Doom (2005)

It's bad, but not cruel & unusual punishment like Ever After and certainly far from "Van Helsing bad". If you willingly walk into traffic, you'll likely get it - just like the chicken. Five minutes into the exposition & about 30 seconds into live-action dialogue, the showman known as The Rock (in his perpetually brawny, pubescent-camp routine) calls rank amongst his marines & describes their imminent mission as "a game". So, the entire movie is low-brow voyeurism and eye-candy for would-be gamers. The film thrives in clichés but occasionally commits cardinal sins in movie screenwriting, such as when a character states ominously, "there's something in Dr. K's office" instead of actually generating that tension visually or with use of sound. Alexander MacKendrick would call this the “Look, Highland sheep!” slip up.

Doom is a shoot-em-up CG show that’s occasionally fun for the violence-desensitized youth, 40 & under. On the non-CG side, Rosamund Pike of Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice appears as a pretty face in poor imitation American accent. On the other hand, Karl Urban portrayed a character who looked like the moral center of the film that didn’t have a chance to materialize in the face of big monster-blasting guns. It's all quite unpretentiously phallic.

Prime (2005)

The hook in the romantic comedy Prime is found in its use of dramatic irony during the scenes between the “Jewish mother” (Meryl Streep) and her young & beautiful patient (Uma Thurman). The movie trailers gave away the first act; a psychologist is unwittingly encouraging her recently divorced patient to have a committed relationship with her own son (Brian Greenberg). They are 14 years apart in age but the sex is GREAT!

I enjoyed director Ben Younger’s escapist first half. If he had sustained the light tone instead of delving into romantic drama territory towards the end of Act 2, I would have watched the film again. The epilogue is a reality check that I didn’t want to expect from what appeared to be a refreshing fluff piece. However, Uma looks just as lovely as she did in the Kill Bill series, without the uncharacteristic gore, of course.

Watch Giovanni Ribisi in Boiler Room instead. Younger’s talent for dialogue rhythm is put to better use there.

...In Dreams

This morning, I awoke from a dreadful dream....

BACKSTORY: Last night, I bombarded my intro class with surreal images by Dali, Bunuel & David Lynch. In the span of 3.5 hours, my vict...students saw the dream sequence from Hitch's "Spellbound", Bunuel's "An Andalusian Dog" and Lynch's "Blue Velvet" (1986). I was in 7th heaven by end of class.

Gasps, both loud & muted, were heard when the images of the cutting razor collided with many sets of eyes in the audience; The class somnambulists woke up. "Blue Velvet" elicited a wider range of audible responses: laughter, "oh my god"-s, "don't go in there"-s, etc.

At the end of class, I remarked that Jeffrey's Aunt, the very sweet secondary character, who provided the last line of dialogue, "I could never eat an ant" (or something to that effect) seemed like a clean-cut package that would reveal a can of worms... I immediately associate her line with Norman Bates's final "I wouldn't hurt a fly."

THE DREAM: I was back in my old engineering office & was chatting with the presumably diabolical but tentatively forthcoming CFO of the company. I then drifted around the warehouse undetected & everything appears as I left it two years ago. I had to go to the bathroom, which has a 3/4 wall that reveals one physically from fore-arm upwards. My former German boss walks by, I bowed my head to further disguise my face with the baseball cap I was wearing. Via peripheral vision, I knew he identified me. As I go to leave, a call halted my step. I looked to the left into an office & saw my briefcase & personal effects that I'd need to bring with me, out of reach. I was trapped. I turned around to face my former boss. He turned out to be my eldest aunt on my father's side, an established adversary against my mother's side of the family. I was very scared now & pathetically negotiated for my personal effects. She wanted something from me before she'd even consider letting me go. All I tried to do was to look away from a close-up of her face (my dream, of course, was cinematic too).

Then, I woke up with great gladness. I think the entire dream contains elements from "Blue Velvet", its general mood & feeling of dread.