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BLADE II AND CLOCKSTOPPERS - >From Crackhead Vampires to Time Machines by Rachel Deahl Click for the official site! In this sequel Wesley Snipes returns as the titular half vampire, half-human that stalks evil with a heavy silver sword and a brutally high kick. A passable combination of over-the-top gore and martial arts pyrotechnics, Blade II trades on the same expected formula of its predecessor. And like the original Blade, this feature is initially more watchable than you might think, although the experience becomes tiring long before the final credits roll. In this go-round, Snipes is given a new breed of enemy whose ass he must kick. Through a genetic mutation, a new kind of creature has come into being: a mutant vampire that feeds on both humans and the sharp-toothed bloodsuckers. Described as a kind of crack addict vampire, the new breed must feed exponentially more times than regular old vampires. And, more than simply sucking blood; these unfortunate creatures devour their prey whole (they actually have no mandible so that they can open their mouth in a leech-like manner to attach onto their prey). And talk about an appetite, if these fellas don't feed often enough they'll actually begin to gnaw on themselves! Pasty, bald, clear-skinned predators, the new villains look like skinheads who escaped the set of Night of the Living Dead. In an unusual turn of events, Blade is approached by the vampire nation so that he can team up with them in order to eradicate the new baddies. The emperor of the vampires (who is seemingly a second cousin of the emperor from the Star Wars trilogy, both in appearance and career choice) asks Blade to work with an elite team of vampires (originally trained to take out Blade) in order to take down the mutant breed that is multiplying at an alarming rate. Uneasy about teaming up with his enemy, Blade agrees but remains on his guard. Shot on location in Prague (where the film is set), Blade II maintains a dingy, eerie look and feel throughout. Wandering through a kind of post-apocalyptic ghetto, Wesley Snipes kicks ass in various unsightly places-- blood banks that look like crack houses and after-hours clubs that look like crack houses. And, although Blade II boasts more than a fair amount of well-crafted fight scenes, the crackhead vampires Snipes and crew are after can only be destroyed by sunlight, allowing for more fires than fisticuffs. For fans of the original, and viewers looking for the kind of artistry ignored on WWF Smackdown, Blade II will probably be two hours well spent. Other viewers, however, should beware. CLOCKSTOPPERS Click for official site! Putting Einstein's relativity theory into motion, literally, Clockstoppers gives the power to halt time to a couple of California kids with moderately amusing results. A joint effort from Paramount and Nickelodeon films, Clockstoppers aims to be kid friendly first and foremost; unfortunately it doesn't leave much in the way of leftovers for the adults. Working mostly off of numerous gags and scenarios on the 'how neat is it to stop time' theme, this kiddy flick isn't unbearable, but it's not that enjoyable either. Jesse Bradford (from the irresistible teen hit Bring It On) stars as Zak, a street-smart high schooler who makes extra cash by selling second hand crap on Ebay. Hoping to buy a used Mustang with all the loot he's made from his online operation, Zak pleads with his dad, a brilliant Physics professor at a nearby college, to co-sign the lease on the car. Unable to make time to check out the car, the scenario causes a rift between father and son, as Zak complains that his dad only seems to focus on his students and his work. But when Dad goes off to a science conference, Zak discovers the top-secret device his old man left behind. Looking like your average digital sports watch, Zak unknowingly straps on a timepiece that seemingly has the power to stop time. The watch, built by a former student of Zak's dad (French Stewart), actually allows its wearer to move so quickly that it only appears as if they've stopped time. In reality, they're simply moving exponentially faster than everything else around them is. What initially begins as a cool trick (Zak and friends use the watch to get back at a school bully and various local characters who've pissed them off), becomes a dangerous mistake. Soon enough Zak is being hunted down by the government baddies (led by Michael Bien) who engineered the creation of the watch. With his hot girlfriend, Francesca (Paula Garces) in tow, Zak must outwit the bad guys in order to save his dad and generally make all right with the world. Clockstoppers is cute enough, with a charismatic lead in Bradford, but the time tampering becomes repetitive all too soon. The comedic talents of Julia Sweeney (best known for her work on Saturday Night Live as the genderless Pat) and French Stewart are unfortunately wasted in lackluster supporting roles, leaving the film lacking the rich sense of irony and sarcastic humor it might have supplied to its older viewers. As such, this underwhelming outing is strictly fit for the tikes and pre-teens. E.T. 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Click for the official site! There are some films that forever remain in your collective conscious not simply as films, but as something more: milestones of the past. These are films that you see at a particular moment in time and are forever bound to that moment; to the person you were with, the things you were doing, the person you were. I was four years old when my parents took me to see E.T. It remains one of my earliest memories of "going to the movies." And, after one or two incomplete viewings on television, seeing the 20th Anniversary Edition marks the first time I've seen Stephen Spielberg's alien opus in its entirety in twenty years. What I remembered of E.T. was, well, limited (chalk it up to the difference in perspective between a pre-schooler and a twenty-something). I remembered Drew Barrymore's adorable Gertie. I remembered the pervasive
catch phrase that the movie coined ("E.T. phone home"). And I remembered,
perhaps more than anything else, the gut-wrenching feeling I got when I
thought E.T. was dead. Suffice to say, I never recognized the cinematic
qualities of Speilberg's film, qualities which immediately came to the fore
after this viewing.
>From its opening sequence, which is shot entirely in shadow and without any dialog, when E.T. loses contact with the mother ship and is abandoned, Spielberg's film is expertly crafted and beautifully shot. Like JAWS, which showcased the wunderkind's ability to create suspense from the simplest of scenarios, E.T. demonstrates a similar gift for simplistic storytelling accompanied by brilliant filmmaking. As in JAWS, the director accomplished much with the little touches. From the slightly melodramatic, yet highly effective, framing of E.T.'s human captors as only shadows, to the scene in the kitchen when the smoke from the hot water emanating from the faucet mixes with the smoky environs of the forest E.T. lands in, Spielberg creates a distinctive and playful visual oeuvre. What's most striking about E.T. after all these years though, is how effectively Spielberg manages to tell this story from the perspective of his child stars. What makes E.T. such a magical film is that it manages to recreate the world with a child's sense of wonder, without ever compromising itself. The bad men are simply shadows, the realities of a broken home amount to little more than a mother's infrequent crying, and kids can fly to safety on their dirt bikes. At one point in the film, E.T. listens in from the closet as the mother reads Peter Pan to Gertie. The moment is so compelling because it reminds us that Spielberg is our cinematic Peter Pan. He is a director who constantly strives to fix the world in that perfect, yet impossible, perspective a child has. In Spielberg's world things work out and, ultimately, the nuclear family is saved. It's fitting in many ways that E.T. should be re-released on the heels of Spielberg's first box office disappointment in recent memory: A.I. The dark, horrifying world A.I. put forth was a disconcerting one for Spielberg to give his fans. As fractured as it is ambitious, the most discomfiting aspect of A.I. was that its director could not successfully tack on a happy ending to his story. With A.I., for the first time in his career, against his best intentions, Spielberg offered up a film that was more pessimistic than optimistic and his box office returns suffered in accordance. Now, with the re-release of E.T., Spielberg reminds us of the warm, fuzzy director who staked his claim on happy endings. While A.I. closed with the devastating realization that Haley Joel Osmet would never be able to go home, E.T. closes by reuniting not one, but two families. Both alien and boy are returned to their mothers, with the addition of a new father (Peter Coyote) for the earthbound clan. |
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