The Chronicles of Riddick, **
Starring Vin Diesel, Colm Feore, Thandie Newton, Judi Dench (*worships*), Karl Urban, Alexa Davalos, Linus Roache, and much, much more!
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action and some language. (edited for re-rating)
This review is also rated PG for some language. There are also "plot" spoilers.
So in many ways I'm totally the wrong person to review this movie, as I've never seen Pitch Black, its low-budget cult classic "predecessor". However, from what I've read and heard, the extra 100 million dollars put its "sequel" into a class all its own (at least in terms of special effects and casting).
Here's the plot summary, ganked from imdb.com:
"An evil race of warriors know as The Necromongers (including Thandie Newton, Colm Feore, and Karl Urban) are traveling across the galaxy destroying entire planets on their way to the `Underverse,' and total glory. Their weakness is a race of people with night-vision called Furians and the only one left is Riddick (Vin Diesel), a criminal and thug who lives by his own rules trying to escape capture on a daily basis. When the Necromongers come to Riddick's doorstep, the outlaw must fight the impossible army, employing his only weapon: himself."
So. If you're the type who loves strange alternate universes with billions of men in strange aluminum racing-stripe armor and one woman in ever-changing sexah dresses (though towards the end she started wearing dresses she's worn before, which shows that the strange alternate universe has no fashion police)...this movie is for you. More importantly, if you like to write Movies in Fifteen Minutes *coughcleocoughpleasehackfortheloveofGodit'saskingforitgag*, you must see this movie.
I saw this movie because a. it was free and b. I saw Judi Dench in the preview. Judi Dench, the conundrum of modern acting, always seems to find her way into the strangest films. I used to think she owed a lot of money to a loan shark, but now I think she just likes to amuse herself by accepting random roles in strange movies. Or maybe she just has the hots for Vin Diesel. In that case, someone should totally clue her in to his non-women-liking.
Anyway! If there's one thing nobody can really snub, it's the special effects. And there are tons! They never seem to stop. The chase and battle scenes really are nice, and the computer-generated ships and strange animals, though obviously computer-generated, are entertaining to watch. The problem is that sometimes it just becomes way too much. I was watching on a normal movie screen (thank God I wasn't experiencing it IMAX-style, otherwise I would have probably hurled sour Skittles on multiple occasions), and sometimes I had to look away to make my brain stop spinning. The cinematography doesn't help either - the camera angle is usually at very forced angles, or in what should be the best action scenes it's jiggling like I'm the one holding the camera and I've had five shots of espresso. But those glowing eyes! Woo! They make the movie, even if they really aren't that great after the first twenty minutes. I spent the next hour-plus wondering if I could find them in time for Halloween.
I have to give props to Vin - of all actors to do macho studly deadpans, he's by far the most convincing. Most of his lines are terribly predictable and were obviously written with wimpy thirteen-year-old boys in mind ("Yeah! That's what I should tell that bully on the playground! I want to be Riddick when I grow up!"), and he's not the only one-dimensional character written. Alexa Davalos makes a good attempt to move her character one step higher on the believability scale of "cold-blooded killer", though it still looks like the most violent thing she could actually do was glare in an evil, catlike way. Even Dame Dench has to strain for believability (though at this point in her career she could probably tap-dance naked surrounded by Jessica Simpson lookalikes and be absolutely brilliant). The "conflicts" between characters are so by the book that I can list off dozens of legendary figures, both real and fictional, who follow the same storyline. Yay for rehashed plots.
Of course, nobody expected this movie to be brilliant - and it doesn't have to be. But it would have been nice if the makers of the film chose to fill in the ten-second spurts of time between epic special effects orgies to compel the audience to actually care what happens to the characters. When the chick dies at the end, all I could think was, "The only action chick in the entire movie dies ten seconds before it's over? Lame!" All the while Riddick, a mythical dude whose callousness to just about everything is made jaw-gratingly apparent in the previous two hours of the film, is crying in his manly Riddick fashion, and I didn't give a flip.
I suppose I could chalk it up to being a chick, but I just didn't buy into the sweeping, ass-kicking epic the film tried to be. Plus if Vin Diesel dramatically took off those goggles one more fucking time, I was going to kick his ass. Even Judi Dench couldn't hold me back.
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action and some language. (edited for re-rating)
This review is also rated PG for some language. There are also "plot" spoilers.
So in many ways I'm totally the wrong person to review this movie, as I've never seen Pitch Black, its low-budget cult classic "predecessor". However, from what I've read and heard, the extra 100 million dollars put its "sequel" into a class all its own (at least in terms of special effects and casting).
Here's the plot summary, ganked from imdb.com:
"An evil race of warriors know as The Necromongers (including Thandie Newton, Colm Feore, and Karl Urban) are traveling across the galaxy destroying entire planets on their way to the `Underverse,' and total glory. Their weakness is a race of people with night-vision called Furians and the only one left is Riddick (Vin Diesel), a criminal and thug who lives by his own rules trying to escape capture on a daily basis. When the Necromongers come to Riddick's doorstep, the outlaw must fight the impossible army, employing his only weapon: himself."
So. If you're the type who loves strange alternate universes with billions of men in strange aluminum racing-stripe armor and one woman in ever-changing sexah dresses (though towards the end she started wearing dresses she's worn before, which shows that the strange alternate universe has no fashion police)...this movie is for you. More importantly, if you like to write Movies in Fifteen Minutes *coughcleocoughpleasehackfortheloveofGodit'saskingforitgag*, you must see this movie.
I saw this movie because a. it was free and b. I saw Judi Dench in the preview. Judi Dench, the conundrum of modern acting, always seems to find her way into the strangest films. I used to think she owed a lot of money to a loan shark, but now I think she just likes to amuse herself by accepting random roles in strange movies. Or maybe she just has the hots for Vin Diesel. In that case, someone should totally clue her in to his non-women-liking.
Anyway! If there's one thing nobody can really snub, it's the special effects. And there are tons! They never seem to stop. The chase and battle scenes really are nice, and the computer-generated ships and strange animals, though obviously computer-generated, are entertaining to watch. The problem is that sometimes it just becomes way too much. I was watching on a normal movie screen (thank God I wasn't experiencing it IMAX-style, otherwise I would have probably hurled sour Skittles on multiple occasions), and sometimes I had to look away to make my brain stop spinning. The cinematography doesn't help either - the camera angle is usually at very forced angles, or in what should be the best action scenes it's jiggling like I'm the one holding the camera and I've had five shots of espresso. But those glowing eyes! Woo! They make the movie, even if they really aren't that great after the first twenty minutes. I spent the next hour-plus wondering if I could find them in time for Halloween.
I have to give props to Vin - of all actors to do macho studly deadpans, he's by far the most convincing. Most of his lines are terribly predictable and were obviously written with wimpy thirteen-year-old boys in mind ("Yeah! That's what I should tell that bully on the playground! I want to be Riddick when I grow up!"), and he's not the only one-dimensional character written. Alexa Davalos makes a good attempt to move her character one step higher on the believability scale of "cold-blooded killer", though it still looks like the most violent thing she could actually do was glare in an evil, catlike way. Even Dame Dench has to strain for believability (though at this point in her career she could probably tap-dance naked surrounded by Jessica Simpson lookalikes and be absolutely brilliant). The "conflicts" between characters are so by the book that I can list off dozens of legendary figures, both real and fictional, who follow the same storyline. Yay for rehashed plots.
Of course, nobody expected this movie to be brilliant - and it doesn't have to be. But it would have been nice if the makers of the film chose to fill in the ten-second spurts of time between epic special effects orgies to compel the audience to actually care what happens to the characters. When the chick dies at the end, all I could think was, "The only action chick in the entire movie dies ten seconds before it's over? Lame!" All the while Riddick, a mythical dude whose callousness to just about everything is made jaw-gratingly apparent in the previous two hours of the film, is crying in his manly Riddick fashion, and I didn't give a flip.
I suppose I could chalk it up to being a chick, but I just didn't buy into the sweeping, ass-kicking epic the film tried to be. Plus if Vin Diesel dramatically took off those goggles one more fucking time, I was going to kick his ass. Even Judi Dench couldn't hold me back.