Reviews

The remake of "The Prisoner" is an atrocity. The only reason I watched it all was out of some twisted sense of devotion to the original.

The only decent episode is the first, "Arrival." As the first episode, it can get away with being obtuse and mysterious, and being introduced to the new Village in a new environment is intriguing. An elderly character who may be our old #6 is introduced, and a visit to his home is a nice nod to the original. And I have to admit I got chills the first time I saw the opening sequence, with Michael's spray-painted "RESIGN" on the glass window.

That said, the last ten minutes of "Arrival" take a sharp turn south as the miniseries starts to kick into gear (or tries to, at least), by throwing two handfuls of "TV ACTION SERIES" at us — Big Explosion, Dying Revelation, "I am not a number, I am a free man!", Rover. Cliffhanger.

After that, it was all downhill, each episode duller and dumber than the last, and I began to vaguely get the sense the new "Prisoner" was made by stupid people trying to fool us into thinking they were creating something smart through cheap tricks like jumping around in time and leaving out important pieces of information.

By the finale I didn't even care what happened to any of the characters, and there was so much expository explanation about what was really going on that it became exhausting. A (very poorly acted) plot twist near the very, very end is completely ludicrous and out of character.

I could go on and on, but won't but for one more point. While I would agree that Ian McKellen was the best thing about this rancid remake, I would also argue that elevating #2 to the equal of #6 in the story is a critical error, one that is only amplified by the actors' performances, where McKellen simply blows Caviezel off the tube.

Really, in the end, since 2's story arc closes happily while 6's continues, you've even got to wonder whose story this is. And if, in the end, the central and most interesting character in the remake of "The Prisoner" is the jailer, not the prisoner, then the entire project itself has been turned on its head by people who should not have been entrusted with the property to begin with.

And really, that's what this finally comes down to. After all the fits and starts and failures to remake "The Prisoner," the people who finally got the green light were people who didn't even understand what they were doing. Considering I've been waiting about 20 years for a remake to finally get made, I'd like to give a hearty "Screw you," to everybody involved for doing such a hapless job.

Very Minor Spoilers Here.

A daring & disturbing movie with great ambitions but a reach that exceeds its grasp. Worth a watch, but prepare yourself -- this movie is off-the-rails.

Extreme realistic violence is uncomfortably offset by comic-book absurdities, which become increasingly off-putting and cheap-feeling as the film progresses. Cops are too stupid to put the most obvious clues together, nobody bothers to get the make/model/color/license plate of the "hero"'s car, nobody takes a shot at him until the very end, etc., etc. On one hand, the movie asks to be taken seriously, on the other it asks for a huge suspension of disbelief.

That said, Rainn Wilson's performance is astonishingly good in spots, and he manages to hold the movie together. His anguish is heart-rending in a few critical scenes, and it's to his credit that he keeps our empathy for the character throughout; we're never certain whether he's divinely inspired or flat out insane. Ellen Page has a less demanding role, but plays the spunky sidekick effectively, including a very weird sex scene that goes where few comic book stories dare -- that part of the "kick" from playing hero is sexual. Kevin Bacon is his usual reliable self, bringing a lot of range to what could've been a two-dimensional bad guy role, while Liv Taylor and Michael Rooker do the same as the ex-wife and henchman. Overall, the acting is the most consistently good thing about the movie.

"Super" occasionally uses colorful comic book style graphics -- SPLAT! BASH! -- like the old "Batman" TV series, but there should have been more of it; either do it or don't, don't go half- way on it. And while the ambiguity of the film's take on religiosity and spiritual vision vs. flat out mental illness is intriguing, the similar paradox of jokiness combined with the intense violence gets increasingly sickening as the movie nears its climax.

Overall, "Super" held my interest throughout, though I had to look away at times. There's a lot of talent involved here, and it's to be commended for a daring and unique take on our current superhero obsession at the box office. It just doesn't always manage to effectively maintain the difficult balance it's trying to capture, and that failure makes the film off-putting in spots.

Third and final of the Mel Gibson trilogy, "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome" is the weakest in the entire franchise. It's not even close because "Beyond Thunderdome" is the only one that's not really a good movie. It has a decent start, but then hits a long draggy section before a big chase and smash 'em up at the very end.

"Beyond Thunderdome" is also the most Hollywood and thus most dated of the Mad Max films, with better lighting and bigger sets, but broader performances, safer PG-13 plot lines, and a softening that takes most of the anarchic sense of danger and that anything can happen from the film, which the previous two had and was part of their acclaim.

The performances are a problem. Gibson's a movie star now, and it shows. His Mad Max isn't really so Mad anymore, now he's just a badass --it's a fun, confident performance and Gibson's a good actor so we have fun with him, but it's Mad Max as James Bond, with bon mots and other quips. Not the tortured stoic anti-hero we saw in the other films.

But even if the movie star actor has subsumed the character, at least Gibson's a gas to watch. Not so Tina Turner, who is terrible. Her delivery is loud, but not convincing...she's broadcasting, not acting. She has screen presence, but she conjures no majesty. I believed she was a strong woman who came through hard times and was now elite, but I didn't believe she was THAT woman. She couldn't connect beyond herself.

The best thing about the film is how they try to expand the narrative from lone outposts in the wasteland to pockets of civilization that are springing up in the wake of apocalypse. The Bartertown community offers a chance for new weird characters and conflicts. The story builds well to the Thunderdome sequence, also another innovation that moves away from the car chase genre "Road Warrior" and into straight apocalyptic sci-fi.

Up to this point, the film's just about half way and still promising; flawed and overly-stylized in spots, but it's created a new sense of place and opened up a new kind of story for Max.

But then Max is back out in the desert and he meets a bunch of feral kids and the movie takes a ridiculous twist into sentimentality and cuteness, like the Ewoks in Star Wars. The next hour is Max hanging out with this wild society of lost children, who just happen to have found a great oasis. This leads to a necessary rescue and a big escape and chase back into "Road Warrior" territory at last, and the film ends on a high note.

But boy, that long middle section with the kids is a drag and a bore. It's like George Miller handed over the reigns to Stephen Spielberg and told him to let all his worst tendencies run amok....and use cheap visual techniques to get around a few complex shots for stunt work.

One final note: A major plot point is that Bartertown is run on pig sh!t, and there are a lot of disgusting sequences where working in or falling in or even being forced to swim in liquified pig sh!t plays an important part. It's played as a joke instead of the disgusting gross horror it should be, and thus completely unnecessary and makes the film very unpleasant to watch in a few repulsive sequences.

Friend of mine recommended this and I was dubious because low budget indie horror films are usually bathed in blood and predictable and stupid but this was none of those things. It's smart, builds well, and doesn't pound the audience over the head.

It's also very slyly subversive in how it delivers the facts behind several real conspiracy theories, including 9/11, America's intervention into WWI and others.

The performances are a little bumpy in spots, and some of the dialog near the climax didn't feel natural to the point of almost being comical. People might also be put off on the faux- documentary style, particularly in the last act when it's all shot by hidden cameras on the protagonists' tie-clips (though, to the director's credit, he gives one of them a small smudge in the corner, so we know whose perspective we're getting).

Overall, a knockout debut from writer/director Christopher MacBride. Will definitely be looking to see what he does next.