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First, the Good:
I saw "Unleashed" Saturday afternoon with a friend, merely hoping that this would be Jet Li's own "Hard Target" (my hands-down favorite Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, at least when it comes to re-watchability -- directed by John Woo, and with both Lance Henrikson and Arnold Vosloo as baddies, and Yancy Butler as the maiden in distress) -- a movie that would do justice to Jet Li's martial arts prowess and native charm and also be a well-acted and well-directed and gripping movie.
Not that I don't get a kick out of those dubbed "Fists of Fury" earlier Chinese flicks of Li's that Spike TV frequently shows on Saturday afternoons -- especially the "historical" ones with all the flying and the much greater quotient of humor (I really loved the one where Li's character's MOTHER was also a great martial artist and dressed up as a man for most of the film so she could get into trouble right alongside her son!) . . . . But, by and large, the English-language movies Jet Li has been in so far haven't been all that profound. "Romeo Must Die" was charming and well-done, and I thoroughly enjoyed Li in it, but it was hardly profound in any lasting sense.
But "Unleashed" was really moving and even thought-provoking, and Li's performance as a man who's been so thoroughly dehumanized and abused that he's unable to feel his own pain or anyone else's was thoroughly believable. Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins were appropriately wise and humane (Freeman) and harsh and manipulative (Hoskins) as Li's two opposing mentor-father-figures. And yes, the fights were spectacular, and almost NONE of the violence seemed gratuitous. (I did think that the fight in the narrow confines of a bathroom at one point was just thrown in there for the martial arts fans who didn't come to see plot or character development, but apart from that one sequence, it all seemed pertinent and necessary.)
I highly recommend this film for anyone who's struggled to overcome their own damaged past, or who's worked with others dealing with the challenge of breaking out of the abusive but familiar cycles of their upbringing in order to make better choices in the future and recover their human dignity and ability to truly feel and grieve their pain. Plus, there are lots of cute and funny bits, centered around Li's growing relationship with Freeman and his step-daughter.
Now, for the So-So:
This category includes both the final actual episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise" last Friday night (I mean the first one, the conclusion of the Terra Prime two-parter, since the supposed series finale was in no way, shape, or form worthy of being counted as an "Enterprise" episode, in my opinion -- I've already mentally deleted it from the entire Star Trek canon, right alongside the original series episode "Turnabout Intruder," a.k.a. "Captain Kirk, Space Queen") and the Sci-Fi Channel's Saturday night monster-movie-of-the-week, "The Fallen Ones".
The "Enterprise" episode made me cry, as expected, and featured some fine work by all of the cast, as well as the always watchable Peter Weller as the paranoid head of an anti-alien terrorist group with some striking similarities to Hitler (in the sense of not measuring up at all to the model of racial "purity" that he claims to stand for, at the very least).
But it was undermined by what I felt was the totally gratuitous death of the baby, and the fact that nowhere in the two-part episode did anyone refer to the fact that the crew already KNEW for a FACT that T'Pol and Tripp were capable of producing a healthy Vulcan-Human hybrid offspring, based on their encounter with an alternate timeline future Enterprise NX-01 in the Delphic Expanse last season, commanded by the middle-aged son of Tripp and T'Pol.
It seemed to me that the baby's death (though believable on the grounds that the Terra Prime scientists who produced her from Tripp and T'Pol's DNA were only concerned with manufacturing a genetic bugaboo to become the focus of Human purist paranoia, rather than producing a viable hybrid offspring for the long-term) was mainly necessitated by the plot developments in the following, so-called finale episode. If the child had survived, it would be much less credible that T'Pol and Tripp had, as that episode claimed, irrevocably broken off their romantic relationship at about that point in time.
Yes, I cried as T'Pol and Tripp grieved in their own ways, yet together, and I could recognize that sometimes a martyr can be a way to bring disparate groups together (in this case, the baby's memorial service bringing together all the alien and human representatives in solidarity over the common loss), but I wasn't convinced that the death was truly necessary, and even as I cried I felt somewhat manipulated.
As for "The Fallen Ones", even though it had the cheesy special effects and production values we've come to expect from the Sci-Fi Channel's made-to-order monster flicks, and even though it played a bit fast and loose with the Bible (most of which didn't bother me, except for perpetuating the common, ignorant mistake of referring to the last book in the New Testament as "Revelations," when it ain't no such thing -- it is one singular "Revelation," and no one with even the research skills of a college freshman could keep on making such a mistake), I found that it had a lot more wit and humor than I'd expected (particular when it came to the supporting characters, like the guy whose stronger older sisters apparently taught him to rely on ankle-biting as his primary form of offensive fighting). Plus, Casper Van Dien is still awfully cute to watch, even if he's not up to the acting standards of such TV veterans as Tom Bosley and Robert Wagner. Between this movie and the Saturday-night premiere from a couple of months ago (the one starring two of my favorite "Xena" alumni, Bruce Campbell and Renee O'Connor, as tongue-in-cheek future astronauts fighting giant termite oppressors of humanity), I'm almost ready to admit that not absolutely every TV movie made for the Sci-Fi Channel sucks dead bunnies.
And as for the truly Sucky . . . .
The award goes, of course, to the so-called series finale episode of "Enterprise" last Friday. I have not always been pleased with, or even tolerant of, some of the weaker episodes during the four-year run of "Enterprise", but I am entirely in agreement with Jolene Blaylock in decrying that episode as a total rip-off and abomination.
I was honestly amazed that anyone had the gaul to think that it was a good idea to have the whole episode dominated by ST:TNG's Riker and Troi . . . and not only that, but to ask us to believe that they were the Riker and Troi of (I'd estimate) at least 15 years ago, during the ST:TNG episode about the recovery of Riker's old ship-with-a-dirty-little-secret, the U.S.S. Pegasus, rather than the much-older (and showing it) Riker and Troi of some post-"Nemesis" occasion (which might, at least, have had some possible merit as an addition to the Next Gen storyline).
If you cared at all about seeing Riker and Troi in that episode, then you were certainly enough of a Next Gen fan to have seen the Pegasus episode several times and to know that we've already been there and done that, and there was no unfinished business there that needed to be filled in -- particularly not when Jonathan Frakes, at least, looked 20 years too old for that storyline. The Pegasus setting just made the whole "Enterpise" holo-deck experience doubly moot, since we already knew how Riker had resolved that particular ethical dilemma long ago.
'Horribly written' would be about the kindest thing I could say about that episode.
An abomination from conception to execution with absolutely no reason to exist and a sorry waste of my last opportunity to spend time with and celebrate the crew of "Enterprise" whom I had, slowly, come to care about and value over the past four years -- that would be a much more accurate description of my feelings and thoughts.
As I indicated above, I will make all haste to repress the memory of that entire episode as thoroughly as I have tried to repress the memory of "Turnabout Intruder" from the original series.
Which, in a weird way, is an indication of how much I really have come to care about "Enterprise", especially during this last and finest season. I can't think of any episode of "The Next Generation" that pissed me off so much -- and NOT because there weren't a few dreadful episodes of that series that I truly despised when I saw them, but rather, because I never became as invested in that series as a whole.
Maybe I'm just a sucker for the under-dogs of the Trek universe, and Next Gen was just too sure of itself and powerful in being, for so much of its run, the only game in town for Trek fans, whether we always liked it or not.
Yes, "Deep Space Nine" remains my undisputed favorite among the modern Treks, but particularly after the unmerited abuse it suffered at the end of its run, "Enterprise" from now on will have a special place in my heart (minus the offending final episode, of course).
I saw "Unleashed" Saturday afternoon with a friend, merely hoping that this would be Jet Li's own "Hard Target" (my hands-down favorite Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, at least when it comes to re-watchability -- directed by John Woo, and with both Lance Henrikson and Arnold Vosloo as baddies, and Yancy Butler as the maiden in distress) -- a movie that would do justice to Jet Li's martial arts prowess and native charm and also be a well-acted and well-directed and gripping movie.
Not that I don't get a kick out of those dubbed "Fists of Fury" earlier Chinese flicks of Li's that Spike TV frequently shows on Saturday afternoons -- especially the "historical" ones with all the flying and the much greater quotient of humor (I really loved the one where Li's character's MOTHER was also a great martial artist and dressed up as a man for most of the film so she could get into trouble right alongside her son!) . . . . But, by and large, the English-language movies Jet Li has been in so far haven't been all that profound. "Romeo Must Die" was charming and well-done, and I thoroughly enjoyed Li in it, but it was hardly profound in any lasting sense.
But "Unleashed" was really moving and even thought-provoking, and Li's performance as a man who's been so thoroughly dehumanized and abused that he's unable to feel his own pain or anyone else's was thoroughly believable. Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins were appropriately wise and humane (Freeman) and harsh and manipulative (Hoskins) as Li's two opposing mentor-father-figures. And yes, the fights were spectacular, and almost NONE of the violence seemed gratuitous. (I did think that the fight in the narrow confines of a bathroom at one point was just thrown in there for the martial arts fans who didn't come to see plot or character development, but apart from that one sequence, it all seemed pertinent and necessary.)
I highly recommend this film for anyone who's struggled to overcome their own damaged past, or who's worked with others dealing with the challenge of breaking out of the abusive but familiar cycles of their upbringing in order to make better choices in the future and recover their human dignity and ability to truly feel and grieve their pain. Plus, there are lots of cute and funny bits, centered around Li's growing relationship with Freeman and his step-daughter.
Now, for the So-So:
This category includes both the final actual episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise" last Friday night (I mean the first one, the conclusion of the Terra Prime two-parter, since the supposed series finale was in no way, shape, or form worthy of being counted as an "Enterprise" episode, in my opinion -- I've already mentally deleted it from the entire Star Trek canon, right alongside the original series episode "Turnabout Intruder," a.k.a. "Captain Kirk, Space Queen") and the Sci-Fi Channel's Saturday night monster-movie-of-the-week, "The Fallen Ones".
The "Enterprise" episode made me cry, as expected, and featured some fine work by all of the cast, as well as the always watchable Peter Weller as the paranoid head of an anti-alien terrorist group with some striking similarities to Hitler (in the sense of not measuring up at all to the model of racial "purity" that he claims to stand for, at the very least).
But it was undermined by what I felt was the totally gratuitous death of the baby, and the fact that nowhere in the two-part episode did anyone refer to the fact that the crew already KNEW for a FACT that T'Pol and Tripp were capable of producing a healthy Vulcan-Human hybrid offspring, based on their encounter with an alternate timeline future Enterprise NX-01 in the Delphic Expanse last season, commanded by the middle-aged son of Tripp and T'Pol.
It seemed to me that the baby's death (though believable on the grounds that the Terra Prime scientists who produced her from Tripp and T'Pol's DNA were only concerned with manufacturing a genetic bugaboo to become the focus of Human purist paranoia, rather than producing a viable hybrid offspring for the long-term) was mainly necessitated by the plot developments in the following, so-called finale episode. If the child had survived, it would be much less credible that T'Pol and Tripp had, as that episode claimed, irrevocably broken off their romantic relationship at about that point in time.
Yes, I cried as T'Pol and Tripp grieved in their own ways, yet together, and I could recognize that sometimes a martyr can be a way to bring disparate groups together (in this case, the baby's memorial service bringing together all the alien and human representatives in solidarity over the common loss), but I wasn't convinced that the death was truly necessary, and even as I cried I felt somewhat manipulated.
As for "The Fallen Ones", even though it had the cheesy special effects and production values we've come to expect from the Sci-Fi Channel's made-to-order monster flicks, and even though it played a bit fast and loose with the Bible (most of which didn't bother me, except for perpetuating the common, ignorant mistake of referring to the last book in the New Testament as "Revelations," when it ain't no such thing -- it is one singular "Revelation," and no one with even the research skills of a college freshman could keep on making such a mistake), I found that it had a lot more wit and humor than I'd expected (particular when it came to the supporting characters, like the guy whose stronger older sisters apparently taught him to rely on ankle-biting as his primary form of offensive fighting). Plus, Casper Van Dien is still awfully cute to watch, even if he's not up to the acting standards of such TV veterans as Tom Bosley and Robert Wagner. Between this movie and the Saturday-night premiere from a couple of months ago (the one starring two of my favorite "Xena" alumni, Bruce Campbell and Renee O'Connor, as tongue-in-cheek future astronauts fighting giant termite oppressors of humanity), I'm almost ready to admit that not absolutely every TV movie made for the Sci-Fi Channel sucks dead bunnies.
And as for the truly Sucky . . . .
The award goes, of course, to the so-called series finale episode of "Enterprise" last Friday. I have not always been pleased with, or even tolerant of, some of the weaker episodes during the four-year run of "Enterprise", but I am entirely in agreement with Jolene Blaylock in decrying that episode as a total rip-off and abomination.
I was honestly amazed that anyone had the gaul to think that it was a good idea to have the whole episode dominated by ST:TNG's Riker and Troi . . . and not only that, but to ask us to believe that they were the Riker and Troi of (I'd estimate) at least 15 years ago, during the ST:TNG episode about the recovery of Riker's old ship-with-a-dirty-little-secret, the U.S.S. Pegasus, rather than the much-older (and showing it) Riker and Troi of some post-"Nemesis" occasion (which might, at least, have had some possible merit as an addition to the Next Gen storyline).
If you cared at all about seeing Riker and Troi in that episode, then you were certainly enough of a Next Gen fan to have seen the Pegasus episode several times and to know that we've already been there and done that, and there was no unfinished business there that needed to be filled in -- particularly not when Jonathan Frakes, at least, looked 20 years too old for that storyline. The Pegasus setting just made the whole "Enterpise" holo-deck experience doubly moot, since we already knew how Riker had resolved that particular ethical dilemma long ago.
'Horribly written' would be about the kindest thing I could say about that episode.
An abomination from conception to execution with absolutely no reason to exist and a sorry waste of my last opportunity to spend time with and celebrate the crew of "Enterprise" whom I had, slowly, come to care about and value over the past four years -- that would be a much more accurate description of my feelings and thoughts.
As I indicated above, I will make all haste to repress the memory of that entire episode as thoroughly as I have tried to repress the memory of "Turnabout Intruder" from the original series.
Which, in a weird way, is an indication of how much I really have come to care about "Enterprise", especially during this last and finest season. I can't think of any episode of "The Next Generation" that pissed me off so much -- and NOT because there weren't a few dreadful episodes of that series that I truly despised when I saw them, but rather, because I never became as invested in that series as a whole.
Maybe I'm just a sucker for the under-dogs of the Trek universe, and Next Gen was just too sure of itself and powerful in being, for so much of its run, the only game in town for Trek fans, whether we always liked it or not.
Yes, "Deep Space Nine" remains my undisputed favorite among the modern Treks, but particularly after the unmerited abuse it suffered at the end of its run, "Enterprise" from now on will have a special place in my heart (minus the offending final episode, of course).
(no subject)
And I pretty much lurved Terra Prime. It's my series ender also. I agree with you that the alternate timeline offspring should have been dealt with somehow, and could have been quite easily. But I'm okay with them killing the baby, if only because I can totally believe that Peter Weller would have made sure the baby WAS programmed to die in infancy. In fact, he hinted as much.
I rewatched Terra Prime Saturday to flush the execrable Voyages out of my system.
(no subject)
That's probably what I need to do -- that, and tape over the "Voyages" episode as soon as possible! -- in order to regain my sense of perspective on the "Terra Prime" story line. I think some of my disgust with "Voyages" was slopping over onto "Terra Prime", coloring my perception of the baby's death as being somehow tied up with the end of their relationship in the following hour of excrescence. You're right, that the child's death was pretty thoroughly foreshadowed, from the beginning of the first part. And their grief over the child's fate -- the whole CREW's grief, as they truly realized, just as Phlox had, that they now had more family to care about and feel pain for, after their time together -- was very well depicted, and not gratuitous or manipulative.
But "Voyages" -- I'll have to erase it, before I start thinking about how even a favored minor character, like Jeffrey Coombs' Shrann, was totally screwed over and rendered small and crass and insignificant by that episode. Way to spit in the face of every person who ever watched an episode of "Enterprise" and enjoyed it, and say, "Hah! It's so inconsequential that we don't even need to hear the start of Archer's speech, because none of this matters at all!"
I'll have to go read your rant, and maybe I'll feel less like sending hate mail to Paramount.
(no subject)
Isn't that Fong Sai Yuk? That's a favourite of mine as well. His early films tend to be shown here in subtitled, not dubbed, form so I always find it really jarring when I watch a dubbed verion of his films, like the wackily enjoyable Black Mask. I've seen little of his US output to date but yours is the second positive review I've read on LJ of Unleashed so I'll try to make a special effort to see it.
I only saw a couple of epsiodes of Enterprise, despite my deep fondness for DS9. I've heard mixed reports about whether or not I've missed out.
(no subject)
Probably -- but since I've only seen the dubbed versions with English names, I can't be sure! In any case, I think you'll find "Unleashed" well worth the effort.
As for Enterprise -- it sort of depends on the season, or in some cases the episodes, whether or not you miss anything by not seeing it. However, most folks who've seen this final and 4th season agree that it finally hit its stride and got quite good this time around. I can't think of a single episode from this season (barring the gag-me-with-a-forklift 'finale'!) that hasn't been at least decent, and some have been spectacular (like the three-parter involving a political and philosophical revolution on Vulcan).
When I think about how much DS9 improved each season, I'm sorry that Enterprise won't get the chance to show us how much better it could have gotten by the end of a 7-year run.