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Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
The first sequel to Starship Troopers had absolutely none of the élan of
the original, which was a sweeping Paul Verhoeven sci-fi epic based on a
Ray Bradbury book written for juveniles. The first film presented a
semi-satirical, semi-inspirational portrayal of a cosmic struggle between
humans and space insects for control of this part of the galaxy, with a
particular focus on some high school seniors in Buenos Aires. It was a
film that could be viewed as an anti-war, anti-Fascism satire or as an
inspirational pro-war film which argues that a strong and unified Earth
government would be necessary in order for our race to survive a struggle
for survival. The director was effectively able to balance the surface
story with the underlying irony and iconoclasm.
The second film was quite a poor sequel. The story dropped the original
characters, all the satire, and the global overview, choosing to
focus on a single front of the war, a lonely outpost on a faraway planet
in which a group of humans made a desperate Alamo-like stand against a bug
army.
The third film actually is a sequel to the first one. In essence, it's the
film that the previous one should have been. Johnny Rico (Casper van Dien),
the ultra-tough hero who worked his way up from private to lieutenant in
the first film with his battlefield prowess, is back and is now a colonel
protecting an entire planet. His regiment suffers an ignominious defeat.
(We later learn that the failure of Rico's defense strategy was caused by
a human traitor).
The satirical propaganda commercials are back. The political machinations
and inter-service rivalries are back. There are bigger and better warrior
bugs, smarter brain bugs, another human psychic who can converse with
bugs, more co-ed group nudity, and many other elements which tend to make
the film a continuation of the original. The new hook in episode three is
that the future humans, who have fundamentally been atheistic for some
time, are turning back to God as the war efforts sour. The fascist
government is trying to suppress freedom of religion, even as it also
steps up further restrictions on freedom of speech. Meanwhile, the human
psychics determine that the bugs also believe in God!
It does fall short of the first film in several places:
(1) there are too many cheesy (and repetitive) CGI effects
(2) there are too many prolonged battle sequences at the expense of
character development. There are lots of characters identified by
name, and the film seems to promise that we will get to know them, then
just drops them in favor of explosions, gunfights, and fires. For example,
Van Dien assembles an elite team of seven crack infantry soldiers for a
grueling mission, and the team members are introduced in a long nude
sequence as they are fitted for armor suits, ala Robocop. But after that
scene, they are never really shown again. We see their suits in battle
action, but when it comes to what's inside the suits, we see only Van Dien.
Even Van Dien's story will be a mystery if you have not seen the first
film. The audience never really gets to know the humans. We root for them
only because it's our nature to root for handsome humans fighting against
ugly insects.
(3) some of the acting is sub-par, most notably Cecile Breccia, who
doesn't seem to speak any English at all. I suppose she learned her lines
phonetically, but I often failed to grasp what she was trying to say.
It's not as good as the original, but it's good enough to have turned me
around on the series, and it's excellent for a direct-to-vid effort. Like
the original, it strikes a pretty good balance between stirring heroics,
satire, and parallels to our own times. It also introduces some
interesting ideas. Because SST2 was so boring, I didn't have any
enthusiasm for #3 before I actually started watching it, but now that I've
seen SST3, I am looking forward to a number 4, assuming that it will
continue the Johnny Rico storyline with Van Dien.
This film clip has nudity from Cecile Breccia, Nicole Tupper, and Tanya
van Graan. (And a bunch of dudes, including Van Dien)
Sample captures:
Breccia
van Graan
Tupper
van Graan and Breccia
all three women
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OTHER CRAP:
Catch the deluxe
version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles,
here.
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Serial
(1980)
Kate: "Carol, gay or straight, you still have that certain something ...
you're a cunt."
Carol (sadly): "Still?"
Kate: "Work on it."
I first became aware of Serial in book form. I stopped at a book store
during lunch and found it on the bargain table. I spent the rest of the day
reading it from cover to cover, ignoring work, absorbed in a brilliant send-up
of life in the late 70s in Marin County, California.
The film is true to the book, so one cannot truly appreciate its satirical
insights without knowing something about Marin, which is directly across the
Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and is where all of the hippies
migrated when Berkeley and The Haight declined. The real die-hard freaks moved
into remote communities and/or communes, but the bulk of the so-called
counter-culture settled into straight middle-class lives and became co-opted
into the capitalist system. The men donned suits and ties and bought BMWs, the
women joined consciousness-raising groups, and the kids were raised
permissively and sent to trendy pop shrinks. There is still a good deal of
this culture in Marin County today.
Tuesday Weld, Martin Mull, and their daughter are installed firmly in the
culture of fern bars, Beamers and "I'm ok, you're ok," but Martin is sick of
relationship talks and would like to get laid a little more often, while
Tuesday Weld feels they don't really communicate. Their teenaged daughter is
chafing at parental restraint, and Tuesday is usually on her side. Their world
includes Dickie Smothers as a new age minister, Peter Bonerz as a POP
psychologist, Sally Kellerman as a free spirit into serial bigamy, and a host
of others.
Then their lives start to collapse. Their daughter runs away to join a San
Francisco religious cult, Martin has an affair with his secretary (at an
orgy), and Tuesday has an affair with her dog groomer, then moves out.
"Kate left me."
"'Right on' your ass. This is serious. She even took the Cuisinart."
It is one of my favorite films from the 80s, and
it's finally available on DVD.
Patch Mackenzie
Sally Kellerman
Tuesday Weld
Unknown
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Notes and collages
The Eyes of Laura Mars
1978 |
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Faye Dunaway
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Death of a Ghost Hunter
2000
I've seen several good low-budget horror
flicks lately, and this 2007 effort is another one. The acting isn't
perfect, but over-all, it's a pretty cool ghost story.
In 2002, a renowned ghost hunter is hired by a
homeowner to conduct a paranormal investigation of the home in which his
relatives had been killed in 1982. She will be accompanied by a cameraman,
a reporter, and a spiritual advocate who is against the investigation,
saying it is "disrespectful" to the good Christians who died in the house.
They use scientific techniques not unlike what
you may have seen on Sci-Fi channel's Ghost Hunters series and as the
instruments start to register activity, things start to get crazy. Even
more important, they find evidence that the events in 1982 may not have
been what they seemed.
This was shot in nine days on a shoestring
budget, and as I mentioned, some of the acting is a little shaky, but the
story is a good solid ghost story, and overall, the movie was quite
enjoyable. If you like ghost stories, watch this one.
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| Lindsay Page |
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