Film Review: Leviathan (1989)

Release Date: March 17th, 1989
Directed by: George P. Cosmatos
Written by: David Peoples, Jeb Stuart
Music by: Jerry Goldsmith
Cast: Peter Weller, Richard Crenna, Amanda Pays, Daniel Stern, Ernie Hudson, Michael Carmine, Hector Elizondo, Lisa Elbacher, Meg Foster

Filmauro, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 103 Minutes

Review:

“Talk about having a bad day.” – Justin Jones

Leviathan is hardly a unique movie. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, considering that most movies are just rehashes of things we’ve seen before.

This film is a hybrid of Ridley Scott’s Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing. But there were a lot of films like this in the 80s; films that took a crew, isolated them and then had them face some sort of terrifying monster. In fact, there was a very similar film to this, which was also released in 1989, Deep Star Six. Out of the two, this is the superior picture.

This film benefits from having a really solid ensemble cast.

Peter Weller, Robocop and Buckaroo Banzai himself, is the crew leader. Then you have Richard Crenna a.k.a Col. Trautman from the Rambo movies, Daniel Stern, Ernie Hudson, Hector Elizondo, Amanda Pays from the original Flash TV series, Meg Foster from a ton of cool movies and Michael Carmine, who was charismatic and entertaining in Michael Mann’s Band of the Hand and Steven Spielberg’s Batteries Not Included.

The creature effects in this film were handled by Stan Winston’s people. While the creature and the effects are pretty good, they do get a bit cheesy when you see the man-eating fish-mouthed tentacle. Still, most of the film was comprised of solid work by Winston’s crew.

Peter Weller did a superb job pretty much playing a normal character and not a cyborg cop or an uber cool 80s superhero. He’s always been an accomplished actor and would do Naked Lunch a few years after this picture, which was some of his best work. Here, he shows signs of greatness but is bogged down by his surroundings, a better than decent but almost throwaway sci-fi horror spectacle. But this is a movie with a cast whose talent level probably deserved a better script that emphasized more suspense and less in your face scares.

Despite some of the film’s hokiness, the sets and effects feel pretty real and this is a good looking film for 1989 and for being limited by its budget, as it was produced by an Italian studio. It had the backing of the De Laurentiis family, who weren’t necessarily known for quality but were often times able to make chicken salad with chicken shit.

I have always liked Leviathan. The fact that it stars a lot of people I adore might have something to do with that but it still plays out well and is better than most of the Alien and Thing clones. There were a lot of these types of films back in the 1980s. Hell, they still knock those movies off today, almost forty years later. But Leviathan, is still, one of the better ones.

Rating: 7/10

TV Review: The Flash (2014- )

Original Run: October 7th, 2014 – present
Created by: Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Geoff Johns
Directed by: various
Written by: various
Music by: Blake Neely
Cast: Grant Gustin, Candice Patton, Danielle Panabaker, Rick Cosnett, Carlos Valdes, Tom Cavanagh, Jesse L. Martin, Keiynan Lonsdale, Victor Garber, Franz Drameh, Robbie Amell, Dominic Purcell, Wentworth Miller, Peyton List, John Wesley Shipp, Amanda Pays, Tom Felton

Bonanza Productions, Berlanti Productions, DC Entertainment, Warner Bros., 69 Episodes (so far), 40 Minutes (per episode)

Review:

*originally written in 2015.

In sixth grade, my favorite television show was The Flash. It was cancelled after one year but it was still the best comic book series put to television at the time. Well, 24 years later, the Flash returned to television again in another self-titled series.

The modern version of The Flash is a spin-off of CW’s Arrow. It goes on to further expand the DC Comics television universe and mythos and has thus, spun-off its own show debuting in the fall called Legends of Tomorrow.

Having now completed the first season of The Flash, I figured it was time to review it.

In short, this is the greatest comic book television show of all-time. Yes, Daredevil, which just debuted a month ago on Netflix is amazing. This however, this is lightning in a bottle – pun intended.

Something about The Flash is just magical. I can admit, maybe I am affected by nostalgia for my love of the original Flash series from years ago. And maybe that is magnified by the fact that the new Flash show features the stars of the original show. The thing is, everyone else I have talked to that has watched this show, regardless of their knowledge of the series from 1990, is pretty much in agreement that this is simply great.

Sure, the acting isn’t always fantastic, there is that typical CW romance thing going on and often times, the villains can be cheesy. But this is a television show based on comic books and if it took itself too seriously, it would be a train wreck like Gotham. (updated 2017 note: Luckily Gotham fixed that.)

The thing this show has going for it is heart. You can’t not care about these characters, their motivations and their world. When I watch Gotham, I really don’t care about anyone on that show. The Flash is the most human and heartfelt superhero show currently on television, if not of all-time.

The story arc of the first season was well orchestrated and ended perfectly. Everything throughout the year was well paced and while it fell victim to the “monster of the week” formula at times, it built a much larger universe and everything had a point to it. There wasn’t a lot of filler unlike a lot of episodes of Arrow this past season.

Where The Flash goes from here is anyone’s guess. I hope the momentum maintains going forward and that the show doesn’t go off the rails, as its predecessor Arrow has recently. I also hope that the quality isn’t effected by the new spin-off series. We shall see but the future looks bright.

Update:

Having now gotten through three seasons, the show unfortunately becomes redundant and derivative of its previous seasons. It sucks that it sort of nosedives, even if you still care about the people on the show. Season four I hope gets back to form. And we really don’t need another speedster as the season’s major villain.

Rating: 7/10