Tag Archives: Benjamin Bratt
Film Review: Demolition Man (1993)
Release Date: October 7th, 1993 (Los Angeles premiere)
Directed by: Marco Brambilla
Written by: Daniel Waters, Robert Reneau, Peter M. Lenkov
Music by: Elliot Goldenthal
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthrone, Benjamin Bratt, Denis Leary, Bill Cobbs, Glenn Shadix, David Patrick Kelly, Jack Black, Jesse Ventura, Rob Schneider (uncredited), Adrienne Barbeau (voice)
Silver Pictures, Warner Bros., 115 Minutes
Review:
“We’re police officers! We’re not trained to handle this kind of violence!” – Erwin
I remember liking Demolition Man a lot but I haven’t watched it since its theater run in 1993. Really though, I never had much urge to revisit it, even though, on paper, it should certainly be my cup of tea and because it stars Stallone and Snipes.
It’s just not a very good movie. Where it works it works well but 75 percent of it is pretty weak and dull.
I do love the action but there isn’t enough of it. There is just too much filler and too many gags in this. It’s really a comedy with some action even though it’s not technically labeled a comedy.
The premise sees a cop and a criminal from the future of 1996 (keep in mind this came out in 1993, not far from 1996) get cryogenically frozen only to wake up in the 2030s. The film then uses almost every breath to poke fun at stupid mutton head Stallone because he’s from a time of testosterone Neanderthals and a total fish out of water in a bullshit utopia where people wipe their asses with sea shells and have sex without physical contact. Some of the bits are funny but the film just beats this shtick over your head at every possible turn. It’s amusing for the first fifteen minutes but then it’s like, “Okaaay! I fucking get it! Move on!”
The best thing about this picture is that it pits Stallone against Snipes. Stallone was already a megastar and in 1993, Snipes was just on the cusp. And frankly, this really helped to give Snipes some serious credibility just because he got to face off with the great Stallone.
Additionally, Sandra Bullock was virtually unknown when she was in this and it is probably the role that opened doors for her. A year later, she was in Speed and then a year after that she starred in The Net.
This movie really didn’t need to be 115 minutes. It should have been more like 95 with twenty minutes of the filler and redundant humor left on the cutting room floor. It would have then had a better balance between the action and the story. It also could have whittled down on the number of characters.
Also, for an R rated film, other than a glimpse of nice boobies, this felt like it was PG-13. This would have been a much better film if someone like Paul Verhoeven directed it, as he could have brought that original Robocop or Total Recall tone to it. This felt like it wanted to be similar to the tone of those movies but it was more like The Running Man but with extra layers of cheese.
Still, this is an entertaining movie. It just isn’t great, isn’t a classic and hasn’t aged very well.
Rating: 6.25/10
Pairs well with: Stallone’s version of Judge Dredd. Also The Running Man and Robocop 3, which is a terrible movie but also deals with a faux utopian future with poor people living under the streets.
Film Review: Catwoman (2004)
Release Date: July 19th, 2004 (Los Angeles premiere)
Directed by: Pitof
Written by: John Brancato, Michael Ferris, John Rogers, Theresa Rebeck
Based on: Catwoman character created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger
Music by: Klaus Badelt
Cast: Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Lambert Wilson, Frances Conroy, Alex Borstein, Sharon Stone
Village Roadshow Pictures, Di Novi Pictures, Warner Bros., 104 Minutes
Review:
“White Russian, no ice, no vodka… hold the Kahlua.” – Catwoman
Some motion pictures are so bad that they make you want to rip your own eyes out of your head while screaming in absolute terror, having gone mad from the level of absolute dreck you’ve been exposed to. Then there is Catwoman, which makes those movies actually look okay.
Is this the worst film I’ve ever seen? No. But man is it pretty damn close. And really, it is probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen that is based on a property I like that had a nine figure budget. Warner Bros. literally dumped $100 million into this dumpster fire. Was it a tax write off? Were the executives all mad? Was someone in the company trying to woo Halle Berry by giving her a starring role in her own comic book film? Has the Devil taken over Earth? Were they contractually obligated to follow through on a script contest winner from a competition held in an insane asylum? Did Joel Schumacher sell his soul so that he would no longer be the worst architect of a Batman-related property on the big screen?
The first question that someone may have for someone who has actually seen this film is, “What’s actually wrong with it.” Well, not to sound cliche but what isn’t wrong with it? Absolutely every aspect of this picture is terrible. In fact, it is beyond terrible. A new word needs to be invented because there is no way to describe how terrible this is. This is the cinematic equivalent to putting a garbage bag over an overflowing litter box, sticking your head in and huffing the fumes. And even then, it’s worse than that.
I guess I could point out the biggest offenses though.
One, the acting is abominable. Can one blame the repulsive script? Sure. But both are so dreadful that just thinking about which is worse causes me to need a handful of Excedrin Migraine. Didn’t studios learn their lesson from Halle Berry’s role in Die Another Day? I mean, she killed the James Bond franchise for a few years. Did they want her to kill the Batman franchise too? It’s just not Berry though, it is everyone. Never has Sharon Stone been worse. Did this actually kill her career? Because she hasn’t done a whole lot since. And why was Catwoman’s sidekick Ms. Swan from Mad TV?
Two, this features some of the worst CGI effects of its era. The scenes where Catwoman runs around rooftops literally made me laugh out loud like a drunken sailor spectating a Bob Hope USO show in Vietnam circa 1967. The CGI fight scenes were just as bad. But the worst thing, by far, was the one-on-one basketball game between Catwoman in her street clothes and Benjamin Bratt’s cop character. I was baffled by every single shot in this long sequence and trying to process it all made me contemplate suicide three times.
Three, what’s with the fucking story? There’s no mention of Batman, I’m not even sure if it’s supposed to be in Gotham City, Catwoman is a completely original character and she is given magic cat powers from a thousands year-old ghost cat from Egypt. Who the hell wrote this? Why the hell would they make a Catwoman movie that has absolutely no ties or similarities to Catwoman, other than sharing her name? A ghost fucking cat, seriously?! Seriously?!?!!! I guess they were trying to expand on the weird Tim Burton origin for Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in 1992’s Batman Returns but why? That really only worked within that film. Why didn’t they just give Pfeiffer her own movie? That shit would have probably been infinitely superior to this, as long as Warner Bros. didn’t employ the same creative team that they used here.
Four, who the hell is this director? What’s with the name Pitof? A pretentious douchey name like that should have been a major red flag that told Warner Bros. to stay the hell away. Did they really need to get someone that was even more eccentric than those Schumacher films?
Five, why does all the music in this 2004 movie sound like generic R&B tunes from the early ’90s? Seriously? Why?! It’s like Warner Bros. had a bunch of unused tracks that were written for Whitney Houston to sing in The Bodyguard in 1992 and she was like, “I ain’t singin’ this shit!” So then they found them when they were throwing stuff away, twelve years later, and said, “Hey! Remeber these, guys? Let’s not waste them! Let’s use them in Catwoman!”
Six, what’s with the damn outfit? I get that Catwoman is supposed to be some shy and timid woman that got some sort of magical Egyptian ghost cat magic powers but if you didn’t already assume that she would inherit horny cat tendencies, her outfit spells it out for you. Because all cats want to do is kill, fuck and play with their food. I’m surprised that they didn’t have her paw around a half eaten Pop-Tart for a ten minute musical montage.
Seven, I could keep going but pointing out everything awful and stupid in this movie would take up an entire book.
I typically run shitty films through the Cinespiria Shitometer. I’m actually afraid to put this through my trusty machine because I don’t think that it can handle this much shit. It’d be like trying to run a 5 lb. sack of jasmine rice through a garbage disposal. The warranty card I have says that it can handle anything and that if it can’t, I’ll get a full refund or a new machine overnighted to me. Well, I guess I’ll give it a whirl. Hmm… okay. It’s going through. Aha! Astounding! The results are like nothing I have seen before! The results read, “Type Negative God Stool: A stool so powerful and awful that it turns the sphincter eye into a supermassive black hole that can suck all the shit in the world back up into its dark nothingness where it goes on to create an entire universe made out of fecal matter on the other side in what’s called the Brown Bang. A cosmic and cataclysmic stool.”
Rating: 0.5/10
Pairs well with: Huffing the fumes of a litter box. No, don’t really do that and I’m not responsible if you’re dumb enough to try.
Film Review: Doctor Strange (2016)
Release Date: October 13th, 2016 (Hong Kong)
Directed by: Scott Derrickson
Written by: Jon Spaihts, Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Based on: Doctor Strange by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko
Music by: Michael Giacchino
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt, Scott Adkins, Mads Mikkelsen, Tilda Swinton
Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Studios, 115 Minutes
Review:
I kind of lost faith in Marvel Studios awhile ago. It has been some time since I’ve truly enjoyed a Marvel picture from the Disney side of things. Although, growing up, Doctor Strange was one of my favorite comic books because it was so different than the other Marvel titles. So there was a part of me that was somewhat excited to finally see Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme on the big screen.
I’m just going to put it out there, this was my favorite Marvel film after Guardians of the Galaxy. I guess the main reason was because it was so different, like Guardians, and it wasn’t a cookie cutter origin story like all the other Avengers’ first movies. Sure, it is an origin story but it isn’t bogged down in that and it moves past it pretty quickly. I think the film benefits from the passage of time being fairly ambiguous.
This is also one of the most visually stunning motion pictures I have ever seen on the big screen. It doesn’t have the enormous scale of Guardians of the Galaxy but the magical realms are just so interesting and vivid. Doctor Strange is definitely a movie that should be seen on the big screen.
Benedict Cumberbatch was pretty much perfect for the role of Dr. Stephen Strange. And since Strange was originally modeled after the great Vincent Price, maybe Cumberbatch could start a side gig of playing Price’s roles in remakes of some of his classics. Just a thought.
Mads Mikkelsen is an actor I always enjoy to see but I do feel like he was somewhat wasted in the film. And really, this is my only gripe with Doctor Strange. His character, the main villain of the story, just feels thin and should have been developed much more. He’s essentially just an evil force of nature who was a great student of the light that was tempted by the dark side. Mikkelsen’s Kaecilius is pretty much any Sith from Star Wars but a lot less interesting.
Some people have a problem with Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One, who in the comics is an old Asian dude. I didn’t take issue with it and I thought she did a good job with the role. Was it accurate to the comics? No. But Baron Mordo also isn’t black but no one seems to care about that. Why? It really isn’t that important. The next thing these “purists” will do is start complaining that the new Ghostbusters are all ladies. Oh, wait…
Speaking of Mordo, Chiwetel Ejiofor served the role well. Although, I thought his slip into villainy was almost too quick and easy. He was the Ancient One’s second-in-command and he turned his back on the order because of stubbornness that he should have probably been able to get past if he was a master sorcerer with extreme discipline. He didn’t even take a second to process it or talk about it, he just walked away, offended and sad, ignoring his own advice throughout the entire film: “forget everything you think you know.”
In the end though, no one was as awesome as Wong.
Doctor Strange also boasts one of the most impressive and interesting scores in the Marvel film franchise.
The film also isn’t drawn out to eye-rolling lengths and is thankfully, just under two-hours. I swear, Captain America: Civil War felt like a four-part miniseries I was forced to watch in one sitting.
And there are a few other things I could talk about but I don’t want to spoil too much of the film, even though film reviews by their very nature are spoilers.
Doctor Strange is a well-acted and well-directed comic book movie. It flows really well and it is great eye candy. It is one of the best Marvel outings, ever. I hope the future films in the franchise take their cues from this film and from Guardians of the Galaxy because Marvel tends to give us their best when they aren’t following a specific formula.
Rating: 7.5/10
Talking Pulp 
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