I’ve always loved the move Sneakers. Not just because it appeals to the geek in me but because it is a finely crafted film.

Listening to the Writers/Director voice over on the DVD brings home the craft of what it’s like to write a fine piece of film. Not only does it help you appreciate this movie more but other well-made films.

Movie Synopsis: Lets keep this simple. It’s about a group of men who get paid to break into secured systems in order to test a companies security. Their leader, played by Robert Redford, has a past that they are not aware of. Two men hire/blackmail Redford’s character into doing a job for them. The job is fairly simple, it’s to recover a little black box from a professor of mathematics. It’s at this point that everything goes to hell for our main characters. To say any more would give away too much of a wonderful story.

Even though this movie is now over 12 years old it still remains timely. Credit that to the writers who had the foresight to see the role information would play in our society with the emergence of the Internet in our everyday lives and the birth of the World Wide Web.

Just a few years after this movie came out we had movies like Hackers and The Net that are in the same genre as Sneakers. It’s amazing to think back and see that this movie, which came out before the common person had ever heard of email, web pages, or the Internet, is one of the better Technology Fiction movies of our time.

The voice over given by the writer/directer Phil Alden Robinson and writer Lawrence Lasker is enlightening. Not just for the occasional bit of trivia – like that the scene in the beginning of the movie where Martin Bryce is standing in a snowy courtyard is the town square courtyard from Back to the Future – but also for the insight into what it’s like to write a screenplay. They bring up many instances of having additional scenes in the screenplay that were unneccesary or how many of the scenes play a dual or even triple role. I even learned a new screen writing term: Laying Pipe; adding something innocuous to a scene that is later shown to be instrumental in a later scene.

Note: the writer Lawrence Lasker also wrote the script for War Games which they talk about a few times during the VO.

The music score for the movie is from James Horner who also did Braveheart and Titanic. It would be redundant to mention that it is first rate.

polyGeek Director's CommentarY, Movie Reviews

A few suggestions for good romantic SciFi/Fantasy movies, including classics like The Princess Bride, plus a few you might not have considered. I thought I’d throw this together for those SF geeks and geek-lovers out there, those who want to watch a good Science Fiction or Fantasy movie with your clone, robot, replicant, elf, hobbit, alien hottie, human, etc. on Valentine’s Day:

Blade Runner
This movie has to go near the top of the list for anything related to SciFi movies. It’s not just one of the best SciFi movies ever it’s also a very romantic movie. It’s two people looking for answers and finding each other. Oh, did I say “people”? I’m not sure, are replicants people? Does replicant love count? These are the questions Philip K. Dick would be thinking about. And after the movie you could tell your partner, “I’d love you even if you were a replicant.”

GATTACA
In a perfect world two imperfect people find each other. A beautifully filmed movie. They did everything just right. It’s a shame it doesn’t get more credit.

Bicentennial Man
Wow, what a happy sad movie. I cried SO hard at the end. And that doesn’t happen often. I can only think of one other movie that is as happy/sad at the end and that’s the Color Purple.

Fifth Element
Man, was that a whopper of a kiss at the end of the movie or what?

Star Man
Ah, an oldy but a goody. Starman’s speech to the scientist at near the end of the movie is some of the most poignant words ever in a SciFi film. And of course there’s the gift that he gives Karen Allen at the end. (Note to men: if your partner wants to have children and you don’t then do NOT watch this film with her or you’ll be sorry.)

The Matrix
You know, this really doesn’t count because you kinda have to watch all three movies in a row to see the depth of romance between Neo and Trinity. But think about it, Neo dies at the end of The Matrix and Trinity brings him back. Then the roles are reversed at the end of Reloaded and of course Neo sacrifices all of humanity for the chance to save her. Then they both die at the end of Revolutions. If you get a chance to listen to the philosopher’s commentaries on the box set they talk about Neo and Trinity being one soul. Of course Trinity doesn’t get the credit but Neo could never have achieved what he did without his love for Trinity.

Superman
The first Superman movie still stands out as one of the best comic adaptations ever. And talk about romance, Superman reverses the Earth’s spin just to save his love, L.L.

Lord of the Rings/Return of the King
I know what you’re thinking, “Dude, there are only three women with any significant role in the whole series – Arwen, Galadriel, and Eowyn.” But, at the end of the movie we have Aragorn and Arwen hooking up. (Did you notice that Elrond/Hugo Weaving was crying in the background?) Eowyn and Faramir are together and of course Sam and Rosie Cotton are married and have children. And you know, I’ve always wondered about the friendship that Gimli and Legolas formed.

The Princess Bride
This might be the best of the list, at least as a Valentien’s Day movie. Because you know, “Nothing is better than true love, except maybe a MLT sandwich – you know: Mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich; when the mutton is real fresh. Ummm, I just love those.”

polyGeek Movie Reviews

I love British films. Films like Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sliding Doors, Notting Hill, Love Actually. I could go on but it would be easier to just go to list all the films that Hugh Grant has been in. Now I can add another movie to my list of favorite British flicks: Shaun of the Dead.

Shaun of the Dead is fantastic comedy and social commentary. I especially like the beginning part where everyone seems like they are zombies but they’re really just plain British folks going about their boring, daily lives. The middle part of the movie is loads of fun. Most zombie movies have some super hero guy/gal who kicks some zombie ass. Not this film. We get an average bloke with a cricket bat. And as with all zombie films we get to wonder which main character gets munched next. The denouement is good fun to.

Basically Shaun of the Dead is good fun from beginning to end.

Few people outside of Brittan will recognize any of the cast and crew but they did the British TV-series “Spaced”. Come to think of it “Spaced” only ran for 2 years in Brittan so there may not be many people in Brittan who recognize the cast/crew. Nevertheless Shaun of the Dead has a TV quality cinematography to it. Not that it’s bad or anything. This isn’t a film that is based on cool filming or special effects. Although the Fx are better than those in Phantom Menace. (Note: there are no Fx in Shaun of the Dead.)

The film is simply about a guy who hasn’t gotten anywhere with his life, who has a mundane job, and a predictable social life. Basically your typical British bloke. And just when he decides to suss out his life all zombie breaks loose.

polyGeek Movie Reviews

Perfect (pur’ fikt)
1. Complete of its nature or kind.
2. Being without defect or blemish: a perfect specimen.
3. Thoroughly skilled or talented in a certain field or area; proficient.
4. Completely suited for a particular purpose or situation: She was the perfect actress for the part.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow may not be the best movie ever; I wouldn’t even say that it’s my favorite SciFi film. However, I do think it was perfect. It’s perfect because after re watching it and listening to the commentaries I just can’t imagine that it could have been any better.

It’s impossible to review Sky Captain and not talk about the beautiful visuals and the style of which the film was shot. The work they did is just incredible. I’m not going to name names here – Phantom Menace – but there have been many recent SciFi films that have over used CGI. Often it’s like watching a cartoon and a film spliced together and the effect just comes off as amateurish. Sky Captain brings the best of CGI and cinematography together seamlessly, and, dare I say, perfectly.

But don’t think that Sky Captain is just a bunch of cool visuals. The story here is fabulous. It captures the early SciFi films of the 40s and 50s. You know, those films that used to come on TV during late Sunday afternoons. These were SciFi films that threw caution, and realism, to the aether. An innocent time when things were so much more unbelievably believable and realistically impossible.

Sky Captain comes close to being a parody. The secret base is always remotely located right around the corner; robots the size of buildings can fly – much like bricks don’t; planes can fly underwater and of course they save the day at the last possible moment. However, the story is well paced. It doesn’t slow down enough for you to say to yourself, “This is ridiculous.” Instead it’s more of an homage to the early classics in much the same way as <em>Raiders of the Lost Ark</em>.

Beyond that there is the interaction of the characters. Even here they draw inspiration from the classics. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow play off each other wonderfully. Again, it reminds me of Karen Allen and Harrison Ford in <em>Raiders</em>. Plus you have to give all of the actors kudos for acting on a mostly empty stage surrounded by blue screens.

The DVD has all the extras you would want. There’s the commentary with Writer/Director Karry Conran and the VFX Crew. I enjoyed that mainly because I like hearing of the technical details and easter eggs in the film. There’s another commentary with the producer Jon Avnet that is okay. It’s hard for one person talking to do much with a commentary.

I wish they would have had a commentary with Gwen and Jude but that probably would have been pretty boring, “Hey, remember this scene? It’s where we were standing on a big, empty sound stage surrounded by blue walls. Oh, and this scene was great. I particularly liked sitting on a box, surrounded by blue walls, while pretending to drive a car.” It probably would have been a lot like that so maybe it’s best there was no actor’s commentary.

There are a few deleted scenes, a “gag reel” that’s full of bloopers and then “The Art of World of Tomorrow” that’s definitely worth watching.

The best part of the DVD extras is the two part “Brave New World” which is a behind the scenes look at making the movie. When you see that you’ll probably want to go out and buy another copy of the DVD just to give these guys some more money. This film was a vision of one man and the hard work of hundreds. People who put up with no money but wanted to see this project through. If you’ve ever thought of putting a film together you’ll want to see this.

polyGeek Movie Reviews

Not that I’m a big fan of Sony but you can see James Bond using a Sony Vaio a few times in the movie Casino Royale. In most movies you see the actors using an Apple Macintosh. I think that’s because it’s good product placement for Apple, whose products are distinct. You can’t help but notice the big fraking Apple logo on their laptops. Whereas most Windows laptops are too nondescript to be discerned from one another.

I really wish Dell had put an XPS in his hands but at least we can say that Bond doesn’t use no stinkin’ Mac!

I don’t want to go overboard with this and I know that OS X, or whatever they’re up to now, is a damn good operating system but there’s a stereotype that “real men don’t use Macs.” I think that’s the main reason they didn’t do a product placement for Apple. It’s just the attitude, no matter how inaccurate, that you use a Mac to look at pictures, surf the web, email, that sort of thing. You use a PC when the fate of the world is at stake.

polyGeek Bond, Movie Reviews

Just for funzies I went to RottenTomatos.com to look for the worst movies and read the blurb reviews. Here are some of my favorites:

Alone in the Dark (2005) – Christian Slater, Tara Reid

“As video game adaptations go, even Pong: The Movie would have a lot more personality.”

How Uwe Boll manages to scrape together enough investment money to give wing to this type of overblown, amateurish gibberish is truly a mystery of the cosmos…

The three stars have seen better days, but I’d like to think they could still do something classier and more dignified than this. Like gay porn.

Saying Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark is better than his 2003 American debut House of the Dead is akin to praising syphilis for not being HIV.

Alone in the Dark co-stars perpetual party-girl Tara Reid as an archeologist. That alone should give you some clue as to how bad this movie is.

If nothing else, Alone in the Dark proves that it’s possible to ‘dumb down’ a video game.

The Covenant (2006) – Steven Strait, Sebastian
This sort of thing might work as a desperation rental — like if you’ve been injected with poison and must keep watching incredibly lame movies or die …

Anyone with half a brain is not this movie’s target audience.

Movies like this are why we have eyelids.

To properly convey the jaw-dropping shoddiness of this videogame-based ‘horror’ ‘movie,’ one must approach what scientists call Absolute Stupid.

House of the Dead (2003) – Sonya Salomma, Jürgen

If you want to see what a cinematic piece of dog barf looks like, go see House of the Dead, otherwise do yourself a favour and play the video game, it’s far more entertaining.

House Of The Dead is laugh-out-loud funny. I should add, however, that it is not a comedy.

Ultraviolet (2006) – Milla Jovovich, Cameron Bright

If you want to break up with your significant other, take him/her to this turd.

Anyway, we went to Ultraviolet so you won’t have to. It was awful. Next time you go, okay?

The adventures of Catwoman, Elektra, Lara Croft and Aeon Flux were positively Homeric compared to this simple-minded Hi-Def tedium…

Ultraviolet will be studied with great interest in the future – not for its quality or its artistic merit, but rather to discover how a turd like this was made.

Ultraviolet wants desperately to be a provocative, high-concept action thriller. It is apparently trying to say something about fear and terrorism, paranoia and racism. But it looks more like a shampoo commercial.

Not Even The Lovely And Seductive Milla Can Save This One. It Is Truly Excrement On Celluloid.

The bad guys stride through spotless corriders in buildings where weirdly calm disembodied female voices say things like “Switching to emergency backup lighting system.” If only I could have found the button for the emergency back-up better movie system.

Crank your brain to its lowest possible idle and you’ll still overthink Ultraviolet.

This is the first movie I ever saw that was so bad the audience was compelled to aplaud at the ending.

The concept of “infinity” is beyond the grasp of the human brain. Sure we have a word for it but that doesn’t mean that a person can truly get their mind around it. It’s the same thing with this movie. I can’t get my mind around just how bad it was. When I try to focus on it my mind just sort of slips and I go catatonic.

polyGeek , Movie Reviews

(no spoilers)

I’m shocked that RottenTomatoes.com has a rating of 22% for Da Vinci Code. I read the book a few months ago and loved it. I didn’t think it was great but the story was captivating and I loved the presentation of the puzzles throughout. I have a pretty solid background in mathematics, philosophy and history so you can guess that this is the sort of thing that I would love.

So what’s the grip that everyone has about the movie? It isn’t like this was a bad rendition of Shakespeare or Tolkien. This is a movie adaptation of a pretty good book but that book is light years from being considered high literature.

The acting was decent. With Tom Hanks in the lead everyone was expecting perfection but this just isn’t the role for him. I never thought he was bad, just nothing better than good.

Ian McKellen was pretty damn good. Surprised?

Acting wise the weak link was probably Audrey Tautou. Again, not that she was bad just not anything to write home about. And as a personal grip I wish Ron Howard would have focused more on getting Audrey to enunciate.

One thing that I really liked was that they played fair with the controversial issues. Every time a theory was proposed it was argued, intelligently and fairly.

Overall I would give the movie a B-. I enjoyed the movie but it isn’t anything that I’ll want to see again.

polyGeek book2movie, Movie Reviews

(no spoilers)

If you’re a fan of well made movies, and who isn’t, then you can look forward to another generation of good movies from the Reitman family. Jason Reitman is the director and wrote the screenplay for the hit movie Thank you for Smoking.

Jason had good actors to work with. Aaron Eckhart did a great job in the lead. It isn’t easy to make a despicable character likable. Credit to the actor and writer here for not forcing us to like him but instead giving the viewer reasons to want to like the character.

Cameron Bright did a fine job as the son. I don’t think it was a particularly challenging role so you don’t walk away thinking, “Wow, what a great young actor.” It was more like one of those roles that good actors blend into and make you forget that your watching an actor.

What’s best about the movie is the way the story is told. The pacing is very good. There’s never a long drawn out moment where you want them to move on with things. And perhaps more importantly there’s never a moment where an actor does something that seems out of place or glossed over by the story.

Best of all the movie is intelligent and funny at the same time. You will certainly get a few good belly laughs out of the movie and even more chuckles. At the same time the movie allows us to perhaps get a better understanding of people which is never a bad thing.

polyGeek Movie Reviews

(No spoilers)

I was expecting to see a movie that was mostly an excuse to see Tom Cruise look really angry and get to use lots of cool toys to do, you know, impossible things. And here and there would be some funny moments, mostly centered around Ving Rhames. Toss in a few really hot women with guns and you have a movie worth the price of admission.

As it turned out MI3 had more acting than I expected and much less action. You know the iconic scene they did in the first movie? None of that, although they did a nice little homage to it that only took about 5 seconds.

We do get a lot of scenes were Ethan is just too pissed off for words. Which is good because Tom Cruise has his iconic stare going pretty good for most of the film.

Going to the theater I wasn’t expecting much. Leaving the theater I felt that I’d gotten more than I expected. It’s kind of hard to rate a movie based on that combination.

Perhaps the best thing to do is rate it by comparison. Is it better than the first MI movie? Yeah, pretty much. It goes without saying that it’s way better than the second MI. But it’s not nearly as good as Bourne Identity though it’s pretty much on par with Bourne Supremacy.

You know, I think that’s a great way to rate a movie by placing it in a spectrum of similar movies. I’ll work on that list and add it to this blog soon.

polyGeek Movie Reviews

(No spoilers)

My first impressions of V is for Vendetta are very good. The movie is 2 hours and 12 minutes long and I never felt that it was dragging on. Pretty captivating from beginning to end, I thought. As usual I sat on the railing at the theater and listened to the people comment on the way out. Everyone I heard sounded favorable. There was even a short applause at the end of the movie. My impression is that the applause was meant to show favor for the message of the film rather than the quality of the story. I’m here in Seattle and I’m going to guess that the film isn’t as likely to get an applause in, shall we say, more conservative areas of the country. I could be wrong but that’s my impression.

I wouldn’t attempt to write anything deep and meaningful about the movie at this point. I’d like to see it a few more times when it comes out on DVD and this is for sure something that I would want to own. As a production of the Wachowski brothers there are a lot of subtleties in there and the dialog moves along too fast to really keep up with in a theater on opening night.

Natalie Portman was excellent. Her character – Evey – went through a huge transformation during the film. While she didn’t pull it off as well as Sigourney Weaver in Alien or Linda Hamilton between T1 and T2 I think it’s more because she is just too damn pretty to portray the steely hard woman thing.

Hugo Weaving, wow. Can there be a harder role to play than a man behind a mask for an entire film. He was brilliant, mask and all.

For those of you who thought that the fight scenes in the Matrix trilogy were too long – that would be nearly everyone but me – you’ll be happy to know that there isn’t any of that in this film. In fact there are only a few fight scenes and they go by pretty fast.

I’d give the movie an A- at this point. Perhaps after a few more viewings it will creep up to an A or A+.

Interesting personal note: In V there is a lot made about there being no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens for a reason or as part of a plan. So, this morning – the day after seeing V – I had the TV on in the background as I went through my morning routine. The two movies that came on TNT were: The Mask and Back to the Future. The coencidenitification (my word) of The Mask is obvious. But what is coencidental about BTTF? Want to guess what day Marty lands in the past? Yep, you guessed it: Remember, remember, the 5th of November. That’s just a little freaky. I did a little searching and couldn’t come up with why the chose that date in BTTF. Dates like that in movies are rarely random. I’d like to know why they chose it.

polyGeek Movie Reviews