Goodnight, 007: Roger Moore (1927-2017)

"But James, I need you." "So does England."--The Spy Who Loved Me

The world is a sadder place this week. We lost the first of the series James Bond actors with the passing of Roger Moore at the age of 89 after a short battle with cancer.

Roger Moore was my first James Bond. I was seven when I first saw The Spy Who Loved Me on HBO in the summer of 1978. I didn't fully understand it at that age--and the guy with the metal teeth absolutely terrified me--but I couldn't stop watching it. I loved it. Almost forty years later, it's still an all-time favorite.
Of course, it's an argument that's gone on for decades: who is the best Bond? Sadly, in some ways, Roger Moore has gotten the most abuse of any of them. And yet, I will argue that Roger was the best.

"Oh, come on!" you are no doubt saying. "Everyone knows that Sean Connery was the best Bond ever. Daniel Craig is a close second."

Really? While I will admit that Connery's first three films are pretty great, let's be totally honest. Thunderball runs a bit too long and the underwater fight is pretty dull. Connery is outright bored and putting forward very little effort in You Only Live Twice. Diamonds are Forever is as silly as anything Moore ever did. And if Thunderball runs too long, it's remake, Never Say Never Again is just plain bottom five Bond. As for Craig, while Casino Royale and Skyfall are pretty terrific, Quantum of Solace joins NSNA on the bottom five and Spectre is a pretty good Roger Moore film. By the way, you wouldn't have Daniel Craig's films today without Roger Moore.

"That's crazy talk!" you shout defensively. "We wouldn't have Daniel Craig without Sean Connery."

Nope. After Connery left and George Lazenby did his one shot at Bond, the entire future of the series was hanging in the balance. To the point that the producers begged Connery back. He came back for Diamonds are Forever, of course, but that was it. If Roger Moore hadn't taken over the role and been accepted by audiences, we wouldn't have had Skyfall. That's right. If Live and Let Die had flopped, we wouldn't still be watching James Bond movies today. It didn't. And while his second film is a bit shaky, his third--like Connery's third entry--is his best and helped secure James Bond straight to the 21st Century.

"But his movies are so bad!"

Are they? I admit Live and Let Die is a pure product of 1973, riding the coattails of Blaxploitation, but it's actually a pretty good movie all the same. The Man With The Golden Gun leaves something to be desired but is somehow not as bad as Die Another Day or Quantum of Solace. The Spy Who Loved Me is where Roger Moore became the character of James Bond for sure and it's as good an entry as Goldfinger or Skyfall. Moonraker is kinda silly but fun. For Your Eyes Only showed that Moore could easily have done From Russia With Love style Bond. Octopussy is loads of fun. As for A View to a Kill, I think it's an under appreciated film. .

A View to a Kill was the first Bond I saw in the theaters. Does Roger look a little old in it? Maybe, though he certainly doesn't look as ridiculous as William Shatner in Star Trek V or--God help me--Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. First close up of him in that movie and all I could think was "He looks OLD". Besides, A View to a Kill has some great set pieces, including the fight on top of the Golden Gate Bridge. In 1985, on the big screen, that scene was a real nail biter. I was literally on the edge of my seat watching it.

By the way, in 1983 when there was the great 007 shootout between Moore's Octopussy and Connery's Never Say Never Again, not only was Octopussy the better movie, it did better at the box office.

"Yeah but he didn't have a career post-Bond," you snicker, thinking you finally have me.

Please. Outside of Connery, have any of them really had a career post-Bond? George Lazenby's career turned south so fast, he was a joke in Kentucky Fried Movie just five years after On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The last movie I actively remember seeing Timothy Dalton in was Looney Tunes Back In Action, where he played a joke on Bond. He also managed to pop up in an episode of Doctor Who, but wasn't asked back to reprise the character apparently. Pierce Brosnan has done a little better, but even he's not really a headliner anymore. As for Craig, we'll just have to see but it does seem notable that two of his higher profile non-Bond movies--The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Golden Compass--didn't exactly set the box office on fire.

Anyhow, his post-Bond career was dedicated to making the world a better place through UNICEF, so who needs a film career when you have that going on? He left Bond behind to become a different type of hero. It's also worth noting that he's the only Bond actor to not badmouth the role afterwards and to actually appreciate not only what Bond did for him, but what it meant for others.

"Oh, you're just being nostalgic for your childhood", you finally scoff.

You could be right. But then again, how many people aren't? I have found with Bond over the years that people's favorites are whoever they are exposed to first. I have a friend whose first Bond was Goldfinger in 1964, so naturally, to him there's only Sean Connery. On the other end of the scale, my nephew's first Bond was Pierce Brosnan and to this day he's the only one my nephew likes. My brother's first one was Live and Let Die, so that's his favorite. But that's okay, too. Bond is Bond. It's like Doctor Who. Everyone has a favorite Doctor and the argument will spin forever whose Doctor was best. But just like Doctor Who managed to continue on thanks to Patrick Troughton, James Bond continues to this day thanks to Roger Moore.

I make no apologies for liking Roger best. I grew up with him. I still have the Moonraker View Master reels. I may still have my well read copy of the Marvel tie in to For Your Eyes Only. Nobody Does It Better is still my favorite Bond tune. His Bond movies have provided me many hours of fun.

Roger Moore remains the longest running Bond with the most in-series movies (NSNA is outside of the series like the 1954 and 1967 versions of Casino Royale). He had a grace and a charm. He might have seemed to stroll through the films with a smirk and a raised eyebrow, but that was part of the fun. He might have turned Bond into Superman, but he did it with class. He was exactly the Bond we needed at the time he came along and what he ultimately did was prove that the series could survive.

So long, Roger. Thank you for being my 007.

"Bond, what do you think you're doing?" "Keeping the British end up, sir."

3-D Thursday: It Came From Outer Space (1953)

Fueled by the terrors of Godless Communism, Nuclear War, and the mysterious happenings at Roswell, the 1950s were a Golden Age of Science Fiction movies like no other decade before or since. One of the best of the decade, 1953's It Came From Outer Space is making a long awaited 3D Blu Ray debut courtesy of Universal Studios and the 3-D Film Archive.

The film opens memorably with a meteor crashing into a mine in the desert outside a sleepy town in Arizona. Amateur astronomer John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and girlfriend Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) witness the crash and go to investigate. Putnam gets a good enough look at the meteor to realize it's actually a spaceship with something alive roaming around inside. The problem arises when the ship is covered over by an avalanche. Putnam tries enlisting help digging the ship out, but the town mocks him. Then weird things start happening and certain members of town begin to wonder if there's something to Putnam's story after all.

Incidentally, Carlson isn't the only cult figure in the movie. Playing the part of George is none other than The Professor himself, Russell Johnson. No, he doesn't get billed as "And the rest". But he does get one of the movie's creepiest scenes, staring blankly into the sun without blinking as one of the Xenomorphs. Joe Sawyer is Johnson's partner. Fans of the Marx Brothers will recognize Charles Drake (A Night in Casablanca) as the sheriff. On the feminine side, we have Barbara Rush in the first of her two 3-D movies and 50s starlet Kathleen Hughes as George's girlfriend. Hughes made a big enough impression that she got a larger role in Arnold's next 3-D movie, The Glass Web. She also amusingly gets a title card at the end despite having less than five minutes of screen time!

One of the best things about 50s sci-fi movies is how intelligent they often are. It Came From Outer Space stands alongside The Day the Earth Stood Still (the 1951 version) as being one of the most intelligent of the lot. Part of that comes from Ray Bradbury. A lot of the dialogue in the movie is his and it absolutely sings in that way that only Bradbury could. It touches on themes common to movies of the era--the unending terror of the Red Under The Bed in particular. The fact that the Xenomorphs could look like and therefore be anyone in town was somewhat unsettling. And yet, there is a special irony in the fact that the aliens actually do come in peace. But as the movie itself points out, we tend to destroy that which we fear and don't understand.

It Came From Outer Space was Universal's first 3-D film. It was also the first of four 3-D movies made by Jack Arnold. Originally projected in dual strip polarized 3-D, the movie was converted to a single strip anaglyphic form in 1972 for re-issue. Since then, that's the way most people have seen the film if they've seen it in 3-D. While I won't go so far as to say that the anaglyphic version is purely awful, it's not as good as the original dual strip version. And surprisingly, the original dual strip version isn't as good as this 3-D Blu Ray.

That's largely due to the efforts of the 3-D Film Archive. Universal gave them access to the materials to do a full scale restoration of the movie. While they didn't have to quite jump through the hoops they did on Gog earlier this year, they still pulled off a mini-miracle. All dirt, scratches, and splices have been fixed along with all alignment issues. All reverse 3-D shots have been fixed. In short, the movie looks better now than any other time in it's history. And yet even that is only the tip of the laser. The soundtrack is where the movie really pops to life.

It Came From Outer Space was one of the early stereophonic releases, shown in a 3 track stereo sound in 1953.That soundtrack has not been heard since then. That's right. Not one single prior home video release of the movie--not the anaglyphic VHS released in 1980 nor the 2D version put out by Goodtimes in the late 1980s nor the DVD from 2003--has had the stereo soundtrack. And guess what? That anaglyphic 35mm and 16mm re-issue from 1972 didn't have it either. In short, not only have people been watching the movie in a fairly sub-par manner for the past nearly 45 years, they've been hearing it in a sub-par manner! This soundtrack rocks.The explosions are Loud. It's a soundtrack as 3-Dimensional as the movie is.

As a postscript, it's worth noting that in 1996, the Sci-Fi channel released a "sequel" called It Came From Outer Space II. Don't feel sad if you've never seen it. It wasn't so much a sequel as a really poor remake that replaced the astronomer with a photographer (why?) and made the aliens a little more malevolent, thereby completely missing the point of the original movie. You can, of course, seek it out if you're in a sadomasochistic mood, but I wouldn't recommend it.

If you've never seen It Came From Outer Space in 3-D, then you've never properly seen the movie. Like so many of the 50s 3-D films, the added dimension adds layers to the story the 2-D version never could. This is one of those 3-D movies that takes place in the desert, and boy does that desert go on forever. The vastness of the desert only adds to the menace.

This new Blu Ray is really the only way to see It Came From Outer Space. And considering the price (under $10!), it's a better bargain than most new 3-D movies.  If you're a 3-D fan, consider this one a must-own release.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

There's an odd thing about The Phantom Menace. During the actual act of watching it, it doesn't really come off as being a bad movie. For the most part the actors range from competent to great, the plot line is intriguing, the pace is good, and there's plenty going on. But, once you stop and think really hard about it, the vitriol comes out and people curse the day they heard the name George Lucas.

Mind you, I can easily name a dozen or more Sci-Fi films that are way, way worse than this. The worst Star Trek movie, Star Trek V, makes this look like Casablanca. And this isn't even the worst Star Wars film ever (hello, Star Wars Holiday Special). For that matter, it's not even the worst of the theatrical Star Wars movies (hello, Clone Wars). But undoubtedly, it is the single most hated film in the franchise.

That's a tragedy since it's actually not a bad movie at all.

Of course much of the hate, besides being directed at Lucas, is directed at Jar Jar Binks, the eponymous comic relief. But as I pointed out previously, Jar Jar isn't even the film's biggest problem. He may be it's most obvious, but not it's biggest.

The biggest issue with the movie is  the same problem that some of the newer James Bond movies have had: it's too much of a cut and paste job. We're not only getting the same basic story, we're getting too many of the same exact scenes. This is most obvious during the film's big finale. It's a mash-up of the finales of the previous three films: the big space battle to destroy the evil Space Base (Star Wars), the light saber duel to the death (Empire Strikes Back), and the primitive planet natives rising up against the evil technologically advanced empire (Return of the Jedi). Mind you, almost all of the sequels and prequels repeat elements. It just comes off as slightly more pronounced here due to the long wait between Jedi and this.

I suspect that the long wait between films is also what doomed it to be a let down. After all, a generation of fans had a decade and a half to wonder what things were like prior to the events of the first movie. How did the Empire rise? What was Darth Vader like when he was Anakin Skywalker? What were the Clone Wars anyhow? Kids played with the toys and imagined their own adventures and had in their minds eye exactly what the prequels would be like.

So naturally when this movie came out and we find out the Emperor rose to power by manipulating a war caused by taxation and Anakin Skywalker was a ten year old who said "Yippee!", a bunch of adults threw a galaxy sized hissy fit. And that hissy fit has only grown in the 18 years since the film first debuted. Screams of Lucas ruining people's childhood have resounded to Dantooine and back by now. Which, of course, is just plain silly. Especially since this film--as almost all of the Star Wars films are--is really a children's film. It wasn't made for 40 year old men wearing Princess Leia costumes and play with action figures. It was made, as the original film was, for ten year old kids who play with action figures and who are far more likely to dress like a Jedi.

But then again, wars have been fought and dictators placed in power over more ridiculous things than taxes. And what exactly did people think a ten year old Anakin would be like? Did they expect him to run around chopping people down with a light saber?

If I sound snobbish and dismissive of the fans, understand that I myself am a Star Wars fan. I'm old enough to have seen the first film on it's original release in the theaters. I played with the toys. I've read some of the books and comic books. I played Star Wars video games on the Atari 2600. I was a member of the fan club and read the fan club newsletter (Bantha Tracks!) back in the day. I even cherished the disco version of the theme song put out by Meco!

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the films had actually been made in episodic order. If this had actually been the first film in the series, would it still be as hated? I tend to doubt it. The action sequences are first rate.
Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman, and Ewan McGregor all do first rate jobs. Darth Maul is a menacing enough villain, even if--like Bobba Fett before him--he doesn't quite live up to his potential. Yeah, Jar Jar is a bit annoying, but no more so than any other comic relief character before him.

Am I saying this is a perfect Star Wars film? Of course not. It has it's issues. All movies do. But the grown men in the Princess Leia costumes screaming that this was a rape of their childhood and the worst thing that ever happened to them need to get a bit of a grip. If this is the worst movie you've ever seen, I'm guessing you haven't seen that many movies. And if this film destroyed all happy memories of your childhood, then maybe your childhood wasn't as happy as you remember it being. And if this was the worst thing to happen to you ever, I'm guessing nobody you know ever died.

At the end of the day, we're talking about something that's just a movie. It's not the worst movie of all time or even the worst sequel of all time. Sure, it's the worst of the episodic Star Wars movies, but--like the worst James Bond movie--it's still better than most other series films out there. It's still entertaining. It had one job to do--to set up the other prequels and make you want to see those prequels. It succeeded in that. It actually did make me curious to see where the story would go. There's a lot of serials I can't say that about. You really want to see a sequel that systematically sets out to destroy everything you liked about the original film? Try Jaws: The Revenge or the Smokey and the Bandit sequels. This film looks like the greatest film of all time compared to them!

3-D Thursday: Comin' At Ya! (1981)

Let's not kid ourselves. Comin' At Ya! is a rotten movie. It has the barest amount of plot it can muster and about as much dialogue. Possibly less. Point in fact, it barely qualifies as a movie. So much so that nobody found a reason to release it on home video in the U.S. until Rhino put out a poor anaglyphic VHS and DVD in 1999, 18 years after it was first released. Its prior home video release was in the mid 80s in the old field sequential format on Japanese VHD. Now its managed a 3D Blu Ray release with the humorous sticker proudly trumpeting the 2D version is included. Please. There's barely a reason to watch it in 3-D, let alone flat.

The bare premise is that after  white slavers kidnap his wife (Victoria Abril) on their wedding day, H.H. Hart (Tony Anthony--God help me, that's his name) gets pissed off and angry and decides to hunt them down. Hart rescues his wife and a bunch of other women, the white slavers recapture them, kill them, and then Hart kills all the white slavers. The End.

If you're thinking that my words are not doing justice to this movie--that surely there must be more to it than that--let me reassure you. No, there really isn't. This is a movie whose plot summary would fit on a postage stamp with room left over.

In an effort to perhaps make the film more interesting, the filmmakers added a gimmick to the gimmick for the reissue. Calling it "Noir 3-D", they went back and made certain shots black and white, or part black and white. It's meant to add a visual flair to the movie, but it's actually an epic fail. It's actually more distracting than interesting.

Like almost every 3-D movie from The Bubble in 1966 to the My Bloody Valentine 3-D in 2009, Comin' At Ya! lost its mind with gimmick shots. Bats, rats, playing cards, guns, knives, spears, flaming arrows, gold coins, coffee beans, and yes a baby's bare ass are flung, tossed, chucked, dropped and otherwise thrust at the audience over the course of 90 minutes. To put it another way, this movie's 3-D is about as subtle as the most garish Hawaiian shirt you can imagine. And while this level of gimmicky goodness does seem to be a lost art today, this particular example is practically a rape of your eyeballs.

It is an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, if you have a 3D TV and are sick of watching 3D movies that have few to no gimmick shots, the 3D Blu Ray of Comin' At Ya! might just be what the doctor ordered. On the other hand, the 3D Film Archive did not work on this release, so there is no correction to the alignment. This means that the film looks fairly brutal. As often happened back then, some of the gimmick shots get way too close to the camera. Virtually every 3D movie of the 70s and 80s did this, causing shots that made you feel like your eyeballs were about to be ripped out of your head.

If you are a completionist of either vintage 3-D or 3-D in general, then absolutely get this disc. If, however, you are subject to headaches from 3-D movies, you may want to skip this disc. I've watched  3-D movies for almost 35 years and even I had difficulty with it. I ended up watching the movie in chunks, partly because of how bad the movie itself is and partly because I need to rest my eyes from the constant assault being inflicted on them.

I am glad to have finally seen the movie in a proper 3-D format. The old Rhino VHS made a pretty brutal to watch movie even more so. I think the restoration could have concentrated less on the black and white and more on correcting the 3-D, but it is what it is. Comin' At Ya! is the first of the 18 3-D movies released between 1981 and 1985, so as a piece of 3-D history, like the equally awful Bwana Devil and The Stewardesses before it, it rates a viewing if you're a 3-D buff. Otherwise, there are better examples of this sort of thing, even from that decade.

3-D Classics on Blu Ray

If you're a fan of vintage 3-D 2016 has been a pretty awesome year so far. MVD kicked things off in January with 1981's Comin' At Ya!. Admittedly, that's a terrible movie--all of the 80s 3-D films fail at being good movies--but it has a lot of goofy 3-D gimmick shots so it's kind of fun in that manner.

Kino Lorber in March released Gog courtesy of the 3-D Film Archive. I've mentioned before what a fantastic restoration it is and it bears repeating. Gog hasn't looked this good since its initial release in 1954. This is a restoration to rival restorations from the major studios, that's how well done it is. If you're a fan of 50s science fiction or classic 3-D movies, you really need to get this one.

Going back to 80s 3-D for a moment, last month Universal finally released all 3 Jaws sequels on Blu Ray. Included in this, of course, is Jaws 3-D. While they didn't make as big a deal about it as it can be argued they should have, that Blu includes the 3-D version listed as a special feature. But it's the 3-D Blu Ray edition, unlike Paramount's anaglyphic release of Friday the 13th Part 3. Some of the gimmick shots get way too close to the camera for comfort but the 3-D looks great. I have a warm spot for Jaws 3-D (despite knowing it's a bad movie) since it was my first 3-D movie in the theaters so I'm glad it's finally out the way it was meant to be seen. Besides, why would you want to watch it any other way?

The most recent release is a 1950s title from Twilight Time. Miss Sadie Thompson starring Rita Hayworth and Jose Ferrer shipped just this week. Sony did a beautiful 3-D DCP restoration a few years ago. I saw that DCP at the 2013 World 3-D Film Expo and it looked terrific. That's what Twilight Time is releasing. I'm looking forward to revisiting this soon.

There's more on the way, too. Kino Lorber and the 3-D Film Archive are working on 1976's A*P*E.  A South Korean Kaiju movie made to compete  with the Dino DeLaurentis remake of King Kong, A*P*E has a ridiculous looking 36 foot gorilla rampaging across Korea, kidnapping Joanna Kerns (the mom from Growing Pains), and flipping off the audience! While it wouldn't be my first choice for restoration, I'm confident the 3-D Film Archive will make it look better than it deserves. More exciting is the potential restoration of September Storm from the 3-D Film Archive. There's a Kickstarter campaign to fund the restoration at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/3-dspace/september-storm-1960-3-d-digital-feature-film-rest. If you are a fan of vintage 3-D, you owe it to yourself to contribute to this.

On top of that, Shout Factory has announced 1983's Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn. Charles Band's second of three 3-D movies, Metalstorm stars Kelly Preston in the second worst sci-fi movie she was in (Battlefield Earth remains the champ) and Richard Moll in the part that got him the role of Bull in Night Court. It has just enough goofy 3-D effects to make it worth watching, too. The 3-D Blu Ray will be released on September 13.

Finally, Universal may be working on the 1953 sci-fi classic It Came From Outer Space. Originally, Panamint in the U.K. had announced a release set for this month but cancelled it when Universal said they were planning a release. It the Universal Blu Ray is the same as what Panamint was planning, it will include the short that originally played with the movie, Nat King Cole and Russ Morgan's Orchestra. Universal hasn't confirmed anything yet, however, so vintage 3-D fans wait eagerly for news.

For those of you who wonder why I get so enthusiastic about these old 3-D movies and not so much the newer ones, it's because I generally find the older titles have better 3-D. They take better advantage of the process with greater depth and more gimmick shots. Even the less gimmicky films of the 50s are deeper and, as a rule, have at least some pop outs. There are more recent titles that have     nothing coming out of the screen at all. They also usually don't take as much advantage of the depth as they could. There are exceptions, of course, but they aren't the rule. So until all modern filmmakers bring the fun back to 3-D, I'll continue to jump at any of these older titles.

HELP THE 3-D FILM ARCHIVE SAVE SEPTEMBER STORM (1960)

I don't normally do this sort of thing. I do not, as a rule, use this blog to promote any Kickstarter campaigns. Not mine and certainly not anyone else's. That said, there is that old saw about rules being made to be broken and this is one of those times. This is special. The campaign at
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/3-dspace/september-storm-1960-3-d-digital-feature-film-rest is for a lost 3-D film, something that instantly caught my attention and it should catch yours, too.

The fine folks at The 3-D Film Archive and 3-D Space: The Center for Stereoscopic Photography, Art, Cinema and Education have teamed up to restore the ultra-rare 1960 underwater thriller September Storm. This was the last 3-D film to actually be shot in the 1950s, having been filmed in Spain in 1959. It is also the first 3-D film to have underwater color photography and it is the first ever 3-D film shot in the CinemaScope process. This is a major but sadly forgotten piece of cinematic history that is on the verge of disappearing forever.

The elements are in real bad shape. They have developed Vinegar Syndrome, meaning that the film has started to warp, shrink, and become brittle. If digital scans are not done soon, the movie will be beyond saving. Being a dual strip 3-D feature, both the left and right eye film elements need to be digitally scanned frame by frame. Any alignment issues will need to be corrected for proper 3-D presentation. On top of that, color restoration and matching is also needed and any damage such as scratches and splices will need to be repaired. It sounds like a tall, expensive order but this is The 3-D  Film Archive we're talking about. They did all this fairly recently with Gog so they can do it here, too.

But they can't do it alone. They need funding to save this one due to the dire shape it's in. That's why they've gone to Kickstarter this time. While it's true that the survival rate of vintage 3-D is pretty impressive, there have been casualties over the decades. 1954's Top Banana only exists in 2-D now. The same year's Southwest Passage--which has Joanne Dru, the star of September Storm--only has half of the movie in 3-D. And as recent a movie as 1983's Rock N Roll Hotel is effectively gone, only existing in a recut 2-D pan and scan VHS. The original 3-D version is gone now. Think about that for a minute. A movie a little over 30 years old is lost. Let's not lose September Storm, too.

I suppose some of you may be wondering if this is a good movie. I have no idea. I saw a few seconds of it a couple of decades ago on AMC in 2-D and pan and scan and chose not to continue. That said, I personally want to see this the way it's meant to be seen: in 3-D and Scope. Besides, does it really matter if it's a good movie? After all, if something as minor as Manos, Hands of Fate is worthy of rescue and restoration, why shouldn't this one be, too? Anyhow, I figure it has some merit. Besides starring Dru, it was directed by the director of 1953's War of the Worlds.

As of this writing, the campaign has raised over 10% of its goal. That's a good start but I've seen these things fail before. Let's not let that happen. Too often films have rotted away due to the indifference of rights holders so this is a chance to contribute to film preservation and keep a historically important movie from vanishing into the abyss.

If you care at all about film preservation or 3-D movies, you absolutely need to contribute to this. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/3-dspace/september-storm-1960-3-d-digital-feature-film-rest

Ghost Busters (2016)

I'll be the first to admit that the internet gender war over Ghostbusters isn't particularly interesting to me. Neither the Social Justice Warriors who demand that it is every woman's responsibility to see this movie nor the Anti-Cootie Brigade's demand that it is every man's responsibility to not see it concerns me. After all, at the end of the day the new Ghostbusters is just another in a fairly long line of remakes of movies from the 1980s. Truth to tell, so many remakes of 80s movies have been done in the past 7 or so years that I sometimes feel I am reliving the decade.

Oh, I get that absolutely nothing I write in this review is going to change your mind if you're one of the people who has already decided if this is good or not. The battle lines have been clearly drawn for two years and people who have not even seen it or are even likely to see it already know everything they want to know about it. However, if you're one of those few people in the world with the intelligence to know that you can't really have an informed opinion on a movie without seeing it, please feel free to read on.

The real questions that needs to be asked of this movie--indeed the only ones that should be asked--is "is it good? Is it funny?". If the answer to that is yes, then gender doesn't really matter, now does it?

Point in fact, the answer does happen to be yes. This is a good, funny movie.

Is it as good as the original? Don't be absurd. Of course it isn't. But I would point out that none of the 80s redos have been, either. It helps that its not a beat for beat remake. It does take some ideas and cameos from the original but it is also its own thing.

Dr. Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is about to make tenure at Columbia University when a ghost from her past comes back. In this case the ghost happens to be a book she wrote years ago with a friend, Abigail Yates (Melissa McCarthy). Yates has republished the book much to Gilbert's dismay. When Gilbert goes to ask Yates to pull the book, she gets dragged along to investigate a haunted mansion by Yates and her new assistant Jillian Holtzman (a wonderfully unhinged Kate McKinnon). When a video of the investigation goes viral--ending with a slimed Gilbert declaring her belief in ghosts--the trio gets fired and decides to set up shop hunting ghosts. They are shortly joined by former MTA worker Patty (Leslie Jones) and dumber than a brick secretary Kevin (Chris Hemsworth). Things get complicated by the usual bureaucrats trying to shut them down while a creepy janitor wants to unleash the Ghostpocalypse on the city.

I won't claim as others have that this is funnier than the 1984 original. Then again, the original is one of the top ten comedies of the 1980s with three top comedians at the top of their game directed by a comedy director at the top of his game. It's an impossible bar to measure up to and even the original cast fell short with Ghostbusters 2 in 1989.

That said, this version also has four top comics at the height of their game directed by a comic director at the top of his game. If this film falls short its not for want of trying. Its just that the original is just that classic. But this movie has nothing to be ashamed of. It has plenty of laughs, especially from Hemsworth, who threatens to steal the show from his four co-stars.

All of the surviving stars make cameos along with a few of the ghosts. After a while the cameos become slightly distracting which is probably the biggest knock on the movie. Some of them sort of work while others just plain fall flat. Dan Akroyd's unfortunately falls into the latter category.

But perhaps the most interesting and fun aspect of this is the 3-D. Unlike many modern 3-D movies, this one actually bothers with gimmick shots! Imagine that! Ghosts and Proton beams go flying out of the screen with fair regularity. It's not quite as insane as an 80s 3-D movie and it would look a bit better if it had been actually shot in 3-D as opposed to being a conversion, but it also doesn't shy away from what makes 3-D fun. It's actually well worth watching in 3-D, something that can't always be said nowadays.

But then again, it's just plain worth watching. While it's not going to make you forget the original, it's also not the disaster the ACB was hoping it would be. It's a good, fun time at the movies during the summer that, since it runs under two hours, wisely doesn't overstay it's welcome.

I hope this movie does well at the box office. NOT to vindicate the SJWs and make the ACB look foolish, but simply because it deserves to.