Briefs

Doomsday
It's Neil Marshall's weakest film, but it was still fun to watch. It pays homage to Escape From New York and The Road Warrior by stealing liberally from them. Hell, I think I even saw stuff from Escape from LA in there. But Rhona Mitra makes an incredibly dull (though spectacularly hot) lead, and great screen presences Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell are given nothing to do. But it was fun seeing about 90% of the Dog Soldiers cast work together again.

WarGames
I remembered this 1983 cult classic as being rather silly and far-fetched. Watching it again, this might be the most accurate representation of a computer hacker I've ever seen. The intelligent computer personality is born from fiction, but everything else about the way computers are treated in this film is accurate. Matthew Broderick spends an entire week just trying to crack a single password. Now that's the boring reality of hacking that's been missing from cinema. As a side note, the film opens with a scene featuring John Spencer and Michael Madsen, in 1983. I never knew either could look so young.

Manticore
For a Sci-Fi Channel movie, it wasn't as ridiculously bad as I was expecting. It wasn't good, but it looked competently made and was reasonably acted. Also, I think they messed up on the Manticore legend, because I'm pretty sure that a flying lion is a Griffin.

Redbelt
I really enjoyed this right up until the "What the Hell?" ending. It felt like the movie was missing its final reel. And because of the terrible ending, it sullies what was turning out to be a great vehicle for Chiwetel Ejiofor.

The Love Guru
What can I possibly add to the giant heap of crap that has been piled upon this film by critics worldwide? I'll say this instead: The Love Guru could have been a great comedy. It has a lot of really funny jokes and sight gags. But Mike Meyers is not content to use any of those jokes just once, and chooses instead to repeat them again and again until just the memory of them makes viewers vomit. An example of this tendency is demonstrated in the first scene of the movie. We hear Morgan Freeman's voice narrating that, as a boy, he found a voiceover machine. The camera pans down to Meyers, who is holding a microphone. That's fucking hilarious. Then, Meyers turns the machine off, and there is a closeup of the machine. We see a knob, and the three options are "On," Off," and "Morgan Freeman." We didn't really need that shot. We all know who Morgan Freeman is, and it doesn't really matter whose voice it was anyway. The joke worked without knowing. But then Meyers says "I had it set to Morgan Freeman." Yes, we already fucking know that! We recognized his voice right away, and then you showed it to us on the knob! We know it's him! You've ruined the whole thing now!

Speed Racer
This will go down as my Guilty Pleasure movie of '08. I loved this movie. I know, it's really really bad. The story is right out of a badly translated cartoon, the brother and the monkey are like having brain herpes, and the visuals threaten at all times to send the viewer into a seizure. But I had so much fun watching all the bright, candy-colored excess. The Wachowksi Brothers are phenomenal filmmakers (though hideous screenwriters), and they pull out all the stops. The intercutting between a past and present race during the opening scene is handled wonderfully, climaxing in cars from both eras racing against each other. And John Goodman surprisingly gives one of his best performances in years. I was enthralled by this, against my better judgment.