Movie Review: Metal - A Headbanger's Journey (2005)

Anthropology and heavy metal music are two subjects that rarely make it into the same sentence; but this does not deter anthropologist, heavy metal fan and documentary film-maker Sam Dunn. He sets out on a journey to better understand the history, evolution and global reach of his favourite music.

The result is an entertaining, well-made and thoughtful examination of heavy metal.

Dunn, from Victoria, British Columbia, traces metal's origins and its branching out into the numerous sub-genres exemplified by countless bands. Through interviews with band members old and new and fans world-wide, he examines metal's cultural influence, social and gender issues, battles with censorship, and links to satanism and violence. A particular highlight, unfortunately short, is Dunn's exploration of the direct links between classical music and heavy metal.

The first half of Metal - A Headbanger's Journey is crisp, sharp and funny. The second half gets lost in a couple of segments that are too long, in particular an unnecessarily drawn-out journey to Norway to explore criminals linked to extreme metal bands.

The highlights are undoubtedly the elegantly edited interviews with metal icons. The interviews with Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead are both smart and entertaining, and the DVD includes a second disc with extended interviews that did not make it into the documentary.

Dunn is not afraid to insert himself straight into the culture that he's documenting -- his continued obsession with metal forms an endearing thread throughout the movie, to the point that we sympathize with his awkwardness when he sits down to interview Bruce Dickinson, his boyhood idol. We also laugh with him as he reveals his boyhood enthrallment with cartoonish blood-soaked lyrics.

Metal - A Headbanger's Journey is a clever examination of a cultural phenomenon that is as powerful as it is misunderstood.






The Ace Black Blog Movie Review No. 54.
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Movie Review: Friday the 13th (2009)

As if time had stood still, the 2009 version of Friday the 13th adds absolutely nothing to the original 1980 horror classic.

This remake is a cinematic paint by numbers of the gagging kind. The true horror on display is the ineptness of the project: everything from the nauseatingly stereotypical multi-cultural mix of teenagers lined up for slaughter, through the various methods of killing, to the oh-so-tired final "shock", is wooden, recycled from the discarded remains of countless other movies, and delivered with all the flair of concrete shoes.

There is exactly one memorable moment in the movie, about 3 seconds in duration, a good one-liner about a hockey stick being a suitable accessory to mass murderer Jason's outfit.

The majority of the victims of Jason's latest rampage through Crystal Lake (which, somehow, required two screenwriters and three "story" credits) are obnoxious, stupid and aggravating to the point that they can't die soon enough or with enough brutality. I'm not sure if cheering Jason on was the purpose here, but he's among the more sympathetic characters, acting like a useful terminator of hyper-sexed teens who are otherwise too inept to deserve oxygen.

Michael Bay either reveals the true depth of his lack of talent or remarkable lack of judgment by being associated with this mess as a Producer. The rest of the cast and crew are unknown, and on this evidence, likely to remain so for a while.





The Ace Black Blog Movie Review No. 53.
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Movie Review: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Yes, it's all fun and games and lots of Nazis get killed; but does the world really need a World War II fairy tale?

A conflict that engulfed the globe for six years surely has enough incredible stories that are real, close-to-real, or capable of inspiring sensational but still reality-based fiction, and over the years Hollywood has generated no shortage of World War II movies that cover all these various dimensions of reality, from the extremely serious to the wildly gung-ho.

Still, a revenge fairy-tale in which all high-ranking Nazis, including Hitler himself, congregate at a dingy Parisian cinema only to get slaughtered and burnt to death by the combination of a rag-tag commando unit and a Jewish girl? Is this what scraping the bottom of the intellectual barrel looks like when it is packaged and polished by a high profile director with a respectable ensemble cast?

From the mis-spelled movie title to some clearly derivative scenes, Quentin Tarantino is clearly not taking any of this seriously, yet the movie never quite places itself as a satire. The result is a general mis-match between intent and execution, with too many scenes played straight and asking for an emotional investment, only for the overall story arch to be just slightly short of farce.

Christoph Waltz as the Jew hunter Hans Landa emerges from the chaos with a priceless performance that will long survive the memory of the movie. He is all sleazy charm effortlessly combined with ruthless fascism. His scenes have a deliciously uneasy edge and deserve to be wrapped into an entirely better and more serious film.

Brad Pitt appears unsure if he is re-making The Dirty Dozen or an arts film. The rest of the cast stick closely to the first of one dimensions.

Inglourious Basterds is not short of entertainment. It is just glouriously unnecessary.





The Ace Black Blog Movie Review No. 52.
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Movie Review: The Hurt Locker (2009)

No so much a traditional movie as a series of tension-packed set-pieces, The Hurt Locker succeeds in re-creating the extreme and continuous pressure faced by the army units responsible for deactivating and disposing of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). And with IEDs being by far the weapon of choice of insurgents in Iraq, the men responsible for neutralizing them are effectively the front line.

Jeremy Renner as Sergeant William James brings life and personality as the bomb disposal expert, freaking out his unit on a regular basis with his unconventional and apparently risky methods. It's a polished but still stereotypical portrayal of the war hero who thrives by ignoring all the rules. The rest of the characters in The Hurt Locker are routine in the extreme and exchangeable with any number of soldiers who have populated war movies for the past 70 years or so.

The movie builds all of its drama around a series of well constructed exclamation points, as bombs (and in one case, snipers) are discovered and the unit needs to swing into action to understand and eliminate the threat. The ticking bomb is one of the oldest movie tricks in the repertoire, but Director Kathryn Bigelow manages to maintain a high stress level mainly by injecting uncertainty everywhere: are the Iraqis on the balconies curious on-lookers or about to detonate the bombs? are the civilians wandering near the bomb disposal unit naive innocents or themselves a danger?

The tight rope that the soldiers must walk between protecting themselves and not harming innocent locals is at the heart of The Hurt Locker. There is a clumsy attempt to introduce the story of a local Iraqi boy who befriends Sergeant James, but whenever The Hurt Locker veers away from scenes that focus on immediate threats, it loses its way.

The war in Iraq will no doubt inspire a new generation of war movies. The Hurt Locker is unlikely to be the best of them, but it deserves credit for shining a unique spotlight on one of the war's most thankless and dangerous jobs.





The Ace Black Blog Movie Review No. 51.
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Movie Review: I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell (2009)

And so Tucker Max becomes one of the early internet age faux-celebrities with a great career behind him.

His book of the same name, reviewed here, was very funny in the most juvenile way, and turned him into a hero in the drunken eyes of losers everywhere and into a legend in his own mind. It takes a special lack of cinematic talent to take such a funny series of adventures and turn them into a stultifyingly boring movie, but the cast and crew assembled here pull it off.

While the book offers a non-stop sequence of genuinely funny short stories from Tucker's life, the movie manages to provide just one partially memorable scene, that being the now infamous race through the hotel lobby in a panicked search for a bathroom.

The rest of this disaster is a bland, humourless non-story about Tucker ruining his friend's bachelor party by dragging him to a supposedly hot strip joint. That's it. No, really.

It ends, not soon enough, with a smarmy apology scene that fools no one.

Director Bob Gosse displays a set of skills appropriate for a daytime soap-opera episode, while a set of mostly unknown actors, including Matt Czuchry and Jesse Bradford, work hard to make sure that they remain largely unknown.

The movie flamed out at the box office before the first batch of popcorn even popped. Tucker Max blamed its failure on poor marketing. Trust me on this one, no amount of marketing would have saved this piece of garbage -- it smells just as bad as that hotel lobby.





The Ace Black Blog Movie Review No. 50.
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Movie Review: Avatar (2009)

Watching Avatar in 3-D, the word that comes to mind is: game-changer.

In terms of technical achievement, Avatar redefines the benchmarks. Here is a whole new lush planet, Pandora, that comes to life at a level of detail that is orders of magnitude beyond anything seen in the Star Wars movies. Here also is a new virtual species, the Na'vi, who start out looking strange at 10 feet tall, blue and with tails, but end the movie as more familiar and more human than the earthlings.

And most of all, here is gorgeous 3-D technology being put to use to create life without gimmicks, without gizmos, and without spears or rocks being thrown at the audience. The 3-D is simply and brilliantly used to draw the audience into the movie and create a level of involvement never experienced before. Avatar is not a movie watched; it is movie experienced.

After his achievements with Terminator, Titanic, and now Avatar, director and writer James Cameron has cemented his place among the all-time giants of the movies.

The story of Avatar is powerful enough, but will certainly not win any awards for originality. It is a modern, science-driven take on the often-told narrative of invaders with a heavy foot trampling over a pristine land and disrupting the lives of locals. Substitute Pandora for North America and the Na'vi for natives; or allow the whole movie to represent US foreign policy in the Middle East -- it's all been done before.

The details here revolve around mining for the precious mineral called Unobtanium (clever name), which is only found on Pandora. The humans have established a joint scientific / military base to extract the stuff, but unfortunately the Na'vi keep getting in the way. The Na'vi combine ferocious but basic fighting skills with stealth, speed and oneness with nature to create a formidable obstacle in the way of the heavily armed but blunt human troops.

The science team (led by Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine) develops avatars in the shape of the Na'vi, to allow humans to take on native form and appearance. The objective is to better understand what it will take to move the Na'vi out of the way of the biggest Unobtanium deposit.

Jack Sully (Sam Worthington), a paralyzed marine who gains full mobility in his avatar, quickly becomes the focal point for both the scientists and the soldiers, as he is accepted by the Na'vi -- and falls in love with the daughter (Zoe Saldana) of the Na'vi chief. The ensuing conflicts that erupt between duty and love, aliens and natives, scientists and soldiers, science and nature, the physical and the spiritual, are all familiar, but are treated on an impressively grand and deeply satisfying scale.

Avatar is an immersive, breathtaking experience, and claims an undeniable place among the most major of milestones in movie history.







The Ace Black Blog Movie Review No. 49.
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