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Particle Man looks at PITCH BLACK
Hey folks, Harry here with our first review from a contributor whom I hope hangs with us folks a while. Particle Man. For his first assembly of electric pixels, he chose to write about PITCH BLACK. A film that I like quite a lot. Warning though here... he does talk and describe bits and pieces of the plot here. Personally... If I were you... I'd walk into this theater expecting a Roger Corman film... Don't do any research.... Don't read about the FX or character moments... just... wander on into the theater and let it happen to ya. That's the best way to see this one. There ya go...
Review: PITCH BLACK
by Particle Man
_Pitch Black_ is the kind of thing that keeps me going to screenings. It comes out of left field -- I knew nothing about the film save for what I read in the invitation -- doesn't pretend to be THE MAJOR FILM EVENT OF THE NEW MILLENIUM!!!, and is just so good that you leave the theater grateful that _somebody_ still understands what filmmaking is about.
The basic plotline isn't blazingly original: a spaceship crash-lands on a desert world. The survivors -- a small band of fractious humans that includes a bounty hunter (Cole Hauser), his captured prey (Vin Diesel), and the ship's guilt-ridden pilot (Radha Mitchell) -- discover a seemingly barren and eternally sunlit world. Soon enough, they also discover _something_ else surviving in the shadows -- something that thrives in darkness, something _very_ nasty. There's more than one of them, actually, and gul-durn-it, wouldn't ya know? The planet just happens to be entering into an extended, solar eclipse...
Yup, _Pitch Black_ is your basic, things-that-go-bump-in-the-spaceship scenario, transferred here to a planetary surface and offering up all the standard features: a dread-filled first act; an escalating body-count; and the opportunity to lay bets on who of the mixed-bag of humans will be the next to buy the hydroponic farm. And if that's all it had to offer, I'd say, 'Thanks for the trip, best of luck, see you on the Sci-Fi Channel.' What saves the film is that David Twohy, the director and co-author (with Jim Wheat), isn't just going through the motions. He's reaching for something bigger. To a great extent, he succeeds.
It helps that he's rounded up a skilled cast. As ruthless criminal Riddick, Vin Diesel brings more than an imposing physical presence to his role. There's a charismatic sense of authority to his performance, mixed with a mordant humor -- you buy Riddick's brutally nihilistic stance at film's beginning and understand why he's decided to let go of some of it (but only some) by the end. Radha Mitchell, as pilot Fry, matches him well, balancing her character's guilt over a critical (and possibly wrong) decision made during the crash-landing against her knowledge that the fate of the survivors rests upon the authority she wields. Even the secondary characters -- including Lewis Fitzgerald as a self-involved antiques dealer -- exhibit a humanity that pushes them far beyond the cartoon. Maybe it's a side-effect of shooting in Australia -- Twohy seems to have modeled his characterizations to Oz standards: bristly, quirky, and all-too-human. In the beginning, they're constantly at odds; by the end, the survivors can just barely stand being with each other. One, big, rancorous family -- just the way I like 'em.
Twohy has also performed some minor visual miracles on what I presume was a limited budget. It may sound odd to use the word "haunting" to describe such a film, but _Pitch Black_ is full of moments of striking (and occasionally horrific) beauty: a massive alien skeleton bleaching in the sun; a knot of humans struggling across the desert while using a tangle of glowing, fiber-optic cable to ward off predators; a soon-to-be victim delivering a grace note so exquisitely realized that I don't want to describe it further for fear of spoiling the effect (here's a hint: fire-breather). "Haunting" may sound odd, but it definitely fits.
The film isn't perfect. There's that stock plot for one thing, and a superficial, none-too-convincing attempt at explaining how the planet's ecology manages to function when spaceships aren't crash-landing on its surface. On top of that, Twohy works so hard to realize the strife between his humans that it becomes hard to buy how they eventually come to trust each other. No, _Pitch Black_ is not an instant classic, just a good, intelligently-mounted film. I can only wish that the rest of 2000's offerings would strive for such exhilarating heights.
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Vin Diesel is the man. Hopefully this will put him through the stratosphere because he is a great actor. Pitch Black is the movie to see in early 2000.
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I wan't this soundtrack! Graeme Revell is a musical genius.
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Not to put too fine a point on it, but I ain't no damn studio plant. I'm not putting my name on these reviews because, frankly, I usually get paid for this stuff. The reason I'm here is that I don't get much chance of late to flex my critical muscles; I'm grateful to Harry for giving me this opportunity. You can disagree with my opinions -- and _Pitch Black_ is certainly a film that allows for that -- but don't doubt that they are my own.
One further thing: if you're looking at "good film" and seeing "BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR," all I can say is that there ought to be a plug-in to Internet Explorer that reminds you to put on your glasses.
Season's Greetings,
Particle Man -
Silly me, all this time thinking Mcarthy was dead
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What because you don't agree with a review, immediately it has to be a studio plant? Wait until you see the movie, then make your assumptions. I for one will be in the theater when Pitch Black comes out. Not because I'm looking to watch "The Best Movie of 2000" but to be merely entertained. Ain't that what it's all about folks?
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Dec 30, 1999 10:21:00 AM CST
The most controversial top ten list of the decade on the net--
by larry cucumber
Bob the Tomato (regular columnist and AICN scooper) has his top ten list of the decade over at Spielberg-DreamWorks.com, in his column for this week, for the decade and I have a feeling his batch of angry e-mails are only multiplying. I'll give you a hint, some flicks are very off the wall choices.
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Punkass motherfuckers are always hitting the airwaves with this movie or that is the shit (remember Mystery Men?) I'm sick of it, so I try to see them all for free, at sneak previews. Fuck this shit, you only get 1 good movie a year, maybe 2. I hate hearing about how this anime flick or that 3rd world turdburger, usually some bullshit Harry has had shoved down his throat, by some studio.
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I thought the trailer was really cool, the cuts, the music suddenly stopping aruptly, the creepy sounds...can't wait for this one...IT played in front of American Beauty last weekend and I was doing trailer checks and The old bitch with grey hair behind me screams out "VIDEO"
Yet she totally laughed at the Gun Shy trailer....sounds like she needs not just two fingers up there but the whole fist!!!! -
Dooval,
Just to re-emphasize my point (and also to somewhat apologize for the tone of my previous post, which was too snarky, even for me -- point I was trying to make there was that I'm not hiding behind a pseudonym because I'm a studio shill, trust me), that opening crash sequence hooked me from the first second and kept me primed for the rest of the story. Maybe the characters didn't behave in a textbook fashion to a traumatic event, but I found them engaging, their behavior satisfyingly unpredictable, and their relationships drawn with enough friction to make them believable. Look, I doubt there's a private detective in the world who can phrase his thoughts with the grace of a gutter poet, but that doesn't make Chandler's Phillip Marlowe any less believable to me. There's a certain stylization that goes into these things -- when a filmmaker goes the extra length and invents people who still manage to surprise you, that's the icing that very often makes the whole cake.
But as I said, I can see where opinions can vary wildly with this film. Still, I suspect that a lion's share of the people reading this page are going to find it a neat, entertaining take on the theme.
Particle Man -
I also saw this movie. i actually saw it at the Butt numb a thon. This movie blowed. The pacing blowed. The acting blowed. The script blowed. You get the point. And it hurts me saying all this since Vin Diesel was there and was such an awesome guy. You couldn't help but love him. But still. A turd is a turd. And for Harry to say this movie is similar to old Carpenter is sacralige(sic?). Carpenter knew timing. Carpenter knew how to set up suspense. This movie has nothing in common with Carpenter, Foolio!
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Happy New Year. Keep up the good work. Dark Horizon's smokin your ass, though. I guess just keep up.
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