers had the sense not to cite the _Challenger_ catastrophe.

I'm getting tired of Hollywood hacks who can't--or more likely WON'T--get it right when it comes to portraying science and ol' NASA. It's as if there's an 'us' (your average consumer) vs. 'them' (the over-educated geekheads who need to get REAL lives). I'm not a scientist, but I find Hollywood's running theme on this subject a continuing insult to my intelligence.

Throw in silly background music, a seriously annoying kid, and some impossible occurrences (a nice alpine meadow at the North Pole), and you'll smell that turkey cooking. Watch this film if you need to complain about something!

Aliens (1986)

The Americanization of Alien

[6/10 · 21 December 2005]

James Cameron's sequel, simply put, lacks the style and depth of detail of Ridley Scott's original. It's also sadly Americanized. Wisecracking Marines with big, jutting guns, cigars, and knife games. A swarm of aliens instead of one solitary killer. Ambitious, mouthy, corporate go-getters. In other words, indulgence where Scott practised restraint ...

And, of course, space travel has changed between 1979 and 1986. Oh, you're still put into hibernation but, in this episode, space is of little consequence, it seems. Yet in the first movie, everyone hated hibernation and space travel was a long, drawn-out trip! The crew in _Aliens_ flits about as if they're heading across town to kick some butt.

Seems Cameron just couldn't resist putting his personal stamp on the film (and stamping out Scott's vision). He even glommed a scene from _2001_ and stuck it right at the beginning of his film.

Cheap sci-fi action garbage with all the TRUE suspense taken out. _Alien_ was a higher standard than that. Cameron, you were out of your depth.

Marooned (1969)

Flawed ... and yet it really draws you in

[8/10 · 21 December 2005]

I'm giving _Maroooned_ a generous 8/10 because of its artificially low total score.

Aside from being a finely-tuned and detailed look into the American space program in its 60s and early-70s era, _Marooned_ is one of my favourite types of film: it's seemingly banal, washed-out, and emotionless upon first viewing. Once you get past that, it's a subtly-acted character study.

After watching it several times, however, the characters' traits become more apparent as the story develops. We see Gene Hackman's character, astronaut Buzz Lloyd, on a slippery slope right from the start. He daydreams on the job, tries pathetically to win favour from Mission Control ("I, uh, fixed the razor"), and then slides into blatant panic as the emergency unfolds.

When we first see her, Celia Pruett presents an exterior persona toughened by fifteen years' experience of being an astronaut's wife. When Celia, in Mission Control, realizes she may be talking to her husband for the last time, her facade slips from forced, banal confidence to seeing her husband anew after fifteen years of marriage. Actress Lee Grant brings out Celia's desperate emotion with simple, innocent gestures: a suggestive laugh, tracing her fingers on the TV image of her husband, and a whispered, forlorn promise to him.

Even the rescue launch director (actor uncredited) is all business during the countdown, quietly reading off checklists and acknowledging reports from his colleagues. Yet, at the very last second--and still businesslike--he looks at Manned Space Director Keith (Gregory Peck) with sorrow and frustration as both realize their rescue attempt is going to fail.

But, again--it's all subtlety. In reality, people often are, so the viewer has to LOOK for it. Even IMDb reviewers who favour this film seem to want flashier character traits, claiming the film to be excessively dry.

There's a common complaint from IMDb reviewers about a lot of films: "boring--entertain ME!" Sorry, that kind of complaint doesn't cut it. Gratuitous gun violence, sexuality, constant profanity, and guts/blood/guts--THAT gets boring. A film like _Marooned_ (or its nearest contemporary, _2001_), is paced deliberately for a reason. You must watch the characters closely, listen to the dialogue, and place both in the context of the story and setting. To dismiss _Marooned_ as 'boring' means you won't (or can't) see the point, and more's the pity.

I will say the film deserved MUCH better treatment, particularly the inexcusably shoddy ending, some robotic performances from bit players, and clumsy use of props. Yet, _Marooned_ is TRUE science fiction, not that Star Wars fantasy stuff. Did Luke Skywalker ever show any character development over the course of one film?

Space Cowboys (2000)

A great story idea with greater flaws

[7/10 · 9 September 2005]

Oh, Hollywood, so close. So close. "Space Cowboys" could have been that one sci-fi film which had it all: fine characters, an intriguing premise, adventure, snappy dialogue, comic relief ... but, as with many science fiction movies, the writers bungled the technical details. Goes to show--if you want to write, learn all you can about everything! Anyway, I'll just list the errors I found:

Corvin talks about the IKON probe "coming home in a hurry," but he uses Imperial units while the NASA employees use Metric; did he convert the figures in his head?

The Shuttle mission is gets a nice, neat, "STS-200" designation ... why not 189 or 214 or 223?

The Shuttle is also named "Daedalus," the name of the original pilot team from the late 50s; c'mon, would NASA rename a Shuttle for a mission?

IKON is a HUGE weapons array; seems about as big as the current Space Station Alpha, which from the ground appears as a bright star crossing the sky; *nobody* noticed that huge Russian satellite for all those years?

Command pilots appear to be in the wrong seat (commander sits on left, pilot right, just like an airliner).

Those pretty, starry backgrounds we ALWAYS see in space movies, but never see in actual photos/films from space (well, Kubrick was close); stars are just too dim given sunlight and the bright Earth below.

Donald Sutherland's character ejects injured astronauts as he casually rides out a careening Shuttle re-entry; nope, he's not even thrown around! (Why would he toss them out, anyway?)

NASA's "top astronauts" (Courtney B. Vance, et. al.) seem at least ten years too young to be the seasoned test pilots NASA requires to fly the Shuttle.

An astronaut sneaking out on an EVA to finish Corvin's job? Surely the MOST insulting error!

Flight directors like William Devane's character don't speak directly with flight crews.

There are other flaws--I just listed the most annoying and misleading. It was a good attempt, but Hollywood suffers from a lack of technical understanding about space flight. Most of the mass media does. Too bad, 'cause it just makes for silly entertainment.