williampsamuel

You've seen him in Toy Story. You've heard of his epic battles with Emperor Zurg. You probably know many of his trademark quotes. Now we get to meet the real (fictional) Buzz Lightyear, in the 1995 blockbuster that spawned the sold-out toy, as he goes to infinity and beyond! OK, so it's a pretty convoluted framing device, but the result is a pretty good sci-fi movie and fun ride.

Chris Evens makes a very good Buzz Lightyear, one that will feel familiar to Toy Story fans, but is quite different from the Tim Allan version. The well-known catchphrases are all there, along with the frequent overconfidence and fondness for charging headlong into danger, but with a greater seriousness and sense of duty, plus the skills and experience to (mostly) justify that nearly boundless self-confidence. Toy Story Buzz is a toy who thinks he's a Space Ranger, a comic relief character trying to be an action hero. This Buzz is the chiseled, square jawed action hero, if an occasionally comedic one.

Alongside Buzz, the film introduces a whole cast of new characters. The cat is the best by far. I mean who doesn't love a talking animal? Especially one that acts, and often thinks like a cat, but is also polite, helpful, a scientific genius, and has a gadget for nearly every situation. He's kind of like the Doctor's sonic screwdriver or R2-D2, but cuter. I also quite liked the curmudgeonly old parolee/demolitions expert. She's a born scrounger and MacGyver level tinkerer who can turn anything into a bomb, which probably has something to do with why she was incarcerated in the first place.

Buzz's sidekick Izzy is kind of generic, but plucky, sympathetic, and quite relatable. She makes a good audience identification figure, even if her character development arc is thoroughly predictable. The only character I didn't like much was Morrison, the comic relief sidekick voiced by Taika Waititi. He has his moments, and Waititi certainly knows how to deliver the jokes, but his clumsiness, carelessness, and tendency to panic or give up in every tough situation are honestly more irritating than amusing. He's not full-on Jar-Jar Binks, but there are definitely some similarities. Shame that such a talented actor should be wasted on such a dumb character, and it's nothing some minor re-writes couldn't have fixed.

Even if the character arcs and some of the jokes are fairly predictable, the story is surprisingly not. The narrative structure is simple enough, but there are some surprising twists, and one truly jaw dropping reveal. It also makes very effective use of number of classic sci-fi plot devices, some very familiar, others rarely used in recent years. There are no outright plot holes either, which is admirable for a family film that deals with a number of complicated, high concept plot devices.

There are however a number of plot points that could have used more- or in some cases any- explanation. I really wish hey have told us more about Zurg's plans, certain characters' reasons for taking rather drastic actions, or any number of other non-technical plot points. For once, I think this movie could use more exposition. Maybe even a monologue or two.

Perhaps the biggest narrative issue is that the movie doesn't get to the main conflict with Zurg until almost the halfway point, So Buzz's showdown with Zurg feels kind of rushed, exposition gets the short shift, and the movie doesn't do as much as it could have with that shocking reveal I mentioned earlier. And to be honest, Lightyear almost feels like two movies, with the extremely sudden shift from a narrowly focused, deeply personal story of an astronaut pushing himself to his limits, to an action blockbuster. Having said all that, the story still mostly works, but it could have used some more polish.

On a more positive not, the animation is beautiful. Cartoonish yes, but in an extremely detailed and polished way, that makes the setting and environments feel more grounded and realistic, at least by science fiction standards. There's some very good weapon, creature, and starship designs here, and the lasers, explosions, and other "effects shots" are all great. I especially liked the dazzling hyper-speed sequence, which reminded me more than a little of 2001.

So overall, Lightyear isn't exactly an outstanding or groundbreaking entry in the sci-fi genre, nor is it on the same level of the main Toy Story franchise, but it's still an entertaining and mostly satisfying summer blockbuster and family movie. Kids will love it, and most Disney, and science fiction fans will like it too.

The title Robo Vampire is something of a misnomer. At no point in this movie is there a robot vampire. Robot vs. Vampires would be more accurate, though the robot is actually a cyborg and the "vampires" are undead creatures that look and act more like zombies, move by hopping around, and are summoned with offerings of drugs. Oh, and they're led by a Gorilla man who shoots fireworks out of his sleeves and a "ghost witch" who may or may not actually be dead. Anyway, they're all employed by a drug syndicate to kill narcotics agents. And somehow, all of this makes much, much less sense than this description would imply.

Robo Vampire is a movie completely devoid of logic or coherence. There is nothing even resembling continuity. Most of the scenes have no connection to each other, no real transitions in between, and if you showed them out of order, it would barely make a difference. Characters appear with no introduction, disappear with no explanation, and occasionally seem to change from White to Asian and back between shots. The scene in which the cyborg first appears does a slow fade from him being activated in the lab to him throttling two soldiers in a forest. Then the movie just forgets about him for a while. Later he's shot with a rocket launcher, and before the smoke has even cleared, he's back on the operating table.

If it seems like Robo Vampire was stitched together from several completely unrelated movies, that's because it totally was. Large portions were lifted from a Thai action thriller, combined with hastily shot new footage and effects shots from some the director's previous films, then atrociously dubbed. And I do mean atrociously. You've got love a line like "Orientals are a stubborn people" in a movie written and directed by a Chinese man. Apparently, director/writer Godfrey Ho made a career of cranking out frankenfilms like this. His IMDB page lists more than twenty credits for 1988 alone, which gives you an idea just how much time and effort went into this.

Supposedly this movie had a budget of $2.5 million, but it looks like made with about $90, a camcorder, and some off the shelf Halloween costumes. The effects are cheap and unconvincing, the same empty warehouse and riverbank keep showing up again and again, and the robot is clearly the work of a sewing machine. There are a few relatively competent fights and shootouts, which obviously came from another movie. The action scenes with the robot and the vampires mostly look like the result of the editor having a seizure while the actors flail and hop around.

In fact, this whole movie is essentially the cinematic equivalent of a seizure. Or maybe a really bad acid trip. Heaven knows that with the constant references to drugs in this movie the filmmakers must have been on some themselves. I don't know what audience this was intended for, or how it could possibly have made any money, but the fact that this director made 149 other movies of roughly equal quality is enough to fill me with deep foreboding.

Manos: The Hands of Fate is the story of a family who become lost while driving thought the West Texas desert and are menaced by a polygamous cult. It also a strong contender for the title of worst movie ever made. With glacial pacing, a threadbare plot, very little that could be described as acting, no real production values to speak of, and nothing remotely scary or exciting, it's a near perfect example of how not to make a movie.

This makes a lot a lot of sense once you know the story behind the movie. You see, Manos was written, directed, and produced by an El Paso insurance salesman with no experience in film or acting, in order to win a bet that he could make a movie. He did this with a near zero budget, a cast of community theater volunteers and random townspeople, and the absolute minimum of editing and post-production work possible. He won his bet, but seeing the result, you'll seriously wonder if it was worth it.

At least the first five minutes consist of the family driving aimlessly around the desert, passing the same amorous teenage couple again and again, in what may be the most pointless, meandering opening sequence ever put on film. Apparently, this was supposed to be a leisurely opening credits sequence, but the filmmakers ran out of money to add the credits, and just left it in to pad the runtime. It drags on and on, going nowhere, adding nothing to the story, until they finally reach the Master's house. Sadly, this brings very little improvement in plot or pacing.

Instead we're mainly treated to slow, awkward conversations, aborted attempts to leave the Master's house for somewhere safer, and even more shots of that teen couple making out in their car. The closest thing this movie has to a high point is the extended catfight between the Master's nightgown clad wives, but even this gets boring after the first couple minutes. You know you're in trouble when you can't make gratuitous exploitation work.

As with any bad horror movie, the characters spend far too much time wandering around looking for each other, calling out each other's names over and over with no reply. You wouldn't think it would take them so long to find each other in such a small house in the absolute middle of nowhere. Then again, it is pretty dark, and these people aren't very bright.

Now the reason it's so dark is that in order to accommodate the cast and crew's day jobs, most shooting was done at night. Only they didn't have the budget for proper lighting, so most of the exterior scenes are pitch black. Hence the scene in which police hear gunshots, walk a few steps from their car to investigate, then turn around and give up because it's too dark to see anything. The lack of production values is even more apparent when one of the night scenes cuts to a piece of stock footage- instantly recognizable as such because it's better lit and photographed than any other part of the movie.

If there is any redeeming value to this production beyond sheer camp, it's John Reynold's one of a kind performance as Torgo, the Master's slow talking, long suffering henchman and housekeeper. I'm not saying it's a good performance. In fact, it's about as far from anything resembling a good performance as can be imagined. But between his stilted, halting speech, jerking movements, and near constant facial tics, Reynold's acting is so awful, so creepy, in such a uniquely bizarre way, that it's almost hypnotic. Like a Beatnik version of Nic Cage, he's either manic or semi-comatose in every scene. No one could possibly be this terrible on purpose, and I was not at all surprised to learn that he was in fact a heavy drug user.

The other performances are also uniformly bad, but aside from a few amusingly overwrought outbursts from the Master, only in the flat, boring manner of the entire movie. It's kind of amazing that it takes over ninety minutes for so little to happen, or that what's supposed to be a horror movie can be so utterly devoid of anything remotely scary. It does manage to be intermittently creepy, but only in all the wrong ways, as in the deeply unwholesome final scene, which I can only hope the filmmakers didn't realize the full undertones of.

The whole thing is just an utter mess of earnest intentions colliding with woeful ineptitude, like Ed Wood minus the minor celebrities and special effects. It's slow, boring, disjointed, frequently bizarre, and completely botched on every imaginable level. If there is a lesson to this movie, it's that just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should. I cannot recommend the original cut, even to the most committed bad movie lovers. However, I can recommend the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, which makes for a rather amusing, relatively painless introduction to the cult of Manos.