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Jun. 30th, 2007 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickMovie review: Ghost Rider
It's not my movie. Movies that are mine, well, I don't generally review them mockingly. This movie belonged to The Boy, the one with whom I went to Amsterdam. His movie recs are almost entirely sucktastic. On the other hand, they're fun to pan even when they're painful to watch. On rare occasions, the movies do not suck. This wasn't exactly one of those occasions, but I do have some nice things to say anyway.
Things I actually liked about Ghost Rider
Motorcycles are cool. Somewhat organic motorcycles with mystical unquenchable decorative flames and lots of chrome that go straight up buildings and over water and come when you whistle are very cool indeed. I'd buy one. I am glad that it looked as cool as I had hoped it would.
This movie had reasonably good villians from the Lovecraft school of the non-reveal. Well-played special effects on that front that I didn't think were over-the-top. Yay!
Really spiffy special effects all the way 'round, really. I still do not understand how flames can burn underwater, but I expect this is much like whatsis giant energy scythe weapons (eg Deathscythe of Gundam Wing) can work underwater. Probably it's nanotech. The flames were good. The transform effect was good. I was, honestly, amazed by how much things looked like they did in the comic books.
The Ghost Rider dresses well and chains and spiky bits are always suitable accessories for black leather. Yay! I call Stylish!
I liked the old guy watching the churchyard. He gave the whole thing a solid western feel. I like westerns. (Cool as he was, though, the Ghost Rider ain't got nothing on the Saint of Killers. The Saint is way cooler.)
The guy who did the air element baddie was striking. I'd do him. Actually, our villian Blackheart was surprisingly not-shitty and had a pretty good range of facial expressions for gloating. I loved how all the baddies got long duster coats. Long duster coats are *almost* as cool as black leather and chains and they added to the western feel.
The redneck audiences (for the motorcycle jump career shots) looked very realistic.
A fair amount of attention was paid to the movie's use of color and it was pretty effective, if blunt. It's not hard to contrast saturated primary colors of the daylight world with the grey/green/navy of the nighttime world. It's even easier when, at night, your main character is *on fire* in brilliant oranges and yellows.
This was also a better ending to Deal With the Devil movies than most.
Things I didn't really like about Ghost Rider
Nicholas Cage. I don't like him. I just don't.
Adult Roxy looks way younger than Our Adult Hero. The "young" versions of each look about the same age, but the adult versions do not. This pissed me off so I went to IMDB. Matt Long (born 1980) played Young Johnny Blaze. Nick Cage (1964) played Adult Johnny Blaze. Raquel Allessi (birthdate unknown but in 1990 she played a six year old. I'd be amazed if she was more than ten at the time. We'll put her birthdate at a guesstimated 1980 even though it's probably slightly later than that. It warn't no ten years later than that because then she'd have been 0 years old and playing a 6 year old. That doesn't fly no matter how good an actress you are.) Adult Roxy was played by Eva Mendez, born 1974. What this tells us is that Johnny Blaze aged 16 years in the interim between his deal with the devil and the present. Interestingly, his chickie, she only aged 6 years, if that many. Let's do the time warp again, kids! Women aren't sexy if they're the same age as their men. Women must age more slowly (by about fifty percent) than the men they are with. Yee-Haw! (More movies than this one do this, especially in "time passes and we're all grown up now!" things. It pisses me off a lot.)
Peter Fonda (the Devil) looks plastic. Hams it up a bit too much to be the real Devil. The real Devil is a being who knows full well how to accessorize his minions. Otherwise, why does the Ghost Rider get such a cool bike? And flame effects? I hate that Hollywood figures all villians have to chortle. I liked the cane, though, and I did, yes, catch the crossroads thing BEFORE the forty-three establishing shots.
Some of the dialogue was cheesier than Rainbow Goldfish. This is, however, a common failing of action movies that are trying to provide the next meme-ish quote a la "Git R Done" or "Let's Roll" or whatever. (Trying to provide the next "cool" quote almost certainly guarantees that one will not succeed.) Also, ten year old boys like cheesy dialogue. I am not a ten year old boy.
These fucking superhero movies (except The Incredibles) totally ignore the amount of property damage done by superheros. This movie, man, the Ghost Rider is all about the property damage. For real. He'd be paying that shit off for years. The man mighta sold his soul to the devil, but AllState and Prudential and those folks will own his ass FOREVER.
Horses do not run as fast as a running-full-out motorcycle, not even magical horses. The problem here lies in stride length and frequency-of-stride and I know what normal looks like for these things on horses. So, y'know, if you have a horse running pretty good alongside a motorcycle and the horse appears to be running *normally* -- normal stride length, normal frequency of stride -- then the bike isn't going more than about fifteen, twenty miles an hour. I don't give a shit if both of them are on fire or not. The horse, myffic or not, was running like a real horse with the footfall pattern and stride frequency of a real horse which means the damn thing wasn't going all that fast.
I like a more complicated plot and a bit of grey to my black-n-white, but I know better to expect things like character development and complex morality in these sorts of films so I can't really mark it down too much on that.
I give weekend rental status, not something you should make an effort to see, unless you have a hard-on for flaming motorcycles. (The flaming motorcycle is pretty damn good, though.)
It's not my movie. Movies that are mine, well, I don't generally review them mockingly. This movie belonged to The Boy, the one with whom I went to Amsterdam. His movie recs are almost entirely sucktastic. On the other hand, they're fun to pan even when they're painful to watch. On rare occasions, the movies do not suck. This wasn't exactly one of those occasions, but I do have some nice things to say anyway.
Things I actually liked about Ghost Rider
Motorcycles are cool. Somewhat organic motorcycles with mystical unquenchable decorative flames and lots of chrome that go straight up buildings and over water and come when you whistle are very cool indeed. I'd buy one. I am glad that it looked as cool as I had hoped it would.
This movie had reasonably good villians from the Lovecraft school of the non-reveal. Well-played special effects on that front that I didn't think were over-the-top. Yay!
Really spiffy special effects all the way 'round, really. I still do not understand how flames can burn underwater, but I expect this is much like whatsis giant energy scythe weapons (eg Deathscythe of Gundam Wing) can work underwater. Probably it's nanotech. The flames were good. The transform effect was good. I was, honestly, amazed by how much things looked like they did in the comic books.
The Ghost Rider dresses well and chains and spiky bits are always suitable accessories for black leather. Yay! I call Stylish!
I liked the old guy watching the churchyard. He gave the whole thing a solid western feel. I like westerns. (Cool as he was, though, the Ghost Rider ain't got nothing on the Saint of Killers. The Saint is way cooler.)
The guy who did the air element baddie was striking. I'd do him. Actually, our villian Blackheart was surprisingly not-shitty and had a pretty good range of facial expressions for gloating. I loved how all the baddies got long duster coats. Long duster coats are *almost* as cool as black leather and chains and they added to the western feel.
The redneck audiences (for the motorcycle jump career shots) looked very realistic.
A fair amount of attention was paid to the movie's use of color and it was pretty effective, if blunt. It's not hard to contrast saturated primary colors of the daylight world with the grey/green/navy of the nighttime world. It's even easier when, at night, your main character is *on fire* in brilliant oranges and yellows.
This was also a better ending to Deal With the Devil movies than most.
Things I didn't really like about Ghost Rider
Nicholas Cage. I don't like him. I just don't.
Adult Roxy looks way younger than Our Adult Hero. The "young" versions of each look about the same age, but the adult versions do not. This pissed me off so I went to IMDB. Matt Long (born 1980) played Young Johnny Blaze. Nick Cage (1964) played Adult Johnny Blaze. Raquel Allessi (birthdate unknown but in 1990 she played a six year old. I'd be amazed if she was more than ten at the time. We'll put her birthdate at a guesstimated 1980 even though it's probably slightly later than that. It warn't no ten years later than that because then she'd have been 0 years old and playing a 6 year old. That doesn't fly no matter how good an actress you are.) Adult Roxy was played by Eva Mendez, born 1974. What this tells us is that Johnny Blaze aged 16 years in the interim between his deal with the devil and the present. Interestingly, his chickie, she only aged 6 years, if that many. Let's do the time warp again, kids! Women aren't sexy if they're the same age as their men. Women must age more slowly (by about fifty percent) than the men they are with. Yee-Haw! (More movies than this one do this, especially in "time passes and we're all grown up now!" things. It pisses me off a lot.)
Peter Fonda (the Devil) looks plastic. Hams it up a bit too much to be the real Devil. The real Devil is a being who knows full well how to accessorize his minions. Otherwise, why does the Ghost Rider get such a cool bike? And flame effects? I hate that Hollywood figures all villians have to chortle. I liked the cane, though, and I did, yes, catch the crossroads thing BEFORE the forty-three establishing shots.
Some of the dialogue was cheesier than Rainbow Goldfish. This is, however, a common failing of action movies that are trying to provide the next meme-ish quote a la "Git R Done" or "Let's Roll" or whatever. (Trying to provide the next "cool" quote almost certainly guarantees that one will not succeed.) Also, ten year old boys like cheesy dialogue. I am not a ten year old boy.
These fucking superhero movies (except The Incredibles) totally ignore the amount of property damage done by superheros. This movie, man, the Ghost Rider is all about the property damage. For real. He'd be paying that shit off for years. The man mighta sold his soul to the devil, but AllState and Prudential and those folks will own his ass FOREVER.
Horses do not run as fast as a running-full-out motorcycle, not even magical horses. The problem here lies in stride length and frequency-of-stride and I know what normal looks like for these things on horses. So, y'know, if you have a horse running pretty good alongside a motorcycle and the horse appears to be running *normally* -- normal stride length, normal frequency of stride -- then the bike isn't going more than about fifteen, twenty miles an hour. I don't give a shit if both of them are on fire or not. The horse, myffic or not, was running like a real horse with the footfall pattern and stride frequency of a real horse which means the damn thing wasn't going all that fast.
I like a more complicated plot and a bit of grey to my black-n-white, but I know better to expect things like character development and complex morality in these sorts of films so I can't really mark it down too much on that.
I give weekend rental status, not something you should make an effort to see, unless you have a hard-on for flaming motorcycles. (The flaming motorcycle is pretty damn good, though.)
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Date: 2007-07-02 11:56 am (UTC)Perhaps hellfire, despite well-worn and quite biblical traditions of sulfur and brimstone, is actually akin to a sodium or magnesium flare? Might explain why damned things burst into flame when in contact with holy objects - the divine is to the damned as water is to a sodium fire. Thus, holy water on a vampire: foosh! That'd make for a different set of special effects for the next rote-by-numbers vampire flick. Great eye-piercing gouts of white flame instead of the usual collapse-into-putrescence, explode into dust, or slow-match smoldering ruin.