Jeff's Movie Reviews

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Jeff's Movie Reviews; Readers beware - spoilers abound!
Topic Started: Jul 18 2008, 08:37 PM (179 Views)
Jeff	Jan 12 2009, 02:07 PM Post #11
Lord of Pie & BBWs Posts: 1,385 Group: Four Against Nature Member #3 Joined: Jul 6, 2008 Quote You are but the strongest KNIGHT! You should be able to ROCK ME!	Today's Movie: The Cube ( http://www.flaniganswake.com/TheCube/ ) Released in 1969 by Jim Henson (yes, the Muppet guy), The Cube is a fascinating experimental film which both questions and probes the ideas of reality, self and sanity. The hour-long feature starts us off with a nameless man in a cube-shaped room, roughly 8x8 in size. He quickly finds a lack of doors or windows as his curiosity gets the better of him initially, before gradually getting more and more frustrated and confused by his situation. The furniture in the room randomly changes, people can come and go as they see fit, but he seems incapable of doing the same, and the said people who visit him change just in the duration of time of speaking with him (including a young, perky blonde girl who starts off friendly and endearing, but rapidly degenerates into a maniacal old hag who gives him an ominous message about trusting others). The man is then confused and bewildered as his situation continues to get weirder as he attempts to come to terms with what's happening. Spoiler: click to toggle In the end, the man finally comes to his revelation as he's met by the 20+ other characters all at once. He declares that even if he doesn't understand reality itself or his environment, he knows himself - and in the end, that's all he really needs to understand. This statement is then directly challenged as he leaves the cube only to find himself in yet another, identical room. Some may call this a downer ending, but by the same token, there's nothing preventing him from merely awaiting the next arrival, and leaving again the way he did the first time, so it actually leaves on an unintentionally hopeful note. The most fascinating aspect of the movie is what it all means. The film has been thought about in many different ways, but here's what I thought. The man is a representation for any given individual - and the cube itself is supposed to be the idea of psychological isolation from an outside world. What's beyond the cube? Who knows? Who is a friend and who is an enemy? All these things entering and exiting at random. The people were not "people", but merely caricatures of stereotypical personalities with no real depth - an analogy perhaps for people compartmentalizing others without ever giving them a fair chance, or maybe more of the psychological implications of media which fails to flesh-out the character, rather making a character based around tropes and cliches. Even the characters that changed over time usually came off as bipolar and disturbing rather than endearing. Spoiler: click to toggle For me, my favorite part was when the man met with the TV Person, who claimed that the man's hardships were part of a TV show - in a unique use of postmodernism to question the role between actor, medium and viewer - and even skipping ahead and showing the protagonist the alleged "ending", with him still trapped in the cube, but he "got the girl" so it was supposed to be the "happy" ending. In the end, the man deliberately defies the TV guy's alleged 'ending', choosing to make his own path by daring to defy his captors. True it didn't make for a much happier ending, but he's still left with the fact that he made it for himself - and still has the power to leave when his next 'guest' stops by. Make of it what you will. It's a little dated, due to being 40 years old as of '09, but I found it a fascinating piece, and you might too.
	Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger.


Root	Jan 12 2009, 03:23 PM Post #12
The Speaker for the Dead Posts: 585 Group: Four Against Nature Member #2 Joined: Jul 6, 2008 Quote If you're going through hell, keep going.	Very interesting, although I don't think it'd hold my interest for too long.
	Does being the only sane one make me the insane one, in a sort of way? Though my eyes could see, I was still a blind man; Though my mind could think, I still was a madman... "Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run...there's still time to change the road you're on"


Jeff	Feb 17 2009, 01:42 PM Post #13
Lord of Pie & BBWs Posts: 1,385 Group: Four Against Nature Member #3 Joined: Jul 6, 2008 Quote You are but the strongest KNIGHT! You should be able to ROCK ME!	Today's Movie: Kamen Rider Kiva: King of Hell Castle The measure of a truly excellent film is when you sit down to watch a movie with a run time of an hour and a half or more, then finish it at what feels like 15 minutes afterwards. Like when you walk out of the theater and see it's already nighttime but you could've sworn you only just got there. King of Hell Castle fails on the above point horrifically. It's only an a hour and a half feature film, but about halfway through I could've sworn most of what I just watched was padding. Fluff. Artificial extension to what should've been the meat of the movie - and I am NOT going to make a "Lawl, spam mail" joke here. In addition, the movie could've starred totally DIFFERENT tokusatsu heroes and with a little alteration could've been an entirely different film altogether. Why? Because it has little to do with Kiva specifically, not only does it have no baring on the series' plot it actually CONTRADICTS it, and the whole time travel element is abused more heavily than it was in Kamen Rider Kabuto's "God Speed Love". For the uninitiated, Kiva is 2008's Kamen Rider, featuring pretty boy protagonist Wataru Kurenai who leads a secret double-life as Kiva - a transforming hero themed on 1920's monster movies. No, seriously. The series had a penchant for showing a parallel of events in 2008 and 1986, between Wataru and his father Otoya. In the series they fight monsters made of a stained glass-like substance known as Fangires. The movie abandons that notion and instead features nondescript horrors known as Legendorgas. Four nameless monsters - whether they're Fangire or Legendorga is never explicitly stated, though the latter is implied - awaken for some inadequately explored reason and find some convict who escaped from a near-by jail who had been possessed by the spirit of the Legendorgas leader, named nowhere in the movie proper but outside sources call him Kamen Rider Arc. They go to some castle and raise hell by some not-exactly-specified way which ends up with a giant eyeball on the moon (Did I mention I'm not making any of this up?) which can temporarily control people to hunt down Kiva - the predecessor of the current Kiva having been the one who locked Arc up for an unspecified amount of time. Via the wonders of magic time travel, Otoya and his love interest Yuri travel 22 years into the future to team up with their progeny, Wataru and Megumi (it's complicated). Instead of worrying over if time traveling to see your future children could indeed ruin history as we know it, the movie leaps on with Megumi and Yuri getting unceremoniously captured by the traitorous Kamen Rider Rey - who also just kind of shows up out of no where. Wataru and Otoya go to a showdown to rescue the girls in a rather epic climax involving lots of explosions and a high-speed aerial battle/chase - easily the very best part of the movie. Spoiler: click to toggle The good guys win. Arc and Rey are both sent up the river without paddles and killed off with little more than a sudden kaboom each, all the Legendorga are killed off equally suddenly and Otoya and Yuri return to the past now knowing just how screwed up the future will become. Oh, and when Kiva finished Arc off, he embosses the Kiva emblem on the MOON... no, seriously. That's just it though - this movie makes no sense and half of it was fluff. You could tear half the content out and have a shorter, better movie for your effort. There's also some random girl Wataru randomly meets (and, wouldn't you know, we never hear/see from her in the series or any other post-movie media) whose mother was a violinist and whatnot, but that was just kind of another dead-end plot line that got us no where too. The movie's primary subtext is supposed to read "Family is there for you - even willing to risk their lives for your sake and you should do the same for them" but since everyone with a canonical family had their parents drop dead before they hit puberty, this comes off as a tiny bit hypocritical on the writing staff's part. Another rather unnerving thing was the rampant references to Kamen Rider Den-O - with each of the Imagin voice actors appearing in brief cameos at varying parts early in the movie and even Naomi's actress doing the same. Under normal circumstances, I can't say this would have bothered me (Den-O and Kiva did a crossover before and Kiva nodding to its predecessor seems fair to me) but then, at the very end you get a surprise post-movie short where Urataros unveils that a third Den-O movie is in the works which kind of made me wonder if the entire movie wasn't just one, long laborious advertisement for "Farewell Kamen Rider Den-O: Final Countdown" which as of this movie's release promises it will be the "third and final" Den-O flick. As of this writing, a fourth movie is underway. I find this one to be a rather weak installment as far as the Kamen Rider movies go, so unless someone makes an abridged version of the movie, axing most of the early fluff, I wouldn't really waste my time. I mean, two scenes that leap to mind include a rather uncomfortable scene with Wataru dressed up as a girl. This scene has no baring on the plot and is never referenced again. The other scene was an unnecessary zoom-in of a guy's crotch as he wets himself with fear when the Legendorga show up. I mean, seriously? Was that really necessary?! I feel like I need a shower.
	Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger.


Root	Feb 17 2009, 10:27 PM Post #14
The Speaker for the Dead Posts: 585 Group: Four Against Nature Member #2 Joined: Jul 6, 2008 Quote If you're going through hell, keep going.	...good god. Somehow I'm glad I decided not to watch some of this stuff. Even if most of it is good.
	Does being the only sane one make me the insane one, in a sort of way? Though my eyes could see, I was still a blind man; Though my mind could think, I still was a madman... "Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run...there's still time to change the road you're on"


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