Red Planet - 2000

 Reading about and watching Mission to Mars made me think of this movie, Red Planet.  What was going on in the year 2000, where we needed two Mars movies about colonization and weird alien encounters on said planet?

Neither of these movies were successful, I remember talk of the town being that they were bad, but what can I say I still always sorta wanted to see the two movies.  A year after this came out, there was also Ghosts of Mars, which was also hugely unsuccessful and is one of the last John Carpenter movies.  We just could not stick the landing on these dumb Mars movies!

Red Planet stars Val Kilmer, Carrie Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore and Benjamin Bratt.  It's a who's who of turn of the century actors.  They're crack-shot astronauts, on a colonization mission to Mars, and once they get there, problems arise and they are running out of oxygen on the planet.  About to die, Kilmer opens his helmet and discovers there's oxygen.  This is just the start of the problems and the mysteries inherent to the planet, so let's see what happens next, eh?

What happens next is a "suspenseful" story of survival.  Trapped on the planet with only a few options, they have to get from point A to B to C, they have to evade a kung fu robot(?) and there's internal conflict between the astronauts.  They later discover life on Mars in the form of insects, as well as combat the various communication problems and the limited time they can be on the planet.

Overall, this is a averagely middling sci fi movie, and although it's not good, it can be entertaining at times.  I guess.  There's nothing special about it, and it relies on heavily cliched heroics and heavily stereotyped characters to do what you expect them to do.  Nothing really happens worth mentioning, and were it not for the stupid robot that turns into a wolf-like killer, this would be a straight up drama.  I don't remember the explanation for the robot thing, but I'm there was a throw away one line of dialogue about it.

Meh, it's a space movie, I guess.  1 star.

Mission to Mars - 2000

 I got home from work just now thinking, ok I'll finish Mission to Mars. What? I finished it? How did it end? I didn't remember. 

This movie is directed by Brian De Palma, in an apparent experiment to make a movie as cool as the recently successful Apollo 13. 

Tim Robbins, Gary Sinise, Tim Meadows, Jerry O'Connell and Connie Nielsen are a star team of astronauts sent to Mars to rendezvous with a team there, a team that recently all but got wiped out by a huge, seemingly sentient tornado.

Wait. Sentient tornado? Sure, but you'll have to wait an hour and a half to get back to it. In the meantime, wonder of space for 45 minutes, a problem for 15, and then Mars for a few. This movie is slooooooow. 

Its by far not a bad movie, I'm not shitting on it, I just wanted a horror or a sci fi or even a space movie, but this sort of isn't any of those. What is this instead? I have no answer to this question. 

The actors are fine and nothing huge is bad UNTIL the weird ass jampacked nonsensical end. Spoilers. So they get there, we have a giant face in the ground, there's a weird cgi alien, and nothing is revealed while at the same time, everything is? I mean, this must be the only movie that confirms aliens and then has it mean nothing and in fact barely be acknowledged. I mean I'm not wrong right? There was an alien in this?

You know who's going to die, sacrifice themselves, and you know they'll be ok in the end, and overall it's one of a slew of weird Mars movies that came out around this time. 2 stars for occasional interest and the effects. 

Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo - 1970

 I wrote a big ol review for Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff and I guess the blog...deleted it?  Fuck!  C'mon man!

I was high school-ish age when I got really into Zatoichi, Lone Wolf and Cub, Kurosawa, and everything else samurai related.  I saw a ton of these Zatoichi films, and I don't remember any of them.  I remember some of the Lone Wolf and Cub films, and in fact I recently rewatched one of them under a different title.

I did not remember this movie, although I feel pretty confident that being a huge Kurosawa fan, I had likely seen it before.  17 year old Theo, Tim's Potato Chips in one had, Dr. Pepper or Cherry Coke in the other, maybe some cocktail pepperoni and some random ass Japanese candy, sitting there chowing down and chilling out on a weekend...  Life huh?

Zatoichi is reprised by Katsu Shintaro, who played the character all throughout this era.  He is a blind masseur and swordsman, renowned in some areas, unknown in others.  He strolls into town and has a 100 or 200 ryo price on his head, we discover through dialogue.  Various people in the town help him, and he has an old relationship with a prostitute Umeno that he rekindles.

This is great n all, but also in the town is Mifune Toshiro as Yojimbo, who oddly enough is never really given a name I realized.  Google tells me it's Daisaku Sasa?  Weird name bruh.  Sasa and Ichi meet and are after the same girl, plus Ichi has that money on his head, so their relationship is contentious to say the least.

The main thing about this, is know it's almost 2 hours and know that those two hours can be quite slow.  This movie does drag a lot, because we have little moments of tiny bits of action with a looooottttttt of standing around in between.  It's more about the relationships in the town than about the swords, and when you see the swords, especially the fight between Ichi and Sasa, it's so short it's barely worth mentioning.

Considering that, it is not so much an action movie as a drama, expect the plot's not really interesting either, so it sorta just lays there, and you kinds look down at it with mild interest.  It like seeing a penny on the road.  You might reach down for it, you might say fuck it and go back into the strip club.  

For that reason, it's a 2.  Or even a 1.5.

Lost In Space - 1998

 Welcome back, me.  I always give an excuse for being gone so long, even though no one cares, and here it is:  My girlfriend came for something like a month, and though we probably watched a few things that could've made the ol' blog here, I opted not to write.  Worse, I also didn't read any of the Sherlock Holmes book I am halfway through.  Ugh.

A while back I got a 4 film "Space" themed set that had 100% only real actual movies on it, big budget, recent, known.  Contact, Red Planet, Lost in Space here, and I don't remember the 4th.  This was also likely the first time I'd seen it since I saw it in theaters at the age of 12.  Ah, good times.

Matt LeBlanc, Gary Oldman, William Hurt, and Mimi Rogers head up an all star cast in this adaptation of the 60's television show I've never seen.  The movie and show were both about a family that is thrown into the depths of outer space with a man who has tried to kill them, and they have to deal with this threat as well as the threats that are in the space they're now exploring for the first time.

Lost In Space is a kids movie, in a lot of ways, and I was the demographic in mind.  That said, it really doesn't fail in that way.  Lots of focus on the kids in the movie, the giant friendly robot, and the stupid cgi monkey thing.   Mom and dad are sort of there, mostly dad of course, and the juvenile romance between sister Heather Graham and Matt LeBlanc is superficial and played for laughs.  It's got "dumb" stamped all over it's head in many, many ways.

Speaking of dumb, this movie is pretty dumb.  They encounter weird spider robots, which I remember from seeing it in the theater.  That part is decently done.  What isn't decently done is the speed up, slow down nature of the story movements.  

The biggest flaw though is the over 2 hour length, and some of this really should have been trimmed off. It's not a terrible movie, surprisingly, but it offensively long, and the writing is thin at best.  For a kids movie, though, what do you expect writing wise?  The length though, is shocking.  What the fuck kid in the 90's wanted a 2 hour movie?!