Interstella 5555 (2003)

Interstella 5555 (NR) - Review

"Around the World"

Daft Punk, those Euro-robo-techno pioneers, gather legendary Japanese cartoon director Leiji Matsumoto to create a movie out of their album "Discovery".  The result?  Old fashioned looking anime with repetitive animation cycles shown over the band's hypnotic beats.  The result is a feature length music video with no dialogue and no energy, a throw away tale of blue humanoid aliens held on earth against their will by an evil record executive.  Coherent but not much else, fans of the band will of course enjoy the music but the visuals add almost nothing to experience.

4 Anime Eyes out of 10 (BAD)

The Cooler (2003)

The Cooler (R) - Review

"Snake Eyes"

Permanently unlucky loser Bernie (William H. Macy) has been hired by a casino manager (a sinister Alec Baldwin) as a cooler, a supersitious job wherein someone enters a game and spoils everyone else's good luck.  Everything is working well until Bernie meets the love of his life in the casino bar and predictable results occur.  Equal parts dark/depressing and saccharine/cliched love conquers all, The Cooler wrings appropriatley cool performances from Macy and Baldwin.  But other movies have done it better and greater and with less heavy handed meanings and obvious plot turns.  Don't miss Macy, it's one of his few chances to shine his as dopey self and not have to share the spotlight with someone more enigmatic.   Baldwin's smokey threats are nothing new after his long stint on tv and b-roles but good none the less.  However in the end The Cooler craps out after just a few promising rolls and a few missed betting opportunities.

5.5 BoxCars out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)

Shredder (2003)

Shredder (R)

"Maybe all that hardware's for making Coleslaw"

Who wants to see a painfully late to the scene, painfully acted snowboarding slasher film (he hates snowboarders cuz he is a skier, haha!) filled with unlikable characters using unlikable vernacular, action filled with continuity errors in audio and video, that flings some stabs at satire and black humor and gore but mostly looking like a really bad Friday the 13th script that was rewritten by some college dropout snowmen and women over a weekend with an appeal to extreme alternative lifestyle audiences (they like punk rock right?) that will frequent the local Video franchises?  Yeah, thought so.

2 Out Cold beat this by two years out of 10 (AWFUL)

Fear X (2003)

Fear X (PG-13) - Review

"X marks the Spot"

Danish Director Nicolas Winding Refn's (Drive) first foray into American cinema was the 2003 mystery film Fear X, a brooding yet unsatisfying tale of obsession and blood told with a truly terse style and steady hand yet rejected by the majority of the public as it showcased two of Refn's favorite genres, surrealism and the art house film's nihilism towards standard plotting.

Leading the cast is the ramrod mall cop Harry (John Turtorro), who's wife murder he is slavishly investigating.  Harry watches the surveillance tapes obsessively, looking for every possible clue in the low-resolution vhs dubs, scans the halls of commerce for familiar faces and motivations, and ultimately leads him (maybe) to the conspiracy of his wife's death.  The overwhelming sense of dread and discovery to the film is wonderful, tracking Harry through this adventure is a nail pulling experience, and many who lived through that tale are put off by its art-house vagueness of its ending, where it is up to the home viewer to decide what happened and why.  It does come as a shock since much of it's first hour is delivered as a fairly standard detective story, but the severe surrealism, dream sequences and shock lighting schemes should serve as a clue to it's eventual arty crash of traditional narrative.

Showing signs of the genius and unconventional voice of Refn's style (X is an obvious precursor to his later Only God Forgives, both in construction and audience acceptance), the director borrows liberally from Kubrick's The Shining and Lynch's Blue Velvet mixed with Coen's Fargo to carve out his own niche in film oddities for his US debut.  It works, it gets under your skin and rattles your cage, but perhaps it being neutered with a lukewarm PG-13 and a unnaturally vague ending (further frustrating the viewer is that the surrounding characters are discussing what happened and what it means and yet we cannot hear them), Fear X is more of a film-theory than a full-fledged film experiment.  Results will vary, but the side effects may be worth it.

6 "Undecipherable visual montages to transition your film ending are soooo 2001:ASO, Refn" out of 10 (GOOD)

X-Men 2 (2003)

X-Men 2 (PG-13) - Review

"United by Competency"

Singer and company return with a bevy of new faces and super powers, as again the mostly evil Magneto makes a play to protect his brethren as the mind-over-matter Professor X and his team of goody-goodies try to keep him from causing too much carnage.  This sequel (actually titled X2: X-Men United for some inane reason) mostly follows its biggest star Wolverine as he continues to root out his forgotten past and whine about not getting in Jean Greys pants.  This time the school is attacked by Government agents who kidnap kids and professors alike, and the disparate elements of the team must reunite and join forces with Magneto’s brood to save Charles X from a Military stooge hell-bent on using Charlie’s own mutation against mutants worldwide.  The onscreen chemistry has blossomed and the prospect of well-made Super Heroic feature for years to come was dawning.  Freed from the costly screentime of introductory scenes, X2 thrives on action and adventure, with scenes like the brilliant attack on the White House by newcomer Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) or the Wolverine stalking the shadowy halls of the overtaken X-Mansion.  Unfortunately the film’s ending teases a sequel that wasn't delivered upon, probably caused by Singer’s leaving the franchise, but it’s a fun 2 hours while it lasts.

8 Jean Grey is a married woman, Logan out of 10 (GREAT)