The Entropy Pump

One of the best examples of the Western comedy genre, in which the famous duo Spencer/Hill play crooks who have to work against an even bigger crook who wants to steal the meadows of a group of Mormons. Hill plays the no-good brother who merely annoys his other brother, played by Spencer, who acts as the Sheriff of small town. Spencer only plays the Sheriff until his henchmen arrive, with whom he wants to steal the horses of the major (the bigger crook). But Hill convinces him to help the Mormons against the major.

It’s a fun movie, especially the interactions between Spencer and Hill. Objectively the movie isn’t that good: the plot is trite and the action quite boring, but due to Spencer and Hill you don’t really care (or you do if you don’t like the two). My only problem with the movie were the Mormons, who were extremely annoying and unrealistic in their attitude (nobody is that high and mighty when faced with that level of violence), which just didn’t fit the setting. If the movie had provided a more realistic group of settlers for the duo the save, I probably would have liked it more.

Villgust is a two-part OVA that follows the common high fantasy template: generic, harmonic medieval nation gets conquered by generic evil guy who wants to summon an even worse evil god. The good goddess Windina has chosen eight warriors who have to stand up to the evil guy. The first part starts with the bad guy fooling the good guys – there are two groups, one with four humans and one with a catgirl, an anthropomorphic dog (Murobo), an elf and a human girl – into fighting each others. They fall for the ruse and in their weakened state the bad guy easily captures them. The second part sees the good guys working together to kill the bad guy. The style of the OVA swings between humoristic fantasy that doesn’t take itself very seriously and high fantasy with a somewhat more serious tone (the drawings always look cute thought). Both styles don’t work well together, especially as the more serious scenes feel completely corny, which isn’t helped by the earlier attempts at humor and the overall lameness of the plot. Still, it’s never quite boring and for the running time it manages to be entertaining.

This DVD collects the earliest cartoons with Donald Duck (1934 – 1941). After watching these I have to admit I like the Warner Brothers humor more. The animation here is superb, especially when you consider how old these shorts are, but I never felt like laughing and some of these were downright boring. Still, there were a few I really liked: Modern Inventions (Donald goes to a Museum with technological gadgets, which he tries out with the usual consequences) and Sea Scouts (Donald and his nephews go sailing, which ends not well for Donald). Overall, excellent animation, some quite imaginative sequences, but rarely a moment that compelled me to laugh or be amused.

Loney Tunes: BiA is a live-action/animation hybrid that’s mostly known for the fact that it bombed and not much else. It starts with a truly awkward and not well done Warner brothers meeting which ends with Duffy Duck getting kicked out. Soon he meets up with a security guy played by Brendan Fraser, who also gets kicked out due to the antics of Duffy.

What follows is actually a well done, if not very coherent tour de force with Duffy and Fraser partnering to get the evil boss of ACME who wants to turn all humans into monkeys. Unlike the earlier live-action/animation hybrid by Warner (Space Jam), I thought this one managed to be actually funny in places. The movie manages to sustain the zany energy of Duffy Duck and Bugs Bunny for a whole movie, which is something hard to achieve with characters who are designed to work in short cartoons.

One problem most of these live-action/animation hybrids have is the intersection between real actors and trick characters, something which can make even good actors feel unconvincing. Brendan Fraser managed that aspect with bravura, but Jenna Elfman, the female main character, feels quite wooden most of the time.

Aliens want to hijack the Looney Toons as an attraction for their amusement park, but to do that they have to win a game of baseball against them. Which seems initially like an easy win for the Looney Toons, the aliens are tiny and don’t know anything about baskeball, turns out to be quite wrong. The aliens steal the basketball skills of major league stars and turn instantly into giants. Cue for Michael Jordon, whose mission is to save the Looney Toons. What follows are some half-assed training sessions, the game with the aliens and then the movie ends.

I don’t care about sports in general, which includes basketball, so that aspect of the movies had zero appeal to me. And since Michael Jordon was the core of the movie, the Looney Toons feel only like secondary characters, most of the time I was waiting for the next animated joke. But overall, if you aren’t interested in basketball or Jordan, the movie will bore you. Especially since Jordan’s talent as an actor is quite limited and showing him trying a new career in baseball and some family moments really wasn’t that interesting.

I’ve never been interested in the GI Joe franchise in the past and I recon neither will I be much interested in the future, but the recent animated movie Resolute piqued my interest due to the involvement of Warren Ellis. As far as things go, it’s a slick, fast moving action piece that is fun to watch without giving you the feeling watching something incredibly stupid, despite the hackneyed setting. Since I don’t know much about the franchise apart from the fact it’s been used to sell puppets (aka action figures) to boys, I don’t really know how much the movie adheres to the established continuity, but knowing Ellis’s work I expect some bastardization of much loved elements going on.

While watching Moon another movie I’ve recently watched (Up) came to my mind, not because of any similarities between the two, but because of how the emotional content of the movies worked. The big difference between both movies is, that while the situation of the main character of Up has universal appeal, that’s not true for Moon, at least not in the same way. Most people can empathize with feeling disconnected and isolated from the world around them when they grow older, even if not to the degree that it happens to Carl. The situation of Sam Bell, the main character of Moon is too unique to have that kind of universal appeal. Sure, it’s easy to empathize with him, to put yourself into his mindset, but his situation (he’s cloned countless time as cheap workforce on the moon, and dies after some time without ever getting home) is too unique to have quite the same impact as that of Carl’s in Up.

That said, I really enjoyed the movie. It’s clever in some ways, for instance inverting the HAL-archetype of the murderous and insane AI from 2001 to that of an artificial creation that turns out to be much more human than most humans. Although it doesn’t have the same epic feel of 2001 or Sunshine, two SF movies that come to mind which share a similar aesthetic, it’s quite effective in what it sets out to do. The human drama contrasts quite well with the desolate yet beautiful landscape of the moon, evoking a strangeness the reminds us that the moon, despite all your media-born familiarity with its look, is still an alien place.

The story also works quite well, even if I find it’s focus too narrow to be anything more than just a smartly written and well acted but ultimately limited narrative. I expect good SF to raise questions that transcend its own story, like 2001, Blade Runner, Gattaca and others managed. For that, Moon is far too straightforward, yet lacking the same appeal that more blockbustery movies have.

What I liked most about Up was that one of the main characters was an old guy. Sure, many movies have old people as characters, but those are nearly always secondary characters who are either the sage full of wisdom brought by age or the hilarious annoying old coot whose not really quite right in his head. Carl, the old guy in the movie, is like every good main character an amalgam of more than just one characteristic: he can be sagely, grumpy, hopeful and all the other things that makes us human. Mostly he’s someone we can easily relate to.

The movie itself is an assortment of strange characters and plot elements.
Before Carl gets stuffed into a home for old people he flees with his house, to find a place where once upon a time he and his wife wanted to go. What’s unusual is his method: he ties countless balloons to his house, which then floats away. Suspension of disbelief is quite necessary to follow through with the rest of the movie. But mostly it’s a fun adventure trip with odd characters and the obvious message that you can’t get happy by living in the past. Memories are fine and all, but to really live you have to engage with those who are alive today, those who are around you and still might need your help.

This is the third movie in a trilogy that started with God forgives… I don’t and its sequel Ace High. The third movie suffers from the same problem that already plagued the first two movies. There are fun moments that make you think you’re watching a Western comedy and there are parts that remind you of a Spaghetti Western, and both don’t work well together. This time around the movie seems to fit more the Spaghetti Western genre (meaning it feels harsher and more violent than the two previous movies). A small settlement of gold miners gets terrorized by the agent of a big company. Their aim: the whole land around town. To do that the agent hired some gangsters who threaten anyone into submission. When that doesn’t work, they resort to killing. Like the first two it’s an average movie that’s okay to watch, but doesn’t really rise above similar movies. The only unique element is the inclusion of a circus, but I found that more than annoying, as it doesn’t seem to really fit the western style.

A sequel to God forgives… I don’t that’s not much better than the original. The movies starts where the other ended. Loaded up with the gold from the dead bandit San Antonio, Cat (Terence Hill) and Hutch (Bud Spencer) bring it back to the bank and get some money as a reward, but then get robbed by Cacopoulos (Eli Walach). Hard on his tails they all end up in a casino where Cacopoulos lost all the money (on purpose). While a tad better than the first movie, it’s still not all that good. The pacing is off with many boring moments and the whole is still a mixed bag in terms of styles, Bud Spencer’s already playing his later comedic self while Terence Hill still plays a tight-lipped old Spaghetti Western character. And most of the time you feel like nobody knows where the whole thing is going plotwise.