WestWorld: When the West was "Meh."

In 1973, acclaimed author and all-around cool guy Michael Crichton decided that he would write and direct a theatrical film. The story is pretty decent, and would have probably made an entertaining novella, or maybe expanded a little into a real novel. Unfortunately, what we have is this movie instead.

Don't get me wrong, it isn't terrible. It just isn't terribly good. I wasn't expecting it to be brilliant, so I wasn't disappointed. I've seen Maximum Overdrive, so I know how movies that are directed by writers can turn out (though I am glad for Maximum Overdrive, because it has a little league coach being bludgeoned to death by a soda machine). I'm sure there are some quality films directed by novelists, I just can't seem to think of any right now.

Ok, sorry about that, this movie isn't all that bad. It was released in 1973, was written and directed by Crichton, and stars Yul Brynner, James Brolin, and Richard Benjamin, with a puzzling cameo by Dick Van Patten. In the future (or maybe not), there exists an adult amusement park, where for a paltry $1,000 a day, you can basically live in a carefully recreated medieval, Roman, or American western-themed world, and the primary thing that people want to do when they go there? They want to kill and/or have sex with robots.

John and Pete are going to WestWorld as the film opens, taking a hovercraft that jets majestically over a projected-screen desert. John's been there before, and Pete's a WestWorld virgin. When they arrive, we notice immediately that several of the stewardesses, attendants, whatever, have blank, terrible, soulless dead eyes. These are robots, with fully articulated movements, limbs, and extremely subtle and realistic facial expressions, mouth movements, etc. What's the one thing that these amazing future-scientists can't quite get right? Their hands. (This is a pretty major flaw in how an actual android would be; Currently, Japanese scientists have created some pretty amazing robot heads, but the faces are really the hardest thing to pull off. It's a big problem in CG, too.)

The only real problem with this movie is that I can't bring myself to care about the characters. They're pretty poorly developed, and there are some basic attempts made early on to round them out. Pete's apparently recently divorced, though it doesn't really matter too much. Not much is known about John, other than he really gets into the whole Western thing. The major conflict arises when the robots arbitrarily decide that they're not going to obey the rules anymore, and start killing everyone. Again, there are some basic attempts made to scientifically explain this, like it's some sort of real virus spreading around between the robots. But it doesn't really matter.

The best part about the movie by far is Yul Brynner. He's essentially playing his role of Chris from The Magnificent Seven. He only has like four lines in the movie, gets shot up a couple of times, and mostly stalks around in a very robot-y way, first kiling John and then spending some time trying to kill Pete. He's also apparently the only robot in WestWorld, because when all the rest of the robots go crazy, it seems to mostly be localized in the Roman and Medieval worlds. He also might just have a longer energy reserve than the other robots (because the dumb scientists shut down all the power, which didn't do anything except seal off some rooms and their own doom). The movie never really explains how the Yul Brynner Gunslinger character is able to rampage for so long, but evidently, it doesn't really matter. Because, y'know. He's a robot, man! And he's unstoppable! Literally a killing machine, what's better than that? This film attempts to postulate that not much is in fact better than that.

Also, they take his face off, and it's pretty cool.

This review seems pretty negative, so I must have disliked the movie more than I thought. I took a lot of funny notes while I was watching it, though, so I did enjoy it. (Sample note: "He gives a robot girl that was being tied up a sip of water and her friggin' face shorts out, and smoke pours from her cheek/ear/side of hear head. Good job, idiot. You could have totally had sex with that robot.") It is also a testament that I watched it all the way through. If a movie is that terrible, I'll stop watching it.

It's not imperative that this movie be seen by millions of people. It's even less imperative that anyone go out and watch the sequel, Futureworld, where the amusement park is used to lure the rich and powerful to their robot-y doom. There was also an ill-advised and thankfully short-lived television series called Beyond Westworld, where I rightly assume that the only thing it was "beyond" was sense, rationality, and the notions of entertainment.

If you're a super-huge fan of Michael Crichton, you may want to watch it, just to say that you did. Or, you may just be a huge fan of Runaway, the unexpected flop starring Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons, which was unexpectedly overshadowed by The Terminator in 1984.

I give WestWorld two and a half faceless robot Yul Brynners out of five.

Altered States: Crazier Than Jacob's Ladder

Remember how I said that Jacob's Ladder was a movie that was pretty crazy? Well, that was before I watched Altered States. Unfortunately, being infinitely crazier doesn't make it better. It just makes it certifiably insane.

Directed by Ken Russell and featuring the debut of both William Hurt and an itty bitty Drew Barrymore, Altered States is the story of a Harvard Medical doctor and scientist, Dr. Eddie Jessup, who studies schizophrenia and the idea that alternative and unusual mental states are just as real and valid as "normal" ones. He's also fairly disjointed, having suffered from religious visions as a child until he was sixteen, losing faith when his father died of cancer. He grows curious of sensory deprivation, hallucinatory drugs, and achieving altered states of consciousness. Things take a completely ridiculous turn, however, when his sojourns into peyote and sealed tanks physically devolves his genetic structure, resulting in what can only be described as "weird shit."

It can be classified as a psychological thriller/body-horror film in that the main character is a psychologist, and some pretty screwed up and horrible things end up happening to his body. It also features some of the most bizarre and complicated montage sequences I've seen, featuring genuinely freaky goats with a half-dozen eyes, creepy religious images, lava, fires, fields of yellow flowers, clouds, fish, eel, a lizard that turns into his wife, and then they both get covered in ash and erode into nothingness, etc. Some of them are so random that they're unrecognizable, and seem to be intended to give the audience itself hallucinations or seizures. I'm sure if I really wanted to, I could have gone through frame-by-frame, and tried to piece apart the images, the visual metaphor encased within. I may love movies way too much, but I do not love them that much.

Almost despite itself, the film and its characters are able to raise some interesting questions concerning the nature of human consciousness, before it departs from such actual scientific stuff and focuses more on Jessup turning into a tiny monkey man and rampaging around a zoo, eating a live goat. Seriously. (The best part of the scene is when monkey-Jessup throws a stone at a goat, striking it square in the face. We are fortunate enough to be treated to this image as an audience, though I wasn't able to capture it or find it to show you. Just imagine, if you will: A goat. Getting hit in the face with a rock.)

The general idea seems to be that our current state, our current position in evolution, society, religion, etc., is mostly based on our "normal" perceptions of the universe around us. He also postulates that our atoms contain six billion years of memories, and the potential to harness that energy, those memories, those previous states is there in every atom of everything, and he seems to prove it in his own crazy-ass way. Once he begins using psychotropic drugs and immersing himself in a tank or a boiler with no stimuli from the outside world, his hallucinations become real, and enact a real biological and genetic change. It isn't as cool as it sounds, though. Eventually, he devolves into a strange melty-jello-man, with no real features, limbs, or identifiers, other than a vaguely human face and a screaming mouth. For some reason, this change also results in an extremely high output of energy, which nearly destroys the laboratory. The changes aren't pleasant for anyone: When he was a tiny monkey-thing, he almost beat a security guard to death, fought with some neighborhood dogs, snuck into a zoo, and ate a goat. His wife Emily (played by Blair Brown, you can see her currently on Fringe) seems to be the only one that can snap him out of these increasingly horrible modifications his body seems intent upon going through.

Bob Balaban is also in this movie, and I just really like his name. He plays another scientist, or researcher, or something, and his job is to keep an eye on things while Jessup is in the sensory deprivation chambers, and make notes on the EEG readings when something interesting happens. There's also another guy, Mason, a character whom I at first thought was some arbitrary hobo/drunk friend of theirs, but it later turns out that he's a professor of endocrinology (study of the endocrine system, hormones, etc.). He's the classic representation of modern science, where even though he has seen the results himself, refuses (in a very violent, aggressive, and especially unconvincingly vehement manner) that it's all poppycock, or hogwash, or craziness. Bob Balaban is more enthusiastic, but it may be mostly jealousy. Emily is fascinated as an anthropologist, as well as frightened as his wife, or ex-wife, or whatever she happens to be (Jessup is so crazy that he never apparently told her that he loved her, even though they were/are married and had two kids, one of whom was played by a tiny Drew Barrymore).

Anyway, the movie barely makes sense. By the end, he's almost devolved into nothingness, when he somehow transfers the regression to Emily, who then ends up looking like Magma from the New Mutants comic books. Then, he turns into a bunch of 1980s special effects, they both materialize (naked) on the hallway floor together, he tells her that he loves her, and BAM we've got ourselves an ending.

Unfortunately, the characters aren't developed enough for me, but the story is interesting and the idea behind it definitely had some potential to go someplace interesting. The montage sequences are fascinating purely on an aesthetic arrangement standpoint, featuring images and themes that are obviously meant to mean something, but unfortunately aren't given enough attention or screen time to be figured out or even cursorily scrutinized by the audience. It does, however, feature some disturbingly bizarre displays of true body horror, where his skin seems to be moving, roiling, changing, first on his arms and then on his chest, which is typically followed by some visual stimuli and hallucination. The body horror genre isn't seen too much these days, but it should always have some vaguely sweet spot in the hearts of all audiences. Audiences will always have bodies, and the threat of something terrible happening to the human body from within is infinitely more frightening than a giant shark, or a machete wielding weirdo, or lepruchauns, or gremlins, or anything like that. Your body is a machine, pumping blood and oxygen and other whatnots around, and it can fail at any time, or betray you in terrible, horrible ways. Think about that.

This movie isn't terrible by any means. It's decent for what it is, and what it's trying to do, and William Hurt is actually a very interesting (if underdeveloped) character. I kept expecting something more interesting to happen, but it never really did. The effects are what can be expected of 1980, but it does use some very interesting editing techniques to create some very disturbing and confusing montage sequences, which is also part of the point. It's worth a watch, at least. Maybe it would be better if you took some drugs, first. I give it three whacked-out-Indian-shamans out of five, or three stone-pelted goats out of five.

Jacob's Ladder: This Movie Is Totally Crazy

First and foremost, this movie is totally bonkers. Absolutely insane. It uses some unique techniques to create some crazy in-camera (non-post) special effects, and you really see how incredibly, mind-bogglingly tall Tim Robbins is.

Jacob's Ladder was directed by Adrian Lyne (director of Fatal Attraction) and stars Tim Robbins, Danny Aiello, Ving Rhames, Jason Alexander, just to name a few. It was released in 1990, and again, is absolutely whacked-out.

Tim Robbins stars as Jacob Singer, a Vietnam war veteran (with a Ph.D) who works in a post office. The film opens in Vietnam, as Jake and his army buddies joke around until they see movement in the trees. Then all hell breaks loose, and there are explosions, gunshots, and Ving Rhames starts having some kind of seizure. Jake is bayonetted by an unseen assailant, and then he wakes up. He's been home from the war for awhile; I don't think it ever really specifically says how long, but it's set in 1975, so he can't have been home too long. As the film progresses, he begins having strange hallucinations and visions of demons, as well as war flashbacks, seeming to be some sort of post-traumatic stress.

There is a ton of religious imagery and references in the film (his girlfriend's name is Jezebel, and his sons have biblical names). He consistently refers to Louie, his chiropractor (played by Danny Aiello) as an angel, an "overgrown cherub." He sees a faceless man (or a man with a bag on his head) everywhere, his face blurred and shaking (accomplished in-film by filming an actor shaking their head back and forth at a slow rate, then played back normal speed, resulting in a totally crazy blurring effect). Nobody seems to believe him, even when he falls ill with a 106 fever, and needs to be baptized in a tub of ice water to save his life.

It seems like a lot of movies feature dank, horrible, depressing hallways, especially in hospitals. After he's abducted by apparently military men/thugs, he beats them up and bails out of the car, hurting his bad back and getting robbed by a streetcorner Santa. When he goes to the hospital, they think he's a little crazy, since he says Santa Clause stole his wallet. He begins hallucinating again (or so we think), as they take him deeper and deeper into the hospital. He sees gibbering mental patients, deformed patients, his son's damaged bicycle (his son Gabe, played by Macauley Kulkin) was killed in an accident on his bike while Jake was in Vietnam), as well as a hallway of random organs and blood. The doctors there tell him that he's already dead, and he thinks that he's in hell. He eventually wakes up; his ex-wife and his sons stop by to visit, but he has more visions. Louie shows up later, raving about the conditions in the hospital, and carts him away, always the guardian angel.

During the whole movie, in addition to his other hallucinations and visions of demons, hell, etc., he also has random flashes and dreams of Vietnam, showing after he was bayonetted, his fellow soldiers finding him, helicopters, etc. This is one of the most interesting aspects of the film. Potential spoiler alert, although I think that 19 years after release, it won't be that big of a deal anymore. However, I don't want to ruin it for anyone that hasn't seen it yet (and I do recommend checking it out), there's some fair warning. By the end of the film, we discover that Jake never made it out of Vietnam. He dies shortly after being stabbed, and his entire post-war life is one long, detailed hallucination, an example of extended tachypsychia, a perception of distended time, where in the span of a few minutes before his death, he lives out a few years of his life, though towards the end, he begins hallucinating and catching visions of reality.

The point is, all the random flashes throughout the film about Vietnam are the only things happening in the real time of the film. Because they're so short, and the other segments are so long, the audience assumes that the Vietnam stuff is a flashback, and the rest is current. In reality, Vietnam is the only current event taking place, and the rest of the movie represent extended "flash-forwards," where he has hallucinatory visions on his deathbed. Not only is this a good plot twist and comes out of nowhere, it's a fantastic example of how the audience can be manipulated by expectation. We assume that the post-war stuff is "real," and actually happening, because we're given no conceivable reason to assume otherwise. In looking at it the other way, we see only about ten minutes of actual "reality," where even the seemingly normal post-war scenes are in fact hallucinations, featuring their own otherworldly twisted hallucinations as his brain begins to die, along with his body (this may explain his chronic back pain; additionally, in his fantasy world, he has a scar on his abdomen that is apparently the healed bayonet wound that he "survives").

The movie also brings up important questions on the nature of perception and reality as we experience it. Can we truly trust anything that we experience with any of our senses? Can we be sure that what we perceive as real actually is? Jake meets a man towards the end that claims to have been a military chemist, and Jake's platoon was being tested with an experimental drug designed to make soldiers more aggressive. It worked too well, causing the soldiers to attack indiscriminately and extremely violently (Jake is stabbed and killed by one of his own men, although it's possible that this is all fake as well, considering he's told this by one of his hallucinations). "The Ladder" is a drug designed to take soldiers straight down into base anger. He returns "home," to his ex-wife's place, and eventually sees his deceased son on the stairs. He climbs them with Gabe, and the scene is whited out. We then see that he's still in 'Nam, dying on a surgical table in a tent.

Louie told Jake that people that burn in hell are those that cannot let go; the fire burns all that away, and it frees the soul. If you have made your peace, the fire is cleansing, and the devils are really angels, freeing the soul. His entire life after the war is designed to help him let go of what he has been clinging to: his wife and children, and the guilt over his son's death, and of not being there when it happened (to prevent it, or even to grieve properly). It's all eventually burned away (get it, with the fever, and whatnot? It's metaphor!). He also climbs a "ladder" of sorts (stairs are like a ladder, sort of, it's a metaphor too, see?).

This movie really messes with the mind. It's difficult to accept anything at face value, and I can see how the ending could be less of a twist and more of a "What the...?" to some audiences. The fact that none of it actually "happened" or was "real" isn't really important. The idea of reality being up to our minds is pretty staggering. Basically, my face was like this by the time the movie was over:

This film is definitely recommended. It's worth four imagined lifetimes out of five, or four insanely tall Tim Robbinses out of five. Definitely check it out, just be sure to prepare your mind for a complete freak-job.

Two Obscure Shakespearean Characters Walk Into A Bar...

So, here's the deal. There's nothing to even vaguely poke fun at with this movie. The only thing that even comes close is to the amazement at how young Tim Roth and Gary Oldman look in this movie. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was released in 1990, which is (sadly) almost twenty years ago. It was directed by the original playwright, Tom Stoppard. It's the only film that he's directed, but he's a well-known and well-respected writer.

For those of you that don't know, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two minor and relatively obscure characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet. They are presented as friends of Hamlet and courtiers, and even in the original play, their identities are inexorably linked. Their original role is to escort Hamlet on his journey to England, with a letter from Claudius with instructions to have Hamlet killed. Ever the crafty (but hopelessly insane) fox, Hamlet rewrites the letter to instruct Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's deaths, instead. The title of the film comes from a line in the play.

In Stoppard's film, the two characters wander aimlessly on horseback, not seeming to have a clear idea of who they are or where they came from. Guildenstern, played by Tim Roth is the smarter of the two, but also the most troubled. Rosencrantz's ignorance seems to be blissful, though he is occasionally pained by flashes of rationality and intelligence. Rosencrantz quickly discovers that a coin flipped will always land heads up, and proves this by flipping heads over 100 times in a row. This causes Guildenstern to question the nature of reality, of fate, of the random, and the law of probability. Guildenstern is consistently concerned with the nonsensical and increasingly existential situations that they find themselves in, while Rosencrantz merely mixes up their own names, and keeps flipping coins.

Richard Dreyfuss makes a brilliant appearance as the leader of a roving theater troupe calling themselves the Tragedians. Guildenstern likens them to prostitutes, peddling cheap entertainment for the exchange of gold. They serve a grander purpose, however: Through this theater troupe (with their comically over-large caravan/stage), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find themselves in the palace of Elsinor, smack dab in the middle of the story of Hamlet.

The film progresses along the skewed context of the play Hamlet, taking some time to check out Ophelia, play a game of Questions on an indoor tennis court (which Rosencrantz is reluctant to give up, long after the game has completed, and keeps trying to play in normal conversation), and have an amazingly bizarre conversation and dinner with the rapidly deteriorating Hamlet himself. They also encounter the Tragedians again, where they completely drive me insane. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern watch them perform the play Hamlet, even going so far as getting to the ending, where Hamlet meets his tragic end, but not before killing Claudius, as well as predicting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's own deaths. During the actual play (in front of Claudius, Gertrude, Hamlet, etc.), the Tragedians perform, and then within the play, they act as the king, queen, and Hamlet watching a play (as a puppet show), where the puppets act out the play. It literally makes me dizzy.

In general, the movie vacillates between existential absurdism and dialogue-driven mind-play. They have some incredibly stellar lines and conversations, where they interrupt each other, talk over each other, and volley back and forth in an extraordinarily rapid manner (and through long takes, as well; Tim Roth and Gary Oldman are much maligned and underrated these days). Their Questions/Tennis game is an incredible scene, mixing movement and words together, and is a rare time for Rosencrantz to shine. Guildenstern has some amazing lines, as well, such as "blood is compulsory," "maidens aspiring to Godheads, or vice versa."

Stoppard directs this film very much like a play. There isn't much camerawork, and there isn't a whole lot of shot-reverse-shot going on. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spend a lot of time on screen at the same time, again reinforcing the idea that they're linked, and aren't able to exist without the other. Additionally, they don't seem to particularly enjoy each other's company, or like each other very much.

They're very much like an old married couple, not entirely certain what they're doing, why they're together, or why they aren't able to be apart. They accept it as a given, and stick it out together, existing separately but intertwined, going on their adventure together, eventually meeting their deaths after escorting Hamlet (with another appearance of the Tragedians on the boat, further screwing with everyone's minds).

I highly recommend this movie. It's not for everyone, however. I would also recommend seeing it performed on stage, provided you're able to see a well-performed version. A lackluster or wavering performance would absolutely ruin everything. Roth and Oldman are a perfect combination of rough-and-tumble courtiers, lost, confused, questioning, and contemplating. Their personalities mingle perfectly, and they seem like lifelong friends, even if they can't remember how they met.

Ok, to wrap it up. Five tragic deaths out of five. Rent it, go see it on stage, watch it more than once if you don't get it at first. There's a lot going on, and it happens pretty fast. Watch Hamlet while you're at it. If you have to rent it, make sure it has either Kenneth Branagh or Mel Gibson in it (listed in order of purely academic integrity). It might help to understand where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is coming from.