A/V Veteran

What turns a movie into a guilty pleasure? I suppose it’s a film that you enjoy, though you know you shouldn’t because everyone else seems to hate it. There’s a lot of such films in my collection, some of them bought by me, others remnants of the “too odd to review” bins in the publications I’ve written for, from the Stereophile Guide to Home Theater to the present.

Here are ten of them, and they’re by no means the only ones on my shelf. All of them are still available on Blu-ray, some of them so cheap they might be worth taking a flyer on. Some are also available in 3D, though I don’t address that here. As for some of the others, well, don’t bring out the tar and feathers if you hate them. Remember, they’re my guilty pleasures, not necessarily yours.

Battleship This is an awful film in many ways, and the most Michael Bayish film neither produced nor directed by Michael Bay. But it was directed by Peter Berg, who does have a few directorial credits on his resume.

The lead character (a wooden Taylor Kitsch) would never have been accepted into the Navy as an officer, much less ever be promoted to full lieutenant. And could the battleship of the title—now a floating museum—possibly be made ready for battle in the (apparent) few hours shown here? Could it be fueled, armed, and made ready to go to sea by a crew inexperienced in its operation (or by a small, retired and rusty crew that may or may not be able to operate it, knowing that it took hundreds of men to operate one of those old battle wagons)? Hardly.

But leave those objections aside, along with the question of how the massive alien weapons platforms could have been be transported across light years of space (though given that they’re aliens, with alien technology, who knows?). On the plus side I really liked the film’s special effects. They were both unique and creative, as were the tactics employed to fight the invaders. The video transfer is also crisp, and the sound intensely dynamic and explosive.

John Carter This adaptation of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel of a Civil War soldier, mysteriously transported to a Mars populated by intelligent life, fell flat with movie audiences. But although it was criticized for ripping off many recent sci-fi films, in actuality those films were the ones that ripped off Burroughs’ early twentieth century books! Burroughs himself, in turn, had been influenced by writers such as Jules Verne and H.G.Wells.

Director Andrew Stanton made his mark in Pixar animated films, so it seemed like a good bet to let him loose with a live-action spectacle supplemented by copious CGI effects. It wasn’t. The movie didn’t work dramatically, but it’s nonetheless visually compelling in many ways, not least of which is a luminous Lynn Collins as the Martian princess.

This is one of those films that can be a chore to sit through more than once from beginning to end, but it’s a delight when favorite scenes are replayed (a quality that saves many of the titles listed here!). This is one of the many reasons I prefer packaged media over streaming and downloading—I can play parts of favorite films sitting on my shelf any time the urge strikes, and as often as I like). The film also has a great soundtrack, enhanced by Michael Giacchino’s evocative score.

Sequels to this film were anticipated prior to its release, but don’t hold your breath.

Armageddon This is the only Michael Bay film that’s ever grabbed me on first viewing. I saw it twice in the theater and waited years for the DVD and later the Blu-ray. In an odd-couple pairing, the first DVD of the film was released by Criterion!

Yes, it’s over-the-top ridiculous in many ways, not least of which are one or two too-many action sequences (such as an absurd leap over a canyon on the asteroid), pure silliness (Ben Affleck’s creative use of animal crackers), and, in the end, just too much Michael Bayness. There are also a few bad edits (one fast cut actually shows William Fichtner’s pilot character in the wrong shuttle), and humor that more often than not just doesn’t work (Steve Buscemi going Dr. Strangelove-crazy on the asteroid).

But if you overlook the flaws (some viewers can’t) there are plenty of thrills here, including the dual shuttle launch (vying with the Saturn launch in Apollo 13 as a video demo piece), a terrific score from Trevor Rabin (a key element in my feelings about the film) and a story that, at its warm core, genuinely moved me on my first viewing and continues to do so. I haven’t watched it in a few years, but just writing about it makes me want to revisit it again.

Chicken Little As the jacket notes, this is an egg-stravaganza. While not the most beautiful of computer animated films, its production was a Disney attempt to meet the Pixar challenge (before they bought that company). It will never be rated among the top animated films of all time, but it plays around with the animation and sci-fi genres in creative and hilarious ways.

The “sky is falling” meme, for example, eventually triggers an alien invasion in a way that’s strangely echoed in this year’s DreamWorks film, Home. But Chicken Little uses pop tunes in a more creative and appropriate way than Home does, which adds real interest to an already superb audio mix. My version of this Blu-ray has a totally uncompressed soundtrack (48kHz, 16-bits)—early Blu-rays often used this format until lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio became widely available. I can’t say it’s better than those formats, but it’s nice to have. (Incidentally, this audio sampling rate/bit depth is only marginally better than CD’s 44.1kHz and 16-bits, but it helps that many film soundtracks are produced at 48kHz. With a 48kHz sampling rate on the disc no conversion to a lower sampling rate is required for the video release. Converting a 48kHz digital recording to 44.1kHz is not trivial).

Hoodwinked This is definitely a guilty pleasure, with a twisted sense of humor that doesn’t click with everyone. I’ve recommended it to folks who thought I’d just dived 10 feet into the shallow end of the pool.

The computer animation on this twisted version of the Little Red Riding Hood story is far less “polished” than today’s animated films, or even such films from 2005 (the year Hoodwinked was released). Hard to say if that was a budget issue or a creative decision. But it works. Some of the set pieces, and at least two of the songs (one by a goat who can’t stop singing!) had me nearly falling on the floor laughing. But I do have a weird sense of humor, since I find films like The Hangover more gross than truly funny. So what do I know?

The audio and video here are satisfactory rather than groundbreaking, but you’ll either be so busy laughing your head off or scratching it and yelling “WTF” at the screen (and searching for your torch and pitchfork) that you won’t notice.

Battle Los Angeles It’s been said that in war you don’t fight for a cause so much as you fight for your survival and for your buddies, even to the point of self-sacrifice. That’s the scenario here, even though it involves an alien invasion rather than a human-to-human conflict. This may not be your grandfather’s war movie, but it clearly harkens back to films about WWII ground combat.

Some of the choices in this film appear odd at first. The aliens’ vehicles look junky, particularly their command center. As the latter emerges from the ground, dropping off bits and pieces of debris in the process, it looks like it was cobbled together from the refuse of dozens of planets that the aliens may have visited. But who’s to say that extraterrestrials’ wouldn’t have their own standards of beauty and efficiency? (The command center, assuming it was a model and not a CGI effect, was probably fashioned from bits and pieces found at Apex, an electronic junkyard in Burbank California. Apex deserves to be on your don’t miss list of tourist attractions if you’re ever in the neighborhood. Just don’t be there during an earthquake!!)

The transfer here is excellent, and the action both tense and intense, particularly the climactic battle. And the final scenes moved me, despite the fact that they were clearly inspired by Blackhawk Down. The latter is, of course, is a far better film, though much more of a…um…downer.

Signs M. Night Shyamalan made three terrific films from 1999 to 2002, including The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. Signs was the third, and it’s my favorite of the three. It’s been long dry spell for the director since then, however, with no genuine hits. But Shyamalan keeps getting funded for new projects.

Like several of the other movies on this list, Signs is also about an alien invasion, but on a much more intimate scale. It’s by far the scariest of Shyamalan’s movies, and one of the scariest films I’ve ever seen. But there’s no gore in it—many horror movies today are just gross and not truly scary.

The film also has a superb, though subtle, soundtrack. On the video side there’s a night scene near the beginning where you can barely make out an alien on the roof, outlined against a nearly black sky. It’s a scene I’ve used in the past (though not recently) to evaluate a display’s shadow detail.

Peter Pan With a new live action film of the Peter Pan story about to hit theaters this fall (simply titled Pan), this might be a good time to give credit to another live-action version of Peter Pan, this one from 2003.

It’s perhaps my favorite version of the Peter Pan story. I suppose calling it a guilty pleasure isn’t really fair, as I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying it. And despite the familiar narrative there’s more going on here than simply a children’s story. An undercurrent of young but impossible love also distinguishes the film. But not to worry; it’s PG and the clues will go right over the heads of most youngsters.

Jason Isaacs as Hook is terrific, as is Olivia Williams as the children’s mother, who provides the final scene’s rich and moving narration. There are great demo scenes here as well, such as the Hook/Pan encounter in Skull Rock. James Newton Howard’s beautiful (and gorgeously recorded) score doesn’t hurt either.

Kingdom of Heaven—Director’s Cut This film was butchered in its theatrical release. The studio considered its running time to be far to long and slashed it. The result was apparently an incoherent mess (I didn’t see it in the theater). Now restored on Blu-ray to 194 minutes, you’ll either find it riveting, as I do (and director Ridley Scott’s best film since Alien), or a long slog.

But be aware that I love period films more than most, and while this one obviously takes the usual circuitous Hollywood route around historical accuracy (for example, it’s a little too kind to the Arab general Saladin, who in reality was no Mr. Nice Guy), I was never bothered by this. There’s also a long list of superb performances, the most surprising coming from Orlando Bloom as the central character.

The film is also an audio-video feast, including a spectacularly well-recorded score from Harry Gregson-Williams. But this isn’t one for the kiddies. Apart from its challenging length, it’s very violent.

Flyboys This melodrama about WWI’s Lafayette Escadrille might appeal more to me because of my flying background than to most viewers. It was a box office bomb, which wasn’t helped by a few off-the-wall elements. A romance between an American flyboy and a French girl, for example, leads to a ridiculous rescue. But for the most part the film really pulled me in. Its audio and video are also first rate.

The special effects, including the flying sequences, are thrilling. I suspect many viewers sneered at the scenes showing enemies acknowledging and even saluting each other in the air, thinking that this had to be a creation of the filmmakers. But it’s known that the air battles in WWI were sometimes the last bastion of chivalry, though not without the appalling exceptions that ultimately killed it off.

Which movie make your "guilty pleasure" list? Leave a comment!