Total Recall (2012)

I hate it when I can't remember if I'm with Kate Beckinsale or if I'm with Jessica Biel. Kate'll be all like, "we're such a happy little married couple" and then there'll be a knock on the door and it's Jessica and she's all like, "you ain't married to that bitch!" And then you have to go and fight some androids. I hate those days.
I was just reading a little about this film in preparation for viewing iit. I read, what I thought was a credible source, an article stating that they didn't try and base this as much on the Schwarzenegger movie as they did off of the CBC series, "Total Recall 2099". I think perhaps someone was pulling my leg. There are homages to the original film throughout. Yet, it does have much the same aesthetic as the television show and does take place on Earth after a war like the series. And yes, I am the only United States citizen who watched the Canadian sci-fi mystery procedural. Because it was there, okay? Because there is not enough good sci-fi programming available and you end up watching what you can get. And to be honest, the show wasn't that bad.
This actually followed the major story points of the first movie pretty closely for the first 75% of the film. The last quarter is still roughly inline, minus that whole 'we're on Mars' bit and the aliens, and making the inhospitable livable again. I kind of thought they might go that route in this, like at the end it turns out that devices have been built to clean the air of the "No Zone".
Most everything about this movie I was able to buy, except the whole bit about the Fall. I sincerely doubt that the most feasible way to get from Sydney to London will ever be through the Earth's core in a giant elevator. And they totally fucked up the whole gravity bit at the core. There would be no one to two minute zero g experience. It made for some cool cinematics, and offered a reason for our star to seem to be all but captured, when really the very Earth itself if pulling for him. Sorry. I can't help myself with the puns here.
The people I know who have seen this film and the original all lament, groan even, that they were remaking this movie. I did to at first, but for a different reason. The person I talked with today said that the Schwarzenegger flick was so great, that you couldn't compete with Farrell. Whereas, I didn't want a remake because I thought the original was so bad. It's an Arnold Schwarzenegger film for christ's sake! Throw in a few future doodads, a hooker with 3 boobs and set it on Mars and everyone is talking like it's the best envisioning of a Dick story since Blade Runner and maybe even better than that. Really? That older movie was action packed, but poorly acted. The Guvanator has never been known for his great great acting ability. Never. Now I do buy the nostalgia angle. I myself have fond memories of this movie because of who I saw it with and that evening. But I saw it as part of a double feature with the other film being Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Universal Soldier" and I thought that film was the stronger of the two. I am fond of lot's of things that are not great, but are special none-the-less. That is the only reason I can think of why people are so fond of the original.
This movie has some great actors. I've already mentioned Beckinsale and Biel and of course it stars Colin Farrell, who may from all reports be a prick, but he can still act and quite decently. We also get to see Bryan Cranston, as a genuine, mother fucking, action star. He kicks some ass and looks good doing it. He had a pretty big year last year, with both this film and Argo coming out. Yay Brian. In my opinion, not enough good things can happen for this man. Oh, and there's some guy, an older British bloke, who does a fairly decent, as always, job - Mr. Bill Nighy. Rounding out the major players is Bokeem Woodbine, whom the last time I saw him was playing a police officer partnered with a vampire played by Adrian Paul (of Highlander the television series fame) and the lover of another vampire played by Bai Ling. He could only have come up from that and still been on my radar, so nice to see that he hasn't just disappeared.
The special effects and visual effects were the reason I wanted to watch this film, as I fully expected it to be total crap. The FX did not let me down, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I liked the film, because even though the story was just as ludicrous as the first film's, it was executed very well by a more than pasable cast.
The one thing that bothered me about this story, okay maybe main would be a better word than one, is present in both films. At the beginning when Quaid/Hauser is first going into Recall, the whole shit-storm happens just after he's been injected. Okay, confessional time, I haven't read the Philip K. Dick story in so long, that it is feasible to me that I never read it at all. But, if I were writing the story, I would run them as the movies did, and that right at the very end, after the credits have already started rolling go back in and show it all to be a recall session, and you could go with either successful or perhaps more appropriately a failure in which he can't wake up from the session. I've always felt that's the way Dick did it, or would have done it. Ugh, I am so lame for not knowing what he did, but I will fix that. You will have to take my word for it that I have.
For the record, nothing happens during the credits, other than the statement, and I quote, "Based on the motion picture "Total Recall"" which comes right before they list the Second Unit and Visual Effects credits. At the top of the credits we get, "Inspired by the short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick". I think that pretty much puts to rest what this film was actually based on.

Total Recall on IMDb

The Breed (2001)

I'm a sucker (no pun intended) for movies set "In the Near Future". It's often a set up for a dystopian tale, or an urban fantasy masquerading as a science fiction film. In the case of The Breed, it's both.
The main character, Grant (Bokkem Woodbine), is an NSA agent, but I'm not sure that NSA is meant to mean the National Security Agency, which in the real world is known for it's spooks - he's more of a noir homicide detective slash U.S. Marshall. The society is very "Brazil" but of a Soviet vein instead of the British-style bureaucracy.
The foul-mouthed Grant and his partner Phil (Reed Diamond) are working with the police to find a serial killer that is taking young women and draining them of their blood. Through luck they happen upon a van suspected to have been used by the killer, and indeed it had been for the killer is still in the near-by building with his latest victim. Grant watches as the man he shot dead gets up and rips out Phil's throat before climbing up a sheer wall, which Grant sees from the trash bin he has been thrown into. He reports to his superiors everything he saw, including the killers fangs; and when called into the director's office expects to be dismissed out of hand but is instead brought into the cabal of those that know that vampires walk amongst us. By this point, Grant has said 'fuck' a dozen times, including directly to the director and we're only a little over ten minutes into the movie. Now, I'm not one of those that thinks this word should be avoided - if the character needs to say 'fuck', the character needs to say 'fuck'. I get that. But, what I don't get is that only Grant says it, well at least at this point in the movie he is the only one to have been using it. If this is how they're going to show that Grant is a bad-ass or a free spirit, it doesn't bode well for the next hour or so. And to some extent this is what they did. Ho-hum.
At the NSA offices, between propaganda messages playing in the background, Grant is read into the secret and introduced to his new partner, Aaron Grey (Adrian Paul), who just happens to be a police detective for the vampire police. I know Paul for his work in the show Highlander, so of course immediately begin to draw comparisons between one immortal character and another. He's playing roughly the same character, but no complaints as he acts circles around Woodbine. Grey is a relatively young vampire only 80 or 90 years old if the near future were to happen today. He has flashbacks to his days being persecuted by the Nazis and later tells Grant his origin story and reveals that the leader of the vampire people's himself, Cross (Peter Halasz), turned him.
The outcome of the movie is predictable - the leader of the opposition, a vampire named West (Zen Gesner), is a red herring and the leader Cross, is of course the real baddie. Grant's vampire love interest Lucy Westenra (Bai Ling) follows a similarly predictable path lover-traitor-true patriot-lover. All the while I am left thinking that minus the fucking constant fucking use of the fucking f-word and the five seconds of naked boobs and naked butt (both on women of course - who would ever want to see a man's naked butt?) that I am likely watching the pilot for a television series, especially when the film ends with Grey coming to Westenra's place to collect Grant to go investigate a murder. The quality of the special effects and acting would certainly bear this out, but since I haven't seen anything like this since the film came out, which kind of surprises me. It they did make a series based on this premise, especially if it starred Paul, I would watch it.
The one thing that surprised me about this film was the way that it dealt with Grant's initial desire to kill all the vampires, which is the feeling that much of the NSA carries through to the end. It didn't treat it as heroic, but instead compared it to the racism that was exhibited by the Nazis. They did this with a heavy hand, and I can only imagine that they felt that such an explicit comparison was necessary for their desired audience, Grey at one point says to Grant, "You're a racist, just like the Nazis", an audience which I imagine to be comprised of Gen Xers and Gen Yers who may or may not know their history and who are more likely than not less than sober. Actually, profanity aside, I felt like this film should have proceeded by an ad saying, "From the writers who brought you Highlander and the producers that brought you Xena and the Adventures of Hercules".

The Bread at IMDb

The Breed (2001)

I'm a sucker (no pun intended) for movies set "In the Near Future". It's often a set up for a dystopian tale, or an urban fantasy masquerading as a science fiction film. In the case of The Breed, it's both.
The main character, Grant (Bokkem Woodbine), is an NSA agent, but I'm not sure that NSA is meant to mean the National Security Agency, which in the real world is known for it's spooks - he's more of a noir homicide detective slash U.S. marshall. The society is very "Brazil" but of a Soviet vein instead of the British-style bureaucracy.
The foul-mouthed Grant and his partner Phil (Reed Diamond) are working with the police to find a serial killer that is taking young women and draining them of their blood. Through luck they happen upon a van suspected to have been used by the killer, and indeed it had been for the killer is still in the near-by building with his latest victim. Grant watches as the man he shot dead gets up and rips out Phil's throat before climbing up a sheer wall, which Grant sees from the trash bin he has been thrown into. He reports to his superiors everything he saw, including the killers fangs; and when called into the director's office expects to be dismissed out of hand but is instead brought into the cabal of those that know that vampires walk amongst us. By this point, Grant has said 'fuck' a dozen times, including directly to the director and we're only a little over ten minutes into the movie. Now, I'm not one of those that thinks this word should be avoided - if the character needs to say 'fuck', the character needs to say 'fuck'. I get that. But, what I don't get is that only Grant says it, well at least at this point in the movie he is the only one to have been using it. If this is how they're going to show that Grant is a bad-ass or a free spirit, it doesn't bode well for the next hour or so. And to some extent this is what they did. Ho-hum.
At the NSA offices, between propaganda messages playing in the background, Grant is read into the secret and introduced to his new partner, Aaron Grey (Adrian Paul), who just happens to be a police detective for the vampire police. I know Paul for his work in the show Highlander, so of course immediately begin to draw comparisons between one immortal character and another. He's playing roughly the same character, but no complaints as he acts circles around Woodbine. Grey is a relatively young vampire only 80 or 90 years old if the near future were to happen today. He has flashbacks to his days being persecuted by the Nazis and later tells Grant his origin story and reveals that the leader of the vampire people's himself, Cross (Peter Halasz), turned him.
The outcome of the movie is predictable - the leader of the opposition, a vampire named West (Zen Gesner), is a red herring and the leader Cross, is of course the real baddie. Grant's vampire love interest Lucy Westenra (Bai Ling) follows a similarly predictable path lover-traitor-true patriot-lover. All the while I am left thinking that minus the fucking constant fucking use of the fucking f-word and the five seconds of naked boobs and naked butt (both on women of course - who would ever want to see a man's naked butt?) that I am likely watching the pilot for a television series, especially when the film ends with Grey coming to Westenra's place to collect Grant to go investigate a murder. The quality of the special effects and acting would certainly bear this out, but since I haven't seen anything like this since the film came out, which kind of surprises me. It they did make a series based on this premise, especially if it starred Paul, I would watch it.
The one thing that surprised me about this film was the way that it dealt with Grant's initial desire to kill all the vampires, which is the feeling that much of the NSA carries through to the end. It didn't treat it as heroic, but instead compared it to the racism that was exhibited by the Nazis. They did this with a heavy hand, and I can only imagine that they felt that such an explicit comparison was necessary for their desired audience, Grey at one point says to Grant, "You're a racist, just like the Nazis", an audience which I imagine to be comprised of Gen Xers and Gen Yers who may or may not know their history and who are more likely than not less than sober. Actually, profanity aside, I felt like this film should have proceeded by an ad saying, "From the writers who brought you Highlander and the producers that brought you Xena and the Adventures of Hercules".