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Vampires (1998)
Summary: Cool and ironic 'Vampires' has to be Carpenter's strangest movie, and the one most difficult to judge. What the viewer expects would be horror, but the very first sequence somehow ridicules this by the nonchalant acting of James Woods and his slayer-colleagues. What in other Vampire-related movies or series would turn out to be a thrilling and dangerous mission here is a rather unconcerned, militarily planned staking operation with a gore factor unusual even for Carpenter. This Vampire-Western features beautiful landscape, cruel killings, a flying Vampire master and - of course - Sheryl Lee. If it were to be understood as a serious attempt at making a Vampire movie, this had to be considered a total failure. However, judging it within the general scope of Carpenter's other movies, it doesn't seem right to presuppose things which couldn't be upheld considering Carpenter's perfectionism. This isn't meant to be a Vampire movie, not one of the pathos-filled ones anyway, it isn't meant to be scary either. What seems unmotivated is rather a ridiculing about these elements: Carpenter isn't a special effects guy, his rather simplistic attempt has a crucial goal: Focussing on the characters, on the story. Pathos is shown in a deconstructed way, in its absurdity it is almost joking about the seriousness of the fictional matter. Every moment which could turn out to be heroic is consequently stripped off all such characteristics, mostly also by music and acting. The nonchalance, the non-caring coolness of the James Woods character is the perspective of the entire movie: Depicting the Vampire genre from its bloody, less romantic side. The anti-hero attitude of James Woods, Daniel Baldwin and Sheryl Lee creates a strange mixture of the uncertain kind.
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Vanilla Sky (2001)
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Summary: Self-Destructive
How can you possibly take a great concept, great actors, great premise, great development and all, and then, at the end, dumb it all down and destroy all the ambiguities and uncertainties by adding some totally superfluous and lengthy explanation? That's how you make an average film, but not an extraordinary one. Give the audience something to think about, give them some alternatives, some space to breathe, and the critics something to crack their head open. But this? All that had been, the entire build-up, interspersed with moments of unease and absurdity, all that's been for nothing as it gets devalued at the end. Who does something like that, does the audience really want to take every single mystery out of it? That's how you destroy a perfectly great concept, it's almost a textbook example. Just shut it off once the explanation begins.
August 6th/26th, 2002
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Vertical Limit (2000)
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Summary: Garbage, almost completely
Martin Campbell is known for two films. One of them, 'Goldeneye', was more or less OK, yet for a Bond film, I'm afraid, it sucked. The other, 'The Mask of Zorro', was a fabulous and entertaining thrill-ride with everything being in its place. 'Vertical Limit', however, goes even below the level of 'Goldeneye' - it is just undescribable how bad this film really is. This is the more annoying as the concept definitely holds potential: The conflict of man versus mountain has been portrayed so compellingly in 'Everest' - and yet, despite some possibly interesting scenes, 'Vertical Limit' does its best to circumvent almost every possible chance of a good and decent scene.
The only really original and interesting aspect is the sympathetic treatment of the Pakistani in this film. The score by James Newton Howard is excellent, yet only in itself: It somehow doesn't fit for the icy mountain scenes, it rather sounds like rain forest, water and jungle - which may be due to its obvious similarities with the 'Waterworld' score, also by Howard. Yet still, it's great music. Another positive aspect is the surprise casting of Alexander Siddig, better known for his role as Dr. Julian Bashir on Deep Space Nine. Nicolas Lea, Alex Krycek from The X-Files, is another possible stronghold - so are Bill Paxton and Scott Glenn, and of course, Chris O'Donnell.
Yet the cast is constantly mistreated, which in turn leads to Paxton's possibly worst performance ever. Maybe that's due to the ridiculous story (the nitroglycerine playing a key role in that, in addition to the constant beginners' mistakes committed by assumed professional climbers), the bad editing with its rough and seemingly unmotivated cuts, the sometimes horribly bad effects (especially in the first scene) and the general feeling of boredom this movie incites. If this were intended as a parody, fine. But it ain't. Unless you really like bad movies, watch 'Everest' instead.
February 17th, 2001
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