Eye Candy #604 - "Taken 2"

Taken 2: Or “Things My Father Would Not Do for Me 2” (it’s okay, he’s been blatantly up front about this).  The vigilante/revenge genre is alive and well in 2012.  This sequel to the 2008 sleeper hit “Taken” (it didn’t do great box office but killed on DVD sales) finds everyone’s favorite ex-spook Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) awkwardly handling his personal life in Los Angeles: daughter Kim (again played by Maggie Grace, who will play teenagers for the next 20 years even though she’s almost 30) has failed her driving test twice and has a new boyfriend, while ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) is struggling with a crumbling marriage to her current husband.  Bryan thinks the perfect solution to this would be a family getaway to Istanbul, where he has security contractor work lined up.  Little does he know that the families of the Albanian mafia members he killed in “Taken” while trying to retrieve his daughter are sizing him up for some revenge involving his whole family, led by grieving father Murad (Rade  Serbedjiza).  So now Bryan has to save himself, Lenore, and Kim (one more time; granted she is way less stupid this time around than in “Taken”) against a small horde of Albanian mafia who seem to have paid off every crooked cop in Turkey (and those that aren’t paid off appear to be off the Keystone Cop variety).  And it appears to all happen within blocks of the Hagia Sophia (it’s in damn near the backdrop of every exterior shot).  Bullets fly, cars crash, and people die, as Bryan cleans house against the Albanians (the body count is something like 25 by the end of the picture).  Leland Orser and Jon Gries are back in very brief support (a scene and a half), yet somehow earn fourth billing.  We do get a new director this time around, Olivier Megaton replacing Pierre Morel, but producer Luc Besson is still involved (this film does feel like watching a music video from time to time with flashy jump-cuts).  Not a great film or genre-defining by any means, but fun in its own little way.  And with a $50 million opening weekend, I’m sure there will be a “Taken 3”, even if it never opens in Albania.  Woodchuck sez, “Worth a look.”

Eye Candy #603 - "Iron Sky"

Iron Sky:  Ohdearsweetlordinheaven…where do I begin?  What nice thing can I say to start off the review? Um…“Iron Sky” has a great poster.  A black forest ham-fisted send-up of science fiction movies, contemporary world politics and politicians, and race relations, this film is generally goofy all the way around in a SyFy original movie kind of way.   In the year 2018, an American manned mission to the moon lands on the dark side, with two astronauts aboard, one of them a Black male model named James Washington (this is so that President Sarah Palin can use her slogan “Black to the Moon!”).  They quickly discover that the moon is swarming with Space Nazis bent on returning to the earth and world domination (this has something to do with them being inspired by a snippet of Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”, specifically the part where Adenoid Hynkel is bouncing the globe around).  Washington is subsequently captured by the Nazis, many of whom have never seen a real live Black person before.  One such Nazi is Renate Richter (Julia Dietze), an “Earthologist” responsible for teaching the young Nazi children about their mother planet and is destined for marriage to moon officer Klaus Adler (Gotz Otto).  As her father is assigned the task of torturing Washington, Renate is intrigued by the stranger.  However, her father injects an albinism solution into Washington to turn him into a white person that they can convert to Nazism.  And leading all the Space Nazis on the moon is Wolfgang Kortzfleisch, played with his usual watery-eyed sibilance by Udo Kier (when Udo is your tentpole actor, you’re definitely in big trouble).  Adler decides to lead a small mission to earth after Washington convinces them that he knows the president personally.  So Adler, Renate, and Washington land outside New York City.  The Nazis kidnap Palin’s campaign manager Vivian Wagner (Peta Sergeant) in order to get an audience with Palin, and Wagner, not realizing they are really Nazis, spruces up their image to help sell their message of fraternity, peace, and fascism to the American public…before they turn on their American benefactors.  Renate also comes face-to-face with contemporary Nazis (skinheads), which cause her to become disillusioned with the truth of Nazism and to join Washington in his quest to stop the Space Nazis.  Insert large space-going zeppelins and flying saucers here.  If that synopsis hasn’t scared you away by now, there is probably something wrong with you.  Sure, the movie is played with tongue planted firmly in cheek, but that doesn’t mean that large swaths of are it still aren’t painfully bad and make you wince, with low production values, bad dialogue, and more than enough hammy acting to spare.  Sure, there are laughs remotely here and there, but it’s still a bit of a bear to sit through.  The producers of the film have already threatened a sequel *AND* prequel, so you have been warned.  Woodchuck sez, “Only if you’re desperate and in the mood for Space Nazis.”

Eye Candy #602 - "Red Lights"

Red Lights:  I don’t use the word ‘pretentious’ often, but when I do it’s usually well-deserved and this is a pretentious film.  A paranormal thriller from Spanish director Rodrigo Cortes (his most recent offering was “Buried” with Ryan Reynolds), it’s the story of two academics who professionally debunk paranormal phenomenon: Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and her assistant Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy).   As they progress with their work, a reclusive, famed psychic named Simon Silver (a miscast Robert DeNiro as the messianic, blind Silver) comes out of a thirty-year retirement, a Yuri Geller spoon-bending type who was never debunked and stirs great interest among the general public.  Buckley feels that Silver is a perfect target for their work, but Matheson refuses to pursue him due to a past history with the man.  Circumstances force Buckley to go after Silver alone, to expose him on his own, as weird, nightmarish happenings start to swirl around Buckley.  Joely Richardson, Toby Jones (who will apparently co-star in anything thrown his way), and Elizabeth Olsen are here in support.  While the premise is intriguing (debunking the unbunkable), the execution is duller than dirt.  DeNiro and Weaver speak wooden dialogue like automatons – they don’t talk like people talk.  The build-up to the “reveal” at the end is largely unsatisfying not to mention barely supported by anything that came before.  And I don’t know what the obsession is with European film directors in general (and Spanish directors, specifically) to put deep philosophical weight behind their “thriller” films instead of just letting the thrills speak for themselves, but it usually slows a film way, way down, which it does here.   You can be too nebulous for your own (and the audience’s) good.  Woodchuck sez, “Skip it.”