There’s nothing like a good bit of OnDemand movie madness to spark a review or two on my blog.  This dynamic duo of time travel movies is brought to you by HBO.

But first, let’s take a step back, to the wonderful sci-fi notion itself: Time Travel!

The Time Machine

It’s a genre that really epitomizes and polarizes the very essence of science fiction.  On one side are the clear-cut scientific efforts to truly provoke thought on just what conundrums traveling through time might entail, as well as the science behind how it might even be possible.  And then on the other side you have the more fantasy-oriented side where time travel is simply a given, not a great feat, and becomes a vessel to make a story whilst completely neglecting the actual science.  Frankly, it’s the latter side that we see far more often than not, and that probably has something to do with modern science rather being of the opinion that time travel, at least functionally useful, is impossible.  It’s something that could be argued until everyone is blue in the face and get nowhere, hence why the science side is perhaps more often than not completely neglected.  But that doesn’t stop writers everywhere from being inspired by the “what ifs” of time travel, often times providing great entertainment in the process, even if the science is a bit on the wonky side.

The TARDIS from Doctor Who

So, frankly, to be a decent time travel movie, you really have to try to provide some kind of new perspective, some creative inspiration, just to get anywhere interesting.  Because it pretty much has all been done before.  Some of it brilliant.  Some of it not so much.  And perhaps repeated attempts going after the not so much might finally get those angles right.  Certainly however, trying to go after the ones that were already brilliant are just going to fall short of that.  Time travel is a dangerous business.  You really have to know what you’re doing to get anywhere with it.  So let’s see how our dynamic duo did.

Our first movie is The Time Traveler’s Wife.

The Time Traveler's Wife

How can one put such a movie into words?  Boring, mostly.  Sorry, but it’s true.  Boy spontaneously and uncontrollably pops about through time.  Boy meets girl.  Girl becomes wife.  Boy continues popping about uncontrollably.  Marriage gets stressed.  Girl cheats on boy with … earlier version of boy.  It’s all very quasi-dramatic, and all very ridiculous, and all very boring.  Seriously.  It fails to be all that engaging.  The time travel lacks any sense of realism or adventure.  And the drama, frankly, falls flat with so many missed opportunities to create any real drama.  I’m sure it was a great effort to be all thoughtful about concepts like free will and the existential issues of time travel … except that it really wasn’t.  Even the movie poster pretended to portray more than was actually there with its creative viewpoint.  In actuality however there just wasn’t even an effort in there to change anything, to inspire in the viewer that someone really tried.  In fact there are only a small handful of scenes that actually provoke thought or wrest an emotional response from the lame horse of a script.  It’s a shame.  If only someone had bothered trying, perhaps there could have been a happier ending.  Maybe there’s a director’s cut coming with scenes that were left on the cutting room floor that give it a better go, but I doubt it.  If you like dramatic romance movies, you might enjoy it enough if you watch it for it to have been worth your while, but it’s a promise I definitely cannot make.  For all of the romantic notions in theory, in practice it felt very unachieved.  And if you’re not overly impressed with dramas, you’ll be killing yourself before you even get halfway through.  I’d hope sincerely that the book is better, because it’d pretty much have to be.  But I’ll probably never know because after watching the movie, I don’t think I can drum up enough interest to actually be bothered to find out, and I love a good read.  I can really only give The Time Traveler’s Wife two genetic-disorder-induced miscarriages out of five.

Our second movie for review is Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel.

Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

First off, obviously, this is not a serious movie.  In spite of its long title, it’s quite the comedy, and one that really hits the mark.  Though it does miss a few opportunities to poke fun at paradox and other time travel tribulations, it does quite well with the ones that it does tackle.  It doesn’t try too hard and end up campy, or at least not enough to make you cringe like most time travel comedies do.  It simply flows, makes you laugh, and sadly, reminds us how much better those folks across the pond are at making people laugh than the ones here in the States are these days.  And it actually does try to engage you with the complexities of “what if” without going too far and making your head actually hurt, a finely achieved balancing act that in itself deserves some applause.  But combine that with the enjoyable journey in a pub through the ages, and it’s a real winner.  My only fault with it is that having done such a good job with pondering the perplexities that it did, it’s a real shame that it didn’t go the distance to include the few that it didn’t.  So in spite of being such a laudable creative work, it falls slightly short of the amazing movie it could have been.  Which is why I can only give Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel four bags of crisps out of five.  But, if there’s ever a sequel, the combined movies could become more than the sum of their parts, and I very much hope to see that in out future.

So, that’s it then.  Those are this review’s two movies.  But I’ll leave you with one parting though:  The effects of the storage of information, can they induce time-travel-like effects?  Whilst searching for a classic TARDIS pic, I ran across this little gem, which Google has captured, at least for now, but has been removed from the actual entry:

Doctor Who is a flying green rabbit that drives a red Ford fiesta. Really! The interwebs said so!

Doctor Who is a flying green rabbit that drives a red Ford fiesta.  Huh.  Who’d have guessed?  It’s a little gem frozen in time.  A tiny piece of alternate reality otherwise already vanished from the constant state of flux that is the information superhighway.  Purged from the annals of reality … and yet not.  A bit of time travel flotsam more interesting in point perhaps than in content.  If it could happen there, what else might be out there?

I just watched Zombieland for the first time.

Gee, I’m glad I never paid to see it.  That may be the first movie ever that was worse than the commercials.

I think I have to give it 0 Dead Bill Murrays out of 5, or 10, or however many you want to scale it to.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s still zero.

I recently caught Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li on HBO.  I’ll admit, it’s not a very timely review.  But then when are any of my movie reviews ever timely?

The thing is, you’re probably not likely to see many good reviews of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.  There are a few reasons for that.  For starters, and while I’m not exactly a Street Fighter expert, it seems to me that of what little I do know, there are a few details wrong there.  That’s bound to piss off Street Fighter fans, which is whom I’d have to assume the movie is aimed at.  So that can’t be good.  But it gets worse, mostly in the form of Gen, who just plain looks nothing like Gen in the games.  For that matter, all of the actors chosen struggle to look like their video game arcade counterparts.  And through nearly the whole movie Chun-Li is hardly ever made up to look like Chun-Li … an odd choice to make indeed.  As was the choice to not exactly overwhelm the screen with her signature moves in the combat sequences.

And then there’s the acting that’s only so-so.  The plot that’s not exactly stunning, though not entirely bad.  There’s also the general abhorrence for including things that might have gotten the kiddie’s blood pumping, like gratuitous sex and blood.  (Though it must be said, this is Street Fighter, not Mortal Kombat, so what can one really expect?)

I think the biggest failing in the minds of Street Fighter fans however will be the complete lack of cartoonish computer animations amidst the myriad of fight scenes.  The movie simply doesn’t look like Street Fighter.  For the most part it has a rather mundane feel to it.  You know, like that thing called reality that we so often try to avoid.

And yet, personally, I think that’s really the one place where Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li shines.  Much like the new Batman movies that take a grittier reality-based approach to our beloved superhero, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li has that same gritty almost-real feeling to it.  And that’s something I very much enjoy.  Oh, certainly I can respect a director’s choice to make comic-book heroes and villains look like a comic-book on the big screen.  It’s the obvious direction to go and to not ever do it would be to disrespect the roots of where things came from in the first place.  But, that having been done, there’s something more … human … about making things a little less ridiculous.

So while for the most part Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li was a fairly mundane watch, quite possibly not worth it to a true Street Fighter fan (And honestly, who else would ever bother watching a Street Fighter-based movie?) I think there’s a direction in the minds that make things move that I would like to stand up and applaud, even if this particular example is otherwise less than shining.  We don’t have to live in a cartoon world any longer.  Let’s see just how real we can be.

But otherwise, yes, I do have to give Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li an unimpressive two lightning kicks out of five.

Okay, so it’s been a while since I’ve reviewed any movies, and Burn After Reading is by no means the freshest dump in the litter box, but sheeeeeeesh does it stink! It was so awful I just had to write.

The thing is, I don’t get it.  If you review the plot, on paper at least, it sounds like it should be funny.  There’s quite a bit there to chuckle over if you think about it.  It’s definitely a black comedy, but it’s also clearly a comedy.  It should have entertained.

And then there’s the cast.  How can you go wrong with this cast?  This isn’t some hodge-podge of losers here.  This is a cast of real seasoned actors, many of whom I’d normally enjoy watching a movie of.  Not to mention the eye candy of George Clooney and Brad Pitt which in itself should count for something.

So how did it all fall so horribly flat?!

That, my dear readers, is the mystery of Burn After Reading.  It’s a movie full of potential energy, but that never becomes kinetic.  It fails to grab you.  Somehow it fails to even make you smile.  It’s only as you sit there struggling not to walk away from it because you’ve already invested an hour in this steaming turd that you even contemplate just how good it could have been.  If only…

So, my dear friends, I give you this advice.  If you haven’t seen Burn After Reading yet, please don’t.  If you want my advice: burn before viewing.  Trust me on this.  I just watched it for free on HBO, and I want my money back!

How does it rate?  I can only give it one beat-up broken-down limp-dicked sex chair out of five.

And you’d think a movie that could even have a reference like that come from it should be funny.

But you’d be wrong.  Horribly wrong.

So the wife and I recently rented Knowing.  You know, that one with Nicolas Cage finding a code that predicts all sorts of bad events, yada yada yada.

On one hand, it was a fairly entertaining movie until it gets near the ending.

On the other hand, it’s kind of a “comfort food” movie because the plot is about three steps behind your ability to figure out what’s going on.  There really are no surprises.  It’s all laid out for you like a cartoon of little candies leading up to a box with a string on it.  You can see it coming.  You know it’s coming.  It’s really pretty basic.  But somehow, you still get caught up in it.  Which can be good … or can be a real let down, depending on how interesting that plot may be.

Knowing had an okay plot.

I’ve seen worse.

All-in-all, because I like Nicolas Cage, and because even though I respect all religions and people’s rights to worship whatever I always get a special little kick out of things that twist Christianity’s tail, I was set to like the movie.  And I generally enjoyed the movie all the way through … until the end.

The end … just WTF!?!?!

Don’t get me wrong.  I can grasp it.  That’s not the problem.  The problem is, the movie basically seems like the writer thought of the end and worked backwards to the beginning to write it.  Which might work in some cases, but in this one, didn’t.

I really don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen it.  Maybe you’ll even enjoy it in spite of the ending.  But when you get to the end, I want you to do some math.  Count how many.  Now, multiply that by the at least 50 years there’s been to do something.  And think about the potentials of the technology involved when you do that math.

And then, when you’ve done that math, ask yourself, was that really an ending that makes any sense whatsoever?  Call me crazy, but seems to me like more could have easily been done, changing the entire outcome.  And would have been done, given the morality involved.

But, whatever.

So maybe you’ll like Knowing.  Or maybe you won’t.  Or maybe, like me, you’ll like about 95% of Knowing, only really really REALLY think the ending sucks eggs.  Not because it’s a theoretically bad way to end it, but because it just doesn’t make any sense why it would have ended that way given every factor put into the plot.

Ah well.

To borrow a line from GI Joe, Knowing is half the battle.