Cinema Assault: Inception VS eXistenZ

So while trying to figure out what to do with this stupid blog I remembered an idea I had a while ago about comparing different movies and what a great idea it was. Part of it sounded good because it goes with the name Cinema Assault, which was just suppose to sound cool, but the main reason it is a good idea is because I fucking hate people who say you can't compare different movies. Like those assholes that say you can't compare an older movie with its more modern remake because they are "different", and not the same movie, which is the fucking point of comparing them. "It's like comparing Apples and Oranges" as if that's some impossible fucking task. Apples and Oranges are both fruit. They are both round, although apples come in a number of different shapes. They both grow on trees, but in different climates. Apples are red, Oranges are green. Holy shit. So I'm going to start with the comparison that inspired the idea. Inception versusing eXistenZ.

Inception
So first up is the modern classic about stealing dreams and shit. I've always wanted to write a review about this movie because despite how much people like it, and how good it actually is, I have nothing but shit to say about it. It's one of those movies that I can't help but pick apart, and while I would usually write this off as me just reacting to how popular it has gotten, because nothing makes you hate more than something other people like, the biggest problem I have with the movie is pretty simple. I just don't fucking care about anyone in it.

Anyone. And to be honest, I doubt you do either. I've noticed this with Nolan's other recent movies, most notably his Batman movies, because as good as they are, I don't care about what happens to Bruce Wayne, or Batman, or the Joker, or Harvey Dent, or whoever was in the first one. I definitely don't care about his girlfriend, who was played by different actors in each movie, and actually died in a very dramatic way. Doesn't matter, because I don't care. And in this movie I don't care about Leo D, who's character name I can't even remember, or Ken Wantanabe, or whoever. There isn't even really an antagonist in the movie, all we get is the mental projection of Leo's stupid dead wife, who killed herself by jumping out of a building, after they both killed themselves by laying down in front of a Dream train. In fact the entire plot of the movie is how he can't go back to America because his wife's death was stupid and for whatever reason, they thought he killed her. Like he just randomly felt like pushing her out a building. Actually they didn't even say that, he just left thinking they would. She died so they have to think it was me! That just makes you look guilty dude! What an idiot. So yeah, like I feel bad for this asshole who was too dumb to take his fucking children with him when he left the country. Oh I hope his top stops spinning! Then there's that other problem with the movie that comes from it simply not meeting my expectations in one pretty fundamental way. It's a movie about dreams with almost no surrealism.

Plus, why try to persuade someone the boring old "talking to them" way when you can INCEPT them?

So when I first saw the teaser trailer for this movie, I, like everyone else, was enthralled. I think it was just some scene text leading up to two guys running up and down the walls before jumping at each other, and I couldn't help but say "Holy shit, what is this?!?" Then we got more trailers with the booming music, and we see scenes of a city folding in on itself and some exposition to explain the basic idea behind the movie, and I'm so excited that there will finally be a big budget Hollywood movie taking on the theme of dreams and the power of imagination. And then we get a movie that has like one scene with visual surrealism before turning into a few different scenes of random bullshit happening stacked on top of each other with plot heavy exposition tying them together. The first scene; a van falling off a bridge. Second scene; people in a hotel flouting around. Third scene; Level 3 from every First Person Shooter.

So instead of having this movie, which is like 90% a dream, depending on how you interpret the stupid ending, feel like a dream, it feels like bad science fiction with sciency "Dream Rules!" Like how time speeds up in a dream, or makes normal life slow down, or whatever. Or how getting killed in a dream either wakes you up, or sends you to some stupid limbo dimension for 100 years. Or that a dream within a dream is literally a dream within a dream. In fact, I remember that one bugging me right off the bat, because it's retarded. Everyone has dreamed so we all know these rules are bullshit, but since they kind of line up with our experiences, or things we might of heard about dreaming, we follow along. The problem for me was that I know a dream is just my brain trying to entertain itself while the rest of my body is being lazy, so dreams are just pure imagination, and the plot of this movie revolves around the you inside your dream also having a dream, and then having that guy then have a dream. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, bullshit. A dream within a dream so to speak, is when you transition from one dream to the next, which is usually something that just happens since dreams are crazy, but in this case are done though your mind tricking itself into thinking it's woken up when you haven't. So no, there aren't people in your head, who can then dream up their own people inside their head, your mind is just an asshole.

 "You don't get it, if you die in the dream you die for real go to Detroit!"

So the entire plot of this movie becomes a huge distraction. Not to mention the fact that I die in my dreams all the time and nothing ever happens because it isn't real. If I get shot, then whatever, I guess bullet holes don't hurt me. If I fall from high up, then I bounce. If I start to drown, I find out I can breath under water. Because it's not real, because it's a dream. And this movie doesn't treat dreams like dreams, it treats dreams like virtual reality. There's the part that recognizes the sensation of feeling like falling before waking up sometimes, so they decide to wake people up in the movie by seriously dropping them, instead of just going up to them and saying "Hey asshole!"

In fact so much exposition is put into figuring out how they can wake each other up and "ride" it out at the end that when you look at the movie and you see them going to such lengths to DROP EVERYONE IN A VAN off a dock thing, or BLOW UP an elevator so it will move and then stop because everyone is floating, that it almost ruins the whole thing if you think about them just simply waking each other up. No explosions or car accidents, the guy left behind to wake them up just slightly slips them to get them up. You would get that in any other movie. But not INCEPTION!

eXistenZ
Yeah, the spelling is really like that. There's even a scene where a guy is like "Little e, big X, i, s, t, e, n, big Z!" It's the name of a new virtual reality game thing. So for anyone who hasn't seen this movie, everyone, you can probably guess why I would compare this with Inception. They are, in many ways, two movies with the same theme executed in completely opposite ways.

Written, Directed, and whatever elsed by David Cronenberg, this was one of the movies that got a lot of attention for being a "like the Matrix" movie that came out before the Matrix. Which means when the Matrix started to get popular, a lot of people said "eXistenZ was better." They said the same thing about Dark City and the 13th Floor, and its all bullshit. Not that the Matrix is the best movie ever or anything, but the fact that these movies came out first just proves that they got their shot at being popular, or even "actually seen" before the Matrix stole their thunder. But whatever. eXistenZ is still a good movie. Because it's written and directed by David Cronenberg.

I first saw this movie back in the day on the Sci-Fi channel late one night. I had no idea what the movie was about and hadn't even heard of David Cronenberg, who is one of my 3 favorite directors, next to Danny Boyle, and John Carpenter. So this weird movie with little production value and a dumb name comes on the Sci-fi channel, and you can imagine my thoughts on the movie right off the bat. I mean it was on the Sci-Fi channel, I'm surprised I even stopped to watch it. It's an ugly, weirdly acted, almost nonsensically written take on video games that is clearly written by someone with no knowledge of video game culture, and has the production value of a high school play. And it's still a great movie that will leave you thinking and wanting more after it's over. Also it's Canadian.

The basic plot is Jude Law is watching people try out a new virtual reality system when armed terrorist people try to kill the game designer, played by the girl who is the lead. I don't know who she is. They get away, meet Willem Defoe, and have weird stuff happen. They decide to go into eXistenZ, and it more or less plays out like a dream. They go into a game within that game. And as they move between different levels of reality, they all start to merge together, until it's clear that the reality we were in at the beginning wasn't actually reality.

Willem Defoe turns out to be a bad guy who probably just wants to kill Spider-man

Although you know they're in a virtual reality, the whole thing is surreal, which is something Cronenberg is good at. Anyone that's seen Naked lunch, or any of his movies really, probably already knows that. Scenes move along without necessarily having a purpose, and stuff just kind of happens. Jude law works in a factory that makes weird organic animal parts used for technology and is a triple agent spy guy in the game, despite being a bodyguard in the outside world. all of a sudden the factory just randomly has a restraint in it and he sits down with that girl character and is forced to order the special, which is a really gross looking frog fish animal thing. He starts eating it, not being able to stop himself and he uses the bones and other remains to fashion a gun. He then pulls out  a bunch of teeth, pops them in and bam, tooth-gun.

So this is where the comparison comes, not because they are similar, which they are, but because of their differences. Where Inception is pretty and sleek, eXistenZ is ugly and awkward. Where Inception is plot heavy, exposition thick, serious, and complicated with it's rules and execution; eXistenZ is simple and dreamlike with it's surrealism that plays with the audience's notion of reality and what's really going on. Where Inception is "Deep", eXistenZ is "Actually Fun To Watch."
I mean, look at their fucking names.
Inception- a sleek techy deep sounding word.
eXistenZ- what the fuck, you actually called a movie that? They almost sound similar.

The real twist end is that it's neither real nor a dream because it's a movie

You can see where each movie's head is at, just by looking at the name. One is a expensive, buzz-worthy exercise in letting dumb people feel smart. The other is a low budget experiment with all kinds of wacky shit going on. So yeah, it obvious which one I prefer, since I'm doing nothing but talking shit about big dumb Inception, but to be honest, I don't really care about which is best. Inception is better made, eXistenZ is more interesting. They represent two sides of filmmaking and Art itself.

And yeah, they also have the same ending. Inception ends with the top spinning, making you wonder if it's a dream, if perhaps this whole ting has been one long dream, while eXistenZ ends with the reality we thought was real being overrun with the surreal violence of the games, leading to us finding out that the real reality was something we hadn't seen yet. We find out that the violence in the game was a result of the players pychies, and it's reveled that the two main characters, who have spent the entire movie running from terrorist that hate technology, are the actual terrorist that hate technology. They start executed the other players and the last one is left to ask "Wait is this part of the game?"

I risk sounding like a elitist that looks for validation by disagreeing with the popular opinion, but fuck Inception. Seriously. There's nothing really even wrong with the movie itself, as much as the response to it. Yeah, it was made to be excepted by audience as being this deep, well written thriller, but it's everyone's fault that they actually bought into it. It's one thing to bad mouth Transformers, which isn't even made to be anything but dumb action, but when you call something like Inception a modern classic, I start to worry. I don't necessarily want to play the Inception "can't be art because it looks too good and is popular" card, but, yeah I guess I do. You can't have a fucking dream within a dream.

I'M STILL HERE

 This movie is kind of an anomaly to me. I'm not really sure how we are supposed to feel about it, or what it's actual purpose for existing is, but despite all that, I can for sure say that although the movie is more or less a unique one, it's not very entertaining. Like at all. So I'm just going to try and get this all straight and see if I have it right.

So a few years ago we find out that Joaquin Phoenix, the guy I best know from Gladiator and Signs, who was also in Walk the Line, which I should probably see, was retiring from acting, which actors tend to do, and was instead working on a hip hop career, which sounded legit, or at least not as crazy to me as it did to others. Then he was chewing gum on the Letterman show, and generally being a spaz that would get mentioned here and there, and out of nowhere I find out that a documentary made about him having a meltdown was coming out on Dvd and that everyone kind of thought it was a hoax before a week later when, yeah surprise, the joke was on all of us because it WAS A HOAX! Whoa!

 Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid

Now, I have all this back story I've pieced together about the movie and I think, hey lets actually watch it, because I was kind of excited. And I shouldn't have been, because the movie itself is like 10 hours of nothing happening. If you know that it's about Joaquin Phoenix being crazy, then there no reason to see it. In fact if you read the previous paragraph about him retiring to get into hip hop before getting press for being a burnout, then there's no reason to see this movie, because the only thing worth knowing about the movie is that Joaquin Phoenix is crazy in it. Which is probably why no one saw it, or can even sit through more than 15 minutes of it. Because when you already know that it's a fake documentary about Joaquin Phoenix pretending to be an asshole, you wonder why he's being such an asshole by showing it all to you.

I mean, I'm not sure what understanding they are expecting us to have. The concept of the movie, which I think can still be considered a concept, is more or less the kind of shit you think up while smoking pot with your buddies, which is obvious the best idea you've ever had, that later turns into an inside joke when you think about it later.

"Pothead Ideas" ---- or when we thought it would be an awesome idea to pretend to have a meltdown, and completely destroy everything Joaquin Phoenix has accomplished as an actor to see if people will believe us. Dude, I dare you to go through with it!

Klaatu barada nikto

And then they fucking did. For like, 2 years they tried to troll us. Just like the shit that happens on the internet all the time where someone acts extra retarded and tries to tell us we're the assholes for falling for it. Expect it doesn't work very well when everyone already assumes it a hoax. And that's kind of why I'm confused about how to fell, because to be honest, I feel kind of guilty.

Joaquin went through all this time and trouble fucking up his life, burning every bridge he has built, fucking over the people like his publicist and friends, to try and fool me into believing he is a self destructive, drug abusing, celebrity loser, and I wasn't even paying attention. I feel kind of bad. He did it for 2 years, while he could have been making other movies, and he got his brother in law to almost go bankrupt over it, and in the end, the only people who even seemed to notice, thought it was odd that he had gone crazy over night and figured it was a trick, and were right.

 Ok, I'm done now...

And its not really all that unique either. It feels like Casey Aflek and Joaquin Phoenix were amazed by the movie Borat, and thought it would be cool to try and freak out the squares too. Only instead of creating a character, Joaquin would just be himself as a drugged out dork. So that's what I'm going to measure the movie by. I'm going to compare it to the stuff Sasha Baron Cohen has been doing for years, the stuff Andy Kaufman did for his entire career, and even some of the other simular stuff you see people like Die Antwoord do, and then it becomes kind of obvious that this movie is pretty shitty because they didn't even do it right. You're not supposed to commit this much, and when it seems like everyone in the movie is in on the joke, then its the audience you're trying to fuck with. Except that no one fucking cares, because Signs wasn't even that good. Why would aliens leave signs BEFORE they attacked us, that doesn't even make sense.

11.1 out of 30

Transformers Trilogy

It's been a year, give or take a few months, since a new review has graced this blog, and in a valiant attempt to breath new life into it's dying embers one soul bravely steps forward to reignite the flames by covering the magnum opus of Cinema's most cherished filmmaker.

---------------------------

This is the story of 

CINEMA ASSAULT 2: Legend of Time's Eternal Change AKA Be a TRUCK!

We pick up from where last we left me, ah, not feeling like reviewing anything for months and months until figuring out, why not do the fucking Transformer movies? I came up with a few reasons, but forgot them so here we go, the pinnacle and single greatest example of what most people consider cinema's new age of mindless bullshit entertainment. Those people are assholes, although they are also right.

Transformers (No subtitle (what a ripoff))

Since no one reads this blog but me, it would be pointless to explain to myself how I grew up with the Transformers. How I watched the TV show, had some of the toys, although not as much as some of the other kids, and how the 1986 movie is still probably my favorite movie of all time. So news of Michael Bay directing a big (BIG!) budget summer blockbuster live action movie based on the franchise would surly leave me in a emotionally confused state unable to decide if I hated the news while still being excited. Right? But I wasn't, because I think it came out while I was in college and I didn't really give a shit. I was in college. 

So I didn't have any preconceived notions of having already hated it or liking it despite it's flaws, and was able to watch it from a position of apathy, because I was in college. I think I rented it on dvd a year after it came out, and was actually a little bit excited to see it. I remember being thrilled and amazed at the special effects, and thinking it was pretty enjoyable, in comparison to others who had bad mouthed it. And I remember being shocked, because that was all I remembered of the movie. When I tried to do my "Yeah that one scene where whatever happened was awesome" thing I always do after action movies, I couldn't actually think of anything that had happened in the movie. Like waking from a dream, the action, characters, and even plot, seemed to disappear from my memory when I tried hardest to recall them. There were glimpses, small fragments I held on the tip of my brain, but nothing concrete. It was like the movie had washed through my mind.

So, damn, it could have been the best movie ever for all I know, but I'm pretty sure I would have fucking remembered it then...

Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen

So the first movie made like a million dollars and they made a second one. It was bigger, louder, and even less thought out. After defeating the evil Decepticons and killing Megatron at the end of the last movie we now find out that the decepticons aren't defeated, and Megatron isn't dead. OOOHHH! Well ok, lets do it all AGAIN! Awesome. And this time they seriously were just doing random shit the whole movie. Micheal Bay said so. He said it was because of the writers strike or because he didn't care, or whatever.

So while you could just sit back and watch the flashing lights with a big retard smile on your face the first time, this one had so many parts that make you think "What? seriously?" that it actually pulls you out of the movie to take note of the stupid shit going on. As such it tends to make you reflect on the first movie, which mysteriously descend from your subconsciousness, so you can look back in amazement. Like what the fuck was with that Berny Mac scene in the first one? I forgot he was even in the movie.  You watch all the lead up in this one with the main character going to College and dealing with all the pointless subplot that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie and you go "Oh yeah, the first movie had like 3 hours of Shia LeBuff trying to be quirky and likable to attract that Megan Fox chick who I guess we are supposed to find attractive, but I mean seriously, what a boring person. What's so attractive about having no personality. She isn't even all that good looking..." and it almost kills the movie for you.

I don't care about this kid's problems. I don't care that he's going to college, or that he is being hit on by some other chick, or anything to do with him and Megan Fox. No one cares about Megan Fox. And even she thought the movie was awful and was talking shit about it until Micheal Bay was like "Fuck you." What an idiot. But yeah, the movie is worst than the first one, but actually kind of memorable for bad reasons. And the subtitle is weird. The main antagonist is a guy named the Fallen. He doesn't really get revenge though..

Transformers 3- Dark of the Moon

So one day I'm on my way to work here in the great mid-western city of Chicago, when I notice that a bunch of the streets around Michigan Avenue are blocked off by police and what looks like a pile of flaming cars. As I try to get around all the commotion and figure out whats going on, I make my way up to see what looks like a giant disaster, and obviously I think to myself "Cool, they're shooting some movie!" But it wasn't just any movie! It was the movie I happen to be talking about right now! I was there! I took pictures! And then later that week I was by Union station and had to go like 3 extra blocks to get around the area because they were shooting there too! And then the same fucking thing happened like 2 more times! Because they were shooting the whole movie in Chicago! Where I live!

It was actually pretty awesome. And when I went to go see the movie, like a year and a half later in the discount theater for 2 bucks because it was already out on dvd, I really enjoyed it, because I was there. There's something about seeing the place you work in and around everyday get invaded by giant robot aliens on the big screen to draw you into the movie. The first half of the movie is all the bullshit with the kid trying to find a job after being out of college for 3 months (Whoa Shit! 3 months out of school and no job!!) and Megan Fox not being there, and whatever, until the bad guys decide for whatever reason to start the invasion of earth in Chicago of all places. Then it gets awesome. The whole second half of the movie takes place downtown, right where I work, where buildings get blown up, and people slid down them, and jump out of planes and do that wingsuit thing through all the wreckage... It was great.

The movie is a fun watch and it helps highlight the problem I have remembering anything from these movies: It's just random bullshit happening for 2 hour. Not that this is a huge revelation, but there is absolutely no reason to think while watching these movies. So your brain can actually be off, because there's nothing worth using it on while watching, so nothing really sticks afterwards. It's about alien robots that can turn into cars and planes that are fighting each other on earth because just because. There's no logic or reason you can apply, no real character development, not even any story, just plot. And when a scene is done, you CAN actually just forget about it because it's no longer useful. It was just alien robots flipping around punching each other in the face. Some times when they get punched in the face they die, or sometimes they get shot a hundred times and are ok. Sometimes they actually fucking die and then come back, because they are alien robots, we don't know how this shit works. When they transform we see a million moving shiny metal pieces flipping around and doing fuck all as far as we can tell, before the dude that looked like a giant metal humanoid thing now looks like a Ferrei, and we don't question it because, whatever, they are robot alien car guys.

Nothing that happens in the whole series makes any sense, so there is nothing for us to invest in. Because you couldn't if you tried. So take them for what they are. Spectacles.

 17 out of 30