The Last Airbender (2010) Review

THE LAST AIRBENDER (2010)
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Written by: M. Night Shyamalan
Produced by: M. Night Shyamalan, Michael Di Martino, Kathleen Kennedy, Bryan Konietzko, and Scott Aversano
Music by: James Newton Howard
Edited by: Conrad Buff
Starring: Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Dev Patel, Jackson Rathbone, and Aasif Mandvi
Runtime: 1 hour 43 minutes
Rating: PG (fantasy action violence)
Genre: Fantasy, Action/Adventure, Family
Release Date: July 2, 2010

A Quick Warning: I just want to let everyone know that for me, school has just restarted (gag), so I may not be able to get posts out as frequently as I was in the summer both because my time is limited and I don't tend to watch as many movies during the school year. I will try my best to get reviews out as frequently as I can, but I can't guarantee I'll get one out a week. Anyway, let's move on to the review, shall we?

Intro: When I was in 4th and 5th grade, nearly all of my friends watch the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender. While I never watched it, I heard it was a good show from a lot of people. Several years later, I heard they were making a movie out of it (I originally thought this was what the movie Avatar was going to be about). I didn't have much interest in seeing it until the b-movie fan in me saw that it got 6% on Rotten Tomatoes and was getting universally panned by reviewers. I remember during summer school that year, I was talking to someone about it. They said, "I kind of want to see Last Airbender, but I heard it's really bad." I replied, "That's WHY I want to see it." Anyway, I didn't get around to seeing it until this summer when I bought it from a nearby closing Blockbuster (in the same trip I got Pan's Labyrinth on). Unfortunately, it was nowhere near as good of a fulfillment of my money as Pan's Labyrinth. The Last Airbender has a lot of potential with an interesting and engaging premise and decent special effects, but it's horrible writing kills it and makes the movie wholly unsatisfying and frustrating to watch.

Plot: It's the same basic premise for the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender. If you're familiar with the show, you probably won't need to read this section. For those who aren't here's the plot: In some world (not sure if it's this one or not) there are 4 nations: the earth, wind, water, and fire nations that all have special abilities to manipulate (or bend) the given elements. There is a group called the airbenders that can bend all 4 elements that keep all 4 nations in balance. However, the fire nation went on the offensive and killed the airbenders and is on the path to conquering the world. Then one day, a young girl (Peltz) and her brother (Rathbone) in the water nation find a boy (Ringer) frozen in the ice and after unfreezing him, they realize he's the last airbender (hence the title) who has been cryogenically frozen for 100 years and his name is Aang. Meanwhile, the fire nation finds out Aang exists and the exiled Prince Zuko (Patel) is hellbent on capturing and killing him. Aang must contend with the fire nation while completing his airbending training throughout the world.

Things people may find “objectionable”: It's a PG movie, so nothing major. There is some "fantasy violence," but it is all very mild. No blood or gore at all, which made everything a little unrealistic. Still, I can see them turning down the blood and gore to keep the movie a family film.

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography: 7/10. Really not half bad direction. It's clear Shyamalan knows how to direct, and he has a couple of acclaimed films under his belt in The Sixth Sense and Signs (both are on my "to see" list). Now his ability to write is a different matter...

     -Acting: 6/10. The actors are really not that bad, just the words they say as part of the script are bad. I couldn't believe they got Aasif Mandvi, who is a comedian and a Daily Show correspondent, to play the main bad guy. Though he played a serious role, it was impossible for me to take a comedian playing the main bad guy seriously.

     -Writing: 1.5/10

          -Story: 2/10. Let me quickly differentiate the premise from the story so I don't look like a hypocrite by liking the premise and then giving the story section a 2. The premise of the movie, which for Last Airbender is really pretty cool, is the starting point for the story. The story is what happens to the characters following what the premise sets up. Anyway, the story is completely plagued by a stupid storyline that was so cliché and formulaic. The writing was awful and it undoubtedly ruined the movie. 

          -Script: 1/10. Terrible script to match the bad story. The lines are really stupid for the most part. Please, any studio that M. Night Shyamalan is working for, never let him write another script!!!

     -Special Effects: 9/10. The effects are all really pretty good. They're not the greatest in the world, but they really are pretty decent.

     -Music/Score: 4/10. Nothing special.

This Youtube Commenter got it right.

     -Power/Emotion: 3/10  Well, I can't say I cared that deeply about any of the characters. The plot was so formulaic that I really didn't have to be concerned with the safety of the main characters. For any aspiring writers out there, please keep in mind that if the plot is formulaic, it wrecks a lot of the ability of viewers to care for your characters. If it's really clear what's going to happen to the characters (as in, X person is going to live and/or X and Y person are going to fall in love), there's really no sense in getting to care about the characters' fates. If you add an element of unpredictability, suddenly the characters become more important to the viewer and they are much more likely to care about them. Anyway, that's exactly what Shyamalan's bad writing does, as it ruins a lot of my feelings for the characters just because it's so easy to see what's going to happen to them.

     -Adrenaline: 4/10. Though there are numerous action sequences, the movie ends up being pretty dull. This is probably for a few reasons. One is, as I explained at length in the previous section, that it was hard to care about the characters that much. Also, the millions of clichés in the script made the outcome of the fight scenes incredibly predictable, therefore making them less exciting since you pretty much know what's going to happen.

     -Stupidity: 5/10. Everything's really pretty solid. That is, except for the writing. The lines are incredibly stupid and the story is stupidly written.
     -Humor: 2/10. This isn't the point of the movie, but there's a couple mildly funny moments inserted obviously for comic relief.

     -Best Credit: Chris Brewster as "Kicking Firebender."
     -Final Score: The Last Airbender is a frustrating movie to watch. It is mainly this way just because it squanders so much potential for being good and it ends up being completely unsatisfying. The writing ruins the movie, as it is bad and extremely formulaic. If you're a fan of the show Avatar: The Last Airbender, I would not suggest watching it because you will likely be mad at how badly the movie messes up a really pretty cool concept. Even if you're not familiar with the show (like me), I don't recommend the movie, as it is just frustrating and unsatisfying to watch.

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Starcrash (1978) Review

STARCRASH (1978)

Director: Luigi Cozzi

Writers: Luigi Cozzi and Nat Wachsberger

Producers: Nat and Patrick Wachsberger

Editor: Sergio Montanari

Music: John Barry

Starring: Caroline Munro, Marjoe Gortner, David Hasselhoff, Judd Hamilton, Joe Spinell, and Christopher Plummer

Runtime: 1 hour 32 minutes

Rating: PG

Genre: Sci-Fi, Action/Adventure, Space Opera

Release Date: March 9, 1979 (U.S. release)

Before Watching the Movie: I can't imagine you're not familiar with Star Wars, but if you've been living in a sad, dark hole for your entire life and you're not, familiarize yourself with the first Star Wars (that would be Episode 4: A New Hope) because Starcrash rips it off so much.

Intro: I had heard about this one for a while now through researching bad movies. I had heard it was a terrible movie and a total ripoff of Star Wars (it was rushed immediately afterwards to try and cash in on its success) starring David Hasselhoff, who wielded a light saber. My hopes for horribleness were quite high, and few weeks ago, one of my new favorite channels on TV, Epix, ran it, so I taped it on the DVR. Starcrash exceeded my expectations for horribleness. It was terrible in pretty much every way, as in ripping off Star Wars, it fails in every way Star Wars could have potentially. The movie also isn't helped at all by horrible acting and an awful script. In all, a Smörgåsbord of terribleness.

Plot: A pair of smugglers (hmmm.. Chewy and Han anyone?) named Stella Star (Munro) and her sidekick Akton (Gortner) pick up an imperial person who was on a mission to destroy a superweapon created by the evil Count Zarth Arn (Spinell) to take over the galaxy with. After being caught by the police, sentenced, and then escaping, Stella and Akton are placed on a mission with the chief of police, Thor, and his robot companion, Elle (Hamilton). They then go from planet to planet trying to find the count's hiding place and destroy him and his weapon before it's too late with the help of a straggler they find named Simon (Hasselhoff).

Things people may find “objectionable”: Lots of what I call "BWC shots." BWC stands for "because we can." It refers to any time the filmmakers intentionally put either a woman in skimpy clothing or a guy shirtless for not apparent reason other than the fact that they can. Like I said, there are lots of BWC shots in this movie. The violence is comparable in severity to what you would see in Star Wars, so it really isn't that bad.

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography: 5/10. Well, the directing isn't horrible, but it certainly isn't great either. It's just kind of there, like those stale Ritz Bits that have been living in your pantry for several months. They don't taste great and are stale, but are not horrible either. They're just kind of there. That's about the best metaphor I can come up with for the directing in this movie

     -Acting: 2/10. Simply awful acting. Everyone gives terrible performances aside from the one real actor in the movie, Christopher Plummer. Even so, he has maybe 6 lines at most. He's the sole reason I gave acting 2 out of 10 instead of 1. God knows how they got him to do this movie. Poor him.

     -Writing: 2.5/10.      

          -Story: 4/10. The story kind of meanders from one unexciting event to another for a good 45 minutes until the real plot starts to take place. Afterwards, it's a stupid story that doesn't make a ton of sense.

          -Script: 1/10. The lines are ALL cheesy. I doubt there's a single halfway decent one in the entire script. The fact that these awful lines are being said by awful actors (aside from Christopher Plummer) doesn't help your view of the both acting and the script.

Notice the similarity: a Shakespearian actor is on the left
and the evil Count Zarth Arn from Starcrash is on the right.

     -Special Effects: 1/10. The movie was released at a great time for visual effects in movies. Star Wars (which it rips off a lot) had premiered just a year prior and visuals heavy Alien and Apocalypse Now were to be released just a year later. Starcrash, though, has incredibly lame, crap-tastic (I've officially created that word) special effects that are laughably bad. All the spaceships look like toys made out of random crap they found in some warehouse, glued together, and painted gray. The explosions are totally underwhelming and look extremely fake. Oh, and did I mention that they have lightsabers in this? Well they do, and it's a clear ripoff of Star Wars and it looks nowhere near as good.

     -Music/Score: 3/10. John Barry is a great score composer who has won 5 oscars for his scores. He has scored several James Bond movies, Dances with Wolves, Out of the Wild, and Chaplin among others. However, the score for Starcrash is just a ripoff of the music from Star Wars and sounds incredibly cheesy. Definitely not a highlight of his career.

     -Power/Emotion: 2/10. I really didn't care at all about any of the characters, and I was rooting for Elle, the robot, to die for a while just because he's so damn annoying. I think he actually may be more annoying than the infamous Jar-Jar Binks from Star Wars Episode 1.

     -Adrenaline: 3/10. Not very exciting. I can't say the fight scenes really thrilled me much at all, and since I didn't care about the characters, I didn't particularly care.

     -Mind-Bendingness: 4/10. The movie tries to throw out some mind-bending concepts, but they all come off as incredibly stupid.

     -Stupidity: 10/10. Like Star Wars, this movie walks the thin science fiction line between brilliance and stupidity. Where Star Wars falls into the brilliance category, Starcrash falls deep into the stupidity category. Everything about this movie either says "this is incredibly stupid" or "we stole this from Star Wars, but we didn't pull it off like they did."

     -Humor: Intentional: 0.5/10. Unintentional: 5/10.  D for effort. They try to use Elle, Stella's robot companion, for comic relief, but he just gets to annoy the living crap out of you with stupid and unfunny lines. Can't say they didn't try, though. The only funny moments come from laughing at either the bad acting, the stupid lines, or the incredibly crappy special effects.

     -Final Score: This movie is awful, terrible, horrible. Any other related adjectives you want to throw out there to describe this movie are 100% accurate. From the acting to the writing to the special effects to the attempted comic relief, this movie fails horribly. If you can stand and want to watch really awful movies or you want to punish yourself, watch Starcrash. If not, don't. Watch the movie it rips off, Star Wars: A New Hope, instead.

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Aliens (1986) Review

ALIENS (1986)
Director: James Cameron

Writers: James Cameron, David Giler, and Walter Hill

Producers: Gordon Carroll, David Giler, Walter Hill, and Gale Anne Hurd

Editor: Ray Lovejoy

Music: James Horner

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser, and Lance Henriksen

Runtime: 2 hours 17 minutes

Rating: R ("monster violence" and language)

Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Horror

Release Date: July 18, 1986

Before Watching the Movie: This is a sequel to Alien, but it's not totally essential to see it before seeing Aliens. All you really need to know is that Ripley (Sigourney Weaver's character) was on a ship and her entire crew was killed by an alien and she put herself to hyper sleep at the end after blowing up the ship and jettisoning the alien into space.

Intro: My friends and I gathered together for a movie night about a week ago, and decided we would watch Back to the Future on Blu-Ray, since my friend had brought it. After waiting 20 minutes for the stupid Blu-Ray player to load the disk and then once it did load, somehow making the disc menu, along with all the buttons, disappear, we gave up and decided to watch Aliens instead.  While Alien is a good movie and regarded as a classic by many, Aliens, its sequel, actually manages to be better through great directing by James Cameron and lots of action, suspense, and unpredictability.

Plot: Ellen Ripley (Weaver) has been put in cryogenic sleep since the end of Alien, where she was on a cargo ship that was terrorized by an alien they picked up as part of a covert operation. She is the only survivor, and she is found in the capsule floating in space by her company 57 years later. Back at corporation headquarters on earth, she frantically tries to explain the danger of these aliens to everyone while she finds out terraformers have started colonizing the same planet her ship found the alien on. When contact is lost with the planet, she agrees to go along with a group of marines to the planet to wipe out the aliens. While there, they find a young girl named Newt (She is the little girl Ripley is holding in the poster. Also see picture below) who is the lone survivor of the entire colony and who Ripley adopts. Though the marines are cocky about the mission to begin, they soon find out that Ripley is right and that exterminating the aliens won't be as easy as they thought.

My artistic (As in, I know how to use Photoshop)
rendition of Ripley and Newt. No, that isn't
what Newt looks like in the movie, thank God.

Things people may find “objectionable”: There is a good deal of violence in the movie, but not as much gore as you'd expect. There are also a few uses of the f-word, but it's not excessive.

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography: 10/10. James Cameron, as always, does a great job with the directing, and the visuals don't disappoint.

     -Acting: 9/10. Good performances by pretty much everyone. Sigourney Weaver is great as always in the role she's known for.

     -Writing: 8/10.

          -Story: 8/10. Solid story with no obvious plot holes. It got a little cliché and over-the-top at times, but not so much that it ruined the movie at all. Also, the story had a nice degree of unpredictability to it, as I didn't know how the characters would escape or which ones would escape (besides Ripley, of course).

          -Script: 8/10. Not a bad script at all, though some of the lines for one of the marine characters (I can't remember his name) were a little cheesy, as the only adjectives he  seemed to know were "big/bad-ass" and "huge." Also, he ended pretty much all of his lines with the word "man." A majority of his lines sounded a lot like, "That was a big-ass alien, man!!"

     -Special Effects: 8/10. By 1980s standards- incredible. Today, some of it kind of looks cheesy, but in watching it, you need to keep in mind how good the effects are for the mid-80s. People will likely be saying the same things about Avatar (another James Cameron movie) in 20 or 30 years.

     -Music/Score: 8/10. Solid score that fit the movie pretty well.

     -Power/Emotion: 8/10. The movie makes you concerned about at least Ripley and Newt, if not anyone else. This is one area I thought the movie was definitely better than its predecessor, since I found it hard to care to deeply about any of the characters except for Ripley, since it was fairly clear they were all going to die.

     -Adrenaline: 10/10. As an action movie, Aliens succeeds in keeping you thrilled pretty much the whole way through, even though it takes a little while to get started. This similar pattern of a slow beginning that leads into an exciting and suspenseful rest of the movie is followed in both Alien and Prometheus, which are parts of the same franchise.

     -Mind-Bendingness: 7/10. The movie features a some cool concepts, such as the terraformers and a couple other spoiler-related things. However, blowing your mind is not as much of an emphasis as it is in Prometheus or Avatar.

     -Humor: 3/10. Not the point of the movie, but there were a couple funny moments that were worked in.

     -Best Credit: Barbara Coles as "Cocooned Woman."

     -Final Score: Aliens was a great movie and to me it was better than Alien, as it's well-rounded and thrilling. I'd recommend this to anyone who like sci-fi and anyone who has seen Alien, since it is a continuation of the story, and is close to Alien in terms of quality at worst.

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Pan's Labyrinth (2006) Review

PAN'S LABYRINTH (2006)

Director: Guillermo Del Toro

Writer: Guillermo Del Toro

Producers: Belén Atienza, Elena Manrique, and Guillermo Del Toro

Editor: Bernat Vilaplana

Music: Javier Navarrete

Starring: Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, and Doug Jones

Runtime: 1 hour 59 minutes

Rating: R (graphic violence, language)

Genre: Fantasy, War, Drama

Release Date: January 19, 2007 (US theater release)

Before Watching the Movie: Maybe read a quick summary or Wikipedia article on the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s just to get a loose grasp on what was going on at the time, since the war features prominently in the movie. Also, this is movie where the less you know going in, the better.

Intro: This is a movie I have wanted to see for a long time. I am a fan of Guillermo Del Toro's work in seeing both of the Hellboy movies and liking both of them. Then on my IMDb prowling and through some recommendations from people, I heard about this movie. Then a couple years later and earlier this year when a local blockbuster was going out of business, I bought the movie for real cheap, and a few months AFTER that, I got around to watching it. My waiting did not go unrewarded. Pan's Labyrinth, though its  is a brilliant movie in almost every way and is and a masterpiece for Del Toro as it successfully blends brutal war and mind-bending fantasy elements so seamlessly.

Plot: Like I mentioned above, it's best to go into the movie with not a lot of information, so I'll keep this section relatively short. In 1944, during the brutal Spanish Civil War, a young girl name Ofelia (Baquero) and her pregnant mother are being sent to the countryside to live with Ofelia's new stepfather (Lopez), who is a captain in Franco's army. Ofelia is obsessed with fairytales and one day she is led by a fairy into a nearby labyrinth, where a faun tells her she is a long-lost reincarnation of a princess. Ofelia buys into this and the faun gives her a series of tasks for her to prove her royalty in. She has to carry out her tasks while trying to appease her sadistic stepfather and avoid getting tangled in an escalating Spanish Civil War conflict

Things people may find “objectionable”: The main objectionable thing in the movie is the violence. Some of the violence can be pretty brutal, as Del Toro tries to capture the bloodiness of the Spanish Civil War. There are also a couple uses of the F-word, but if you don't speak Spanish and don't read the subtitles, you won't know!

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography: 10/10. Incredible directing. Del Toro is a fantastic director, and it's clear that Pan's Labyrinth is his masterpiece. He spectacularly blends the fantastical and the realistic elements of the movie to the point where they seamlessly coexist.

     -Acting: 10/10. Great performances by the entire cast. Sergi López, in my opinion, gives the best  performance as Ofelia's sadistic stepfather and army captain.

     -Writing: 9/10.

          -Story: 10/10. The key to having a great story is to always keep the audience guessing what is going to happen next. This is exactly what Pan's Labyrinth's story was like. Even towards the end of the movie, it was impossible to predict the ending, or even where Del Toro was going to take the story. The story also had its share of plot twists that were completely unpredictable.

          -Script: 8/10.  Solid script, even after the translation from Spanish to English. I think Del Toro made sure the translation was accurate since he speaks both English and Spanish.

     -Special Effects: 9/10. The movie is a few years old, so the effects are not what they are today. Even so, the effects work amazingly well with the movie.

Normally I'd add a picture from the movie,
but if I did, it might spoil some of the
creepier moments, so instead, here's a cool
alternate poster I found on the internet.

     -Music/Score: 7/10. Since it's been a month and a half since I've seen the movie (I need to get a review out, that's why!), I honestly can't remember the score that much, but what I remember of it was good and fit the movie well.

     -Power/Emotion: 10/10. Since the story was completely unpredictable, as I mentioned above, it was easy to become concerned with the fates of the characters. By the end, you really get to care about the characters and feel really bad when something terrible happens to them.

     -Adrenaline: 9/10. The tension in the movie started out high and only got higher

     -Mind-Bendingness: 9/10. As this is a fantasy movie, there are definitely some mind-bending moments in the movie, and Del Toro masterfully blends them in with the more reality-grounded Spanish Civil War aspect of the movie. The most mind-bending elements are the spectacular and weird creatures Del Toro comes up with. Creating imaginative monsters is definitely a strength for Del Toro.

     -Humor: n/a. The movie is heavy and dark throughout and leaves little room for humor. Still, the movie doesn't suffer one bit from the absence of humor.

     -Final Score: Pan's Labyrinth is a fantastic movie in every way and is easily one of the best I have seen all year. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes fantasy movies or just wants to see a great film. If you can stand the violence and the subtitles, watch this movie. You will not be disappointed.

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