Month: February 2024

Released: May 2004

Director: Phil Tippett

Run Time: 88 Minutes

Rated R

Distributor: Sony/Tristar Pictures

Cast:
Richard Burgi: Captain V.J. Dax
Ed Lauter: General Jack Gordon Shephard
Brenda Strong: Sgt. Dede Rake
Colleen Porch: Pvt. Lei Sahara
Lawrence Monoson: Lt. Pavlov Dill

One of the greatest things about director Paul Verhoeven is that regardless of what kind of movie he makes, you can almost guarantee that people will talk about it for years.  Why?  It’s a huge number of reasons.  It could be the over-the-top bloody violence.  It could be the not-so-subtle sexuality on display, or it could be the incredibly obvious social commentary that permeates each of his movies.  Regardless of which reason a movie of his is memorable, the fact that they are so memorable speaks volumes about his dedication to the craft.  This last weekend, I saw my Twitter feed explode with really ding-dong takes about how Starship Troopers isn’t a satire of fascism.  I’ll settle it right now: It IS satire.  Now, whether or not you like it as satire is a whole different can of beans.  For a movie that’s nearly 30 years old, people are still divided over it.  Personally, I loved the hell out of it, and I’ve read the book it’s LOOSELY based on.  It wasn’t a super successful movie, but for some reason, Sony decided to start doing sequels to the movie.  We now have three live-action films and two animated ones.  All of which are canonical to the original 1997 picture.  20 years ago, in 2004, we got our first direct-to-video sequel in Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation.

Set sometime after the Terran Federation captured a brain bug on the distant planet P, we see a platoon of Mobile Infantry troopers trying to escape the Arachnids when they reach an abandoned outpost.  Taking cover from the bugs and the storm, the troopers, led by psychic Lt. Dill, discover that there is one lone occupant of the outpost: a former Federation officer named Dax.  After being released by Pvt. Sahara, Dax helps secure the building when a handful of lost troopers, including General Jack Shephard show up.  Things start taking a turn for the strange when these new troopers start behaving very strangely.  It turns out that these troopers are host for a new kind of bug intent on infiltrating the Federation at the highest levels.  It’s very clear from the film’s budget of 7 million dollars, that Starship Troopers 2 was never going to match the original movie in any capacity.  Story-wise, this is a far more contained film than the sprawling space soap opera that was Verhoeven’s movie.  Instead, this movie is set pretty much in a single location: An abandoned outpost on the fringes of Federation space.  That alone makes this a very different kind of movie.  This is more of a horror movie than a big sci-fi epic spectacle.  It actually has more in common with movies like The Thing and Alien.  Now, I’m not saying it’s as good as those movies.  Far from it.  It’s not even in the same league.

When I first heard that a sequel to Starship Troopers was made, I was excited.  I thought I was going to get more of the great action sequences that peppered Verhoeven’s original film.  Nope.  It certainly had action, but it wasn’t even close to being what the first movie was, and that pissed me off.  I remember distinctly HATING this movie when I first saw it.  From the acting to the CGI, it was an abominable mess.  Now, having seen it nearly 20 years after its release, do I still hate it?  No.  Not remotely.  I’m not saying it’s a good movie.  It isn’t it.  Between the obvious budget limitations and the fact that this was the directorial debut of creature effects guru Phil Tippett, Hero of the Federation has a lot going against it.  This is not a grand sci-fi spectacle.  This is a horror movie, and on that level…it kind of works.  This is a pretty gory movie, and most of the blood and guts are practical, which is a HUGE plus in my book.  It’s also pretty atmospheric.  The level of claustrophobia is high.  Again: more points.

Everything else about the movie is…questionable.  The CGI isn’t the worst I’ve seen, but it’s still not very impressive, when you can see it.  There’s another bad mark: The cinematography is AWFUL.  I get that this is a very different kind of movie than the first, but the film is so poorly shot, you can barely make out anything that happens.  It’s a dark movie…literally.  The set designs are fine as it’s all on stage.  But the green-screen effects are…nasty, and not in a good way.  The acting is also not very good.  In fact, the only person that returned to the franchise was Brenda Strong, who played Captain Deladier in the previous movie.  Here, she plays Sgt. Rake, a tough-as-nails, cigar-munching squad leader.  I thought she did just fine.  The other acting highlight is Richard Burgi as Captain Dax.  I think he knew exactly what kind of movie he was in, because he chews the scenery like its nobody’s business.  Everyone else, though is weak, and so are the characters.  Lawrence Monoson plays the psychic Lt. Dill, who comes across as a bit of a…dill.  Colleen Porch is supposed to play our resident hero, Pvt. Sahara, but she just wasn’t convincing.

The movie was so low-budget they couldn’t even afford blanks for the guns, so instead they used flashing lights to indicate a burst.  That’s great, if you’re going up against someone who has epilepsy, but giant bugs?  I don’t actually blame Phil Tippett entirely for this mess.  He’s an award-winning visual effects artist that’s worked on some of the biggest movies that Hollywood has made.  This movie was clearly intended to be what it ended up being, so in that regard, it works.  It really does.  But as a sequel to Starship Troopers, it sucks.  For fans of the original movie, there were certain expectations that Hero of the Federation was simply never going to deliver, and when I first saw it, I was devastated at what I was seeing.  20 years later, I now understand what the intent was, and I think it was decent enough.  Also, the whole propaganda angle of the original film was mostly removed, so the movie played it straight.  It’s a vastly different kind of movie, but I don’t hate it as much as I used to.  Is it a good movie?  Not by a long shot.  It’s got a lot of problems from a technical and narrative perspective, but I think it’s fun in its own way.

Released: August 2012(United States)

Director: M.J. Bassett(As Michael J. Bassett)

Rated R

Run Time: 104 Minutes

Distributor: Anchor Bay

Genre: Action/Fantasy

Cast:
James Purefoy: Solomon Kane
Max Von Sydow: Josiah Kane
Rachel Hurd-Wood: Meredith Crawthorn
Pete Postlethwaite: William Crawthorn

Conan: The Barbarian is widely regarded as one of the best fantasy films of the 80s, and why not?  It was an epic revenge story starring Arnold Schwarzenegger that put him on the map.  It also a great cast including Sandahl Bergman in her first real role as Valeria; Max Von Sydow as King Osric, and the legendary James Earl Jones as the iconic Thulsa Doom.  Arnold would go on to star in movies like The Terminator, which was his next project.  There are die-hard fans of Robert E. Howard’s original stories that don’t care for the movie, because it wasn’t in line with who and what the wanted the Cimmerian to be.  Still, the movie got a sequel, The Destroyer, and a television series as well as multiple comic book adaptations through Marvel, and a reboot starring Jason Momoa.  But Conan wasn’t the only character that was the creation of Howard’s.  He created other characters like Kull(who also got a movie starring Kevin Sorbo).  But for this review, I’m tackling Solomon Kane.

Solomon Kane begins in the year 1600, when privateer captain Solomon Kane lays siege to an Ottoman fortress.  Killing his way to the throne room, he encounters the Devil’s Reaper, who has come to claim his soul for all the evil that he’s committed.  Escaping the demon, Kane ends up at a monastery, swearing off his life of violence for a more peaceful existence.  A year later, he’s forced to leave to find his own way to redemption when he crosses paths with a Puritan family, the Crawthorns, a kindly family on their way to the New World.  One night, they are attacked and the young woman, Meredith is kidnapped.  Forced to return to violence, Kane hunts and kills his way through the countryside to find and rescue Meredith, not realizing there are more sinister forces at work.  This is actually a very interesting origin story for one of Howard’s more obscure “heroes.”  I’ve read a bunch of the short stories, and there really isn’t a whole lot of exploration of Kane’s past.  You get a few hints here and there that he committed some horrendous acts of violence, and is searching for some kind of redemption by fighting evil, but that’s it.  What this movie does, and I love it for this, is that it doesn’t directly adapt anything from the stories, does its own thing, but it remains mostly faithful to Howard’s vision.  At least, in my opinion.  It’s a surprisingly good story.

Before I go any further, I want to discuss the film’s release.  The movie was completed in 2008 and was released world-wide in 2009…except for North America, due to legal reasons.  It would eventually get released on DVD and Blu-Ray in 2012.  I don’t know the ins and outs of what the legal issues where that prevented the film’s release in North America, but I can tell you this: Solomon Kane needed a theatrical release.  In my opinion, it’s the best adaptation of a Robert E. Howard character since the original Conan.  First off, let’s talk about the casting: Absolutely phenomenal.  James Purefoy as Kane is one of the best castings of the last 20 years.  He has the look, the charisma, and the physicality to bring The Puritan to life.  Pete Postlethwaite plays William Crawthorn, the patriarch of a West-bound family.  He’s got this warmth and gravitas that just permeates the screen every second that he’s in front of the camera.  Alice Krige is also really good, despite her limited run time.  Max Von Sydow brings some real legitimacy as Josiah, Solomon’s father.  It kind of makes sense to cast HIM, because he was in Conan: The Barbarian.  Seriously, though, Sydow could do no wrong.  He was one of the great actors of his generation.  Again, not much screen time, but the man had presence.  The acting overall, is pretty good, but there really isn’t much character development aside from Kane.

This movie is beautifully shot.  It’s beautifully ugly, I should say.  The cinematography is great, but the world of Solomon Kane isn’t exactly sunflowers and dandelions.  No, this is a very dark world that’s suffering through disease and bandits and demonic forces.  So, the color palate is very…subdued and grey.  It’s also very wet and muddy.  It’s an ugly reality that Kane inhabits.  You could definitely tell that this was not an easy shoot.  The action sequences are not just competent, but they’re actually really solid, especially the opening siege as well as Kane’s slaughtering of the bandits that kidnapped Meredith.  The sword-fighting, while not as memorable as something like The Mask of Zorro, is well-staged, with Kane using a rapier, a dirk, and two flintlock pistols.  There is definitely CGI used in the movie, and it’s not particularly great, but it gets the job done, but for the most part, it’s all done for real.  The stunt-work is phenomenal with Purefoy doing a lot of his stunts and fighting.  It’s a fairly exciting movie to watch, but the tone is definitely very serious and dark, and that’s just not going to work for a lot of people.  I love the hell out of it, though.

It’s hard to judge how well Solomon Kane should’ve done, because it’s based on a character that the audience member has no idea exists.  For Robert E. Howard fans, it was either a joy to see this character brought to life, or it was an abomination.  But the overall reaction to the film was surprisingly not overly negative.  It wasn’t going to win awards or anything, but there were a number of outlets that actually enjoyed the film.  It’s flawed, to be sure, but I think this movie could’ve done better with better marketing and an actual release in North America when it was first released.  When I first heard of the movie, I was excited, but I wasn’t able to see the film until it Blu-Ray 4 years later.  It’s a solid action adventure film with really strong performances from most of its cast, and decent action sequences that rival some of the stuff that we see today.  Also, the music by Klaus Badelt is pretty epic.  If you liked Conan: The Barbarian, you might actually find something here to enjoy.  It’s not the best movie of its kind, but I think it’s good enough on its own merits.  Highly recommended.