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Reviews
American Battleship (2012)
Schlock sailing the high cheese
I saw this film on Youtube, so I can't really complain and say they took my $15, unlike some recent movies. For the price of free, I would say that any complaints I have about "bad quality" wouldn't really apply here.
The USS Iowa is an old WWII era boat headed for the US to become a museum, and the Captain played by Mario Van Peebles is taking it on its final cruise. Along the way, someone starts attacking US Navy ships with missiles, and the Captain has to find out who before World War III starts.
Surprise surprise, it turns out to be aliens who for reasons that aren't very well explained using human weaponry to attack ships and anything modern is disabled, so the Iowa has to hunt down the aliens and save the world.
That is the plot, and it is very formulaic and cheesy. The CG special effects were bad in their day of 2011, and now are even worse. They would make a PS2 game from 2003 look embarrassed. The sets are bare bones as they obviously hired a museum and the ship is in a rusty, rundown state so the idea that it's a working ship requires a lot of suspension of belief.
The acting is hilarious though, and I kept on watching as the mixture of bored and earnest is my kinda schlock. Mario van Peebles obviously had a hankering for a new car or some house work that needed doing, and basically is just there collecting a check.
There is a Lieutenant called Caroline played by Johanna Watts who puts a bit more effort into her role, however this is mainly just wandering around, occasionally giving out exposition speeches and also being the Captain's secret girlfriend which would violate fraternization laws in the real service.
In one scene her leg gets hurt and the Captain's response is to start rolling around with her on the deck making out while the rest of the crew gawp at them. It's hilarious and random, because about half an hour ago they both say they want to keep their romance a secret. There is no consistency in the characters or their motivation.
It's a huge piece of schlock sailing the high cheese, but that's what is likeable about it. Don't expect a quality film, but if you want something to put on and laugh at while you do other things American Warships/American Battleship could be the film you want.
Chris Chan: A Comprehensive History (2018)
The greatest documentary on an internet phenomenon
When the history of meme culture in the 2010s is written, the name Christian Weston Chandler will be wrought large throughout it. Despite the fact that he's one of the most trolled people in the history of the internet, he has nevertheless in a peverse way achieved his dream of making his Sonic rip-off, Sonichu a true phenomenon and has created the multimedia franchise he believed he could... just not how he pictured it. His effect on the Sonic fanbase has been profound.
This documentary by GenoSamuel is the definitive work on the Chris-Chan saga. An epic 22-part (at the time of writing) series of hour-long documentaries, taking you from the first moments of Chris-Chan's life right up to the present day, the effort which has gone into this is nothing short of superhuman. So much material has been produced by Chris and his, uh... fans, so it's hard for most mere mortals to keep up with it all and digest it. GenoSamuel has managed to condense it all into a highly watchable and entertaining series, and if anyone ever asks me what the Chris-Chan thing is all about, this is where I will send them.
I look forward to seeing what other documentaries will come from this talented producer.
Chris Chan: A Comprehensive History (2018)
The greatest documentary on an internet phenomenon
When the history of meme culture in the 2010s is written, the name Christian Weston Chandler will be wrought large throughout it. Despite the fact that he's one of the most trolled people in the history of the internet, he has nevertheless in a peverse way achieved his dream of making his Sonic rip-off, Sonichu a true phenomenon and has created the multimedia franchise he believed he could... just not how he pictured it. His effect on the Sonic fanbase has been profound.
This documentary by GenoSamuel is the definitive work on the Chris-Chan saga. An epic 22-part (at the time of writing) series of hour-long documentaries, taking you from the first moments of Chris-Chan's life right up to the present day, the effort which has gone into this is nothing short of superhuman. So much material has been produced by Chris and his, uh... fans, so it's hard for most mere mortals to keep up with it all and digest it. GenoSamuel has managed to condense it all into a highly watchable and entertaining series, and if anyone ever asks me what the Chris-Chan thing is all about, this is where I will send them.
I look forward to seeing what other documentaries will come from this talented producer.
The Gospel of Us (2012)
Beautiful visually, but a few plot problems
I grew up in Swansea, near to Port Talbot, so while I am not a native of that town I can sympathize with the story presented in The Gospel of Us. I'm going to discuss the plot so those who are spoiler sensitive should look away although what I will say is that unless you were raised under a stone you should know how it will go - it's pretty heavily based on the story of Jesus as told in the New Testament.
The updated version features Michael Sheen as a man who has gone missing for 40 days and 40 nights, and returns to his hometown of Port Talbot to "listen" to its story. In the universe of the film, Port Talbot is under threat from a greedy corporation called ICU, which is planning something called the Passover Project, a new add-on to the M4 that goes past Port Talbot but also is after some unspecified valuable mineral under the town and wishes to clear Port Talbot away in order to extract it.
The man becomes known as The Teacher after saving a woman tricked into being a suicide bomber, and becomes a popular rallying point for the townspeople who feel inspired by his presence to resist the designs ICU has for the town as he reminds them of its history through the stories of the town. Eventually, ICU tires of this and accuses him of being an insurgent out to spark an uprising, and has him arrested and sentenced to be crucified after a sham trial. He finally "remembers" his former life in Port Talbot and tells the crowd of it, and dies on the cross before being apparently resurrected, having fulfilled his purpose of reminding Port Talbot of who it is and what it has lost.
And there you have it - swap the Romans for ICU, Jerusalem for Port Talbot and Jesus for "The Teacher" and it's the story of Jesus that everyone knows. This was a major event last year, and it's still talked about now. It can be seen on Youtube as many took videos on their phones, but Dave McKean's film takes that footage along with professionally shot footage from the National Theatre of Wales and ties it all together into a film that is much easier to watch and far more satisfying.
McKean's direction clarifies certain points that I missed from the footage on Youtube, such as the characters of the Teacher's wife, daughter and mother-in-law, the significance of whom I missed and adds a certain otherworldly feeling that is missing from seeing unedited footage of the live event. It lends the whole story a coherence that it was lacking before, and makes the story quite enjoyable to follow.
However, in some respects I felt that the updating of the Gospel story to modern day Port Talbot harmed certain aspects of it. The events depicted in the Gospels allegedly took place long before living memory and in a far different time than today, and so trying to transplant them to the modern world isn't going to be entirely successful.
The main problem is the power enjoyed by the ICU corporation, which is able to pretty much condemn a man to a torturous death in public without any interference during the carrying out of the "sentence" or legal ramification afterwards. The film has no documentary aspect but presents the events to us straight, and I had a problem suspending my disbelief and not picking holes in this aspect for its two hours running time.
The idea of the council and South Wales Police allowing ICU to carry out a summary execution doesn't really sit well with me as a plot point I could buy into either, and I felt watching it that in reality the ICU corporation would have faced at least an inquiry and upon the commencement of the attempt to crucify the Teacher arrests for conspiracy to murder and assault.
And here we've reached the problem of updating the story of Jesus and replaying the events in modern times: since the time of Jesus, humanity has progressed far enough so that in all likelihood someone acting like Jesus in the modern day would be taken to a mental health clinic rather than executed (indeed, in Jerusalem the local police occasionally take in sufferers of "Jerusalem Syndrome", people claiming to the Messiah) and so despite a valiant attempt to update the story I never felt I could fully engage with it the way I would with a more fantasy-based film.
I'm over-analyzing a bit here. The main point of the film is really to make the viewer think a bit about the story of Port Talbot and how the town has suffered somewhat at the hands of numerous companies and other outside agencies seeking to make the practice of capitalism easier for themselves. The construction of the M4, while linking Wales to the centre of England, also tore a hole through many local communities in doing so and this point is keenly made here.
While we gained jobs and convenience for business we also may have lost something valuable as the price of the fast travel and ease of commerce, and the real point of the play at least seemed to me to be to get the viewer thinking about what the real price of that is. In that endeavor, it's far more successful and as I said I was actually able to sympathize with the idea of how we may have sacrificed such things as our sense of community in the pursuit of material wealth and the price we all pay for it now.
As an updated version of the story of Jesus, I'm not so sure it works. However, for anyone from South Wales or with an interest in the history of the area I think it offers some very interesting things.
Progeny (1998)
A laughably poor "alien abduction" horror film
Arnold Vosloo plays Craig Burton, a doctor who when making love to his wife one night experiences an "alien abduction" and begins to suspect that his wife (Jillian McWhirter) who became pregnant on that night is really carrying an alien baby, and he goes to great lengths to prevent the alien baby from coming to term ending up with him hacking her to pieces trying to get the alien out.
That's it. I've summarized the whole film, and now you don't need to see it. Why? It's possibly one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. The acting is some of the worst I've ever seen, with Vosloo putting in a one-note, flat performance that evokes Tommy Wiseau, and the supporting cast hamming it up in an attempt to be emotional but just coming off as plain funny.
The special effects are hilarious. When the "grey aliens" turn up, they look like unconvincing rubber blow up dolls being waved around, and the "alien experimentation" scene where McWhirter is impregnated by aliens is laughable as she writhes around screaming among a bunch of fake looking "alien tentacles". Also, Vosloo being "floated off" his wife in bed is done in a really daft way, and just adds to the naffness of the whole thing.
I watched it to the end and derived some amusement from the poor acting and special effects, but this is not one of those "so bad it's good" films, it's just bad. For a better "alien abduction" film try CBS's 1991 miniseries Intruders, the bizarre Christopher Walken flick Communion or find the alien abduction flashback sequence from Fire in the Sky online, all of which offer better special effects, a better plot line (in the case of the Fire in the Sky alien sequence, a ten minute scene is better than 70 mins of this) and are just better entertainment.
Vosloo went on to become Imhotep in The Mummy, which mostly just required him to grin in an evil manner and let the CGI do the acting which was a marked improvement over his performance in this film. I think Lindsay Crouse, who plays Vosloo's shrink, went on to have some minor bit parts in some TV series, and the rest of them appear to have gone on to have small parts in direct-to-video horror and action films that populate the bargain buckets of the country's supermarkets.
Avoid.