BLADE: TRINITY: Sounds Like Rejects from a Saturday Morning Cartoon

Blade: Trinity (2004) – Directed by David S. Goyer – Starring Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Jessica Biel, Ryan Reynolds, Parker Posey, Dominic Purcell, Triple H, Callum Keith Rennie, Natasha Lyonne, John Michael Higgins, Patton Oswalt, James Remar, and Eric Bogosian.

BLADE: TRINITY is not the fall from the mountaintop that Spider-Man 3 represents, but it is a definite step down in quality from the first two movies in the vampire-hunting franchise.

The main problem with TRINITY is that it moves BLADE firmly into superhero territory; watching this film is like watching a comic book company try to save an under-selling book by tossing in a bunch of guest stars and trying to make the book look more like everything else in the company line. It just doesn’t work; if anything, TRINITY feels like it should be the fourth movie in the series (not that there is a fourth movie in the series) and in the early stages of the film I feel like I’ve missed a story. The BLADE franchise, then, is like picking up a few old back issues of a now defunct comic, maybe from one of those awesome East Coast Comics ads that used to run in Marvel books all the time, and digging issues 18 through 25, but then being mostly confused by issue 64.

Things progress too quick here, and there’s an acute sense of David S. Goyer (who wrote all the BLADE movies and directs TRINITY) jumping too far ahead in his overall story. Before you’ve even settled into your seat, we’ve got some vampires digging up Dracula and Whistler being killed, and then Blade is hanging out with Patton Oswalt. It just moves too fast and too unconvincingly.

Danica Talos (Parker Posey) leads a group of vampires to look for Dracula in the-

I just can’t go on without saying how much I hate Parker Posey in this movie. She’s not an actress that does a whole lot for me even on her good days (mostly in the Christopher Guest films), but she’s intolerable here. Talos’ vibe is all “I’m better than you because I’m a bitch who doesn’t care,” and Posey does little to convince me she’s not on total cruise control in this movie. It’s not all Posey’s fault, of course, because she seems to deliver exactly what Goyer wants out of Talos, but whether the fault likes more with Goyer or Posey, I can’t stand the scenes with her in them.

The problems for Blade (Wesley Snipes) and Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) start when Blade kills a human familiar of the vampires. This comes to the attention of the FBI, who lead a raid on Blade and Whistler’s HQ which ends with the mechanic/father figure dying for good this time. The FBI captures and interrogates Blade, but the two chief interrogators interview Blade like they learned their cop techniques from watching reruns of bad cop movies.

It’s awful stuff, and we’re saved from seeing even more of it (or John Michael Higgins’ phony psych exam) by the arrival of Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel). There’s a decent fight scene during their escape but it’s just that – decent and nothing more.

Another area where TRINITY fails is that this movie feels more like THE NIGHTSTALKERS AND BLADE rather than BLADE AND THE NIGHTSTALKERS. The movie asks Reynolds’ charisma to carry much of the film, and while Reynolds’ is fine in that role, the film has him go overboard a bit too much. King’s outward loudness is balanced by Whistler’s inner calm, and perhaps if the film were simply theirs instead of having to include Blade, it might have worked better. As it is, however, we’ve got Blade competing for screen time with King and Whistler; as a result, where the previous two films were able to blend a variety of genres into an effective movie, TRINITY’s varying parts never coalesce.

There’s other Nightstalkers, too, but they’re here just to die.

The Nightstalkers-featuring-Blade want to stop Dracula (Dominic Purcell) and blah blah blah …

I mean, there’s nothing here unique or surprising or barely engaging. Everything is either a step down in comparison to previous films or a step sideways, and all of it is confusing. There’s really not much more to say about TRINITY. It’s not the worst film ever made, but it’s a step back from the first two films. It’s a much more straightforward superhero action movie but it’s not as enjoyable. In making the movie function more like a traditional superhero story, Goyer has robbed Blade of what makes him unique.

SCREAM 3: Why Don’t You Take Some F*cking Responsibility?

Scream 3 – Directed by Wes Craven – Starring Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Patrick Dempsey, Parker Posey, Deon Richmond, Liev Schreiber, Kelly Rutherford, Jenny McCarthy, Patrick Warburton, Matt Keeslar, Emily Mortimer, Scott Foley, Jamie Kennedy, Roger L. Jackson, Carrie Fisher, and Lance Henriksen.

SCREAM 3 has the right idea but the wrong execution, and what was so fresh and fun during SCREAM and SCREAM 2 becomes limp and predictable.

SCREAM took place in high school, SCREAM 2 in college, and so SCREAM 3 is transported into the real world. The Stab franchise (the in-film franchise interpreting the real-life events of Sidney Prescott into cheesy slasher films) is filming its third go-round and Sidney is living by herself (okay, with a dog) up in the hills and working as a telephone counselor who goes by the name Laura.

It makes complete sense that after everything she’s seen Sidney (Neve Campbell) has retreated away from the world, but it doesn’t make for a very good movie. Each film resets Sidney back to the scared victim and by now that’s worn thin.

I’d be more than willing to accept a lessened role for Sidney if the franchise pushed Dewey and Gale (David Arquette and Courteney Cox) to the front. Unfortunately, they’ve reset that couple, too, so we’ve got to sit through the Dewey and Gale Courtship Dance all over again. Why? Having Dewey and Gale as a couple would have been a perfectly fine place to start and would have given the film some momentum which it sorely needs.

The film has the right idea introducing the film cast of Stab, but doesn’t take enough time to make them real people, so they’re just actors getting killed. It feels reheated, too, after SCREAM 2′s use of Luke Wilson, Heather Graham, and Tori Spelling to redo the actions of the first movie. It is pretty cool to see Woodsboro rebuilt on a movie soundstage, and there’s a nice scene with Sidney back in “her” bedroom, but for the most part, the entire movie angle falls completely flat.

Even the appearance of Randy (Jamie Kennedy) via videotape doesn’t work. They try to do the whole “in the third film, all bets are off” bit, but what horror movie stops at #3? Randy’s “all bets are off” line is apparently justification for “do whatever you want,” because the bad guy this time around is Roman (Scott Foley), the director of Stab, who also (TA-DAAAAAA!) happens to be the son of Sidney’s mom, Maureen Prescott! Is your mind blow?

Probably not.

SCREAM 3 generates some energy from the Courteney Cox/Parker Posey pairing. Parker plays Jennifer Jolie, the actress playing Gale Weathers in the Stab movies, and as they investigate Maureen Prescott’s life as an actress, they manage to scrounge up a few laughs.

Mostly, though, it’s just a whole lot of snooze, as people we don’t care about get killed by a guy in a mask.

JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS: Hudson Hawk Flavored Bubblegum

Josie and the Pussycats (2001) – Directed by Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan – Starring Rachel Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson, Tara Reid, Alan Cumming, Gabriel Mann, Parker Posey, and the singing voice of Kay Hanley.

Like the beloved Hudson Hawk, JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS is both not a very good movie and a completely awesome movie.

If you want the movie to make some kind of realistic, narrative sense, you’re going to be disappointed. JOSIE isn’t interested in the steps it walks to get its characters from situation to situation – it’s just interested in their reactions once they get there. Here’s the best example of this: Josie and the Pussycats are a struggling power bubblegum pop group in the middle of nowhere, who play a gig at the bowling alley that sees them completely ignored by all of the bowling patrons. They only get the gig because they pay to rent bowling shoes, so the $20 they earn for the gig turns out to net them only $5. This is not a bad that’s got a big buzz behind them, and yet by a stroke of fate, a music exec (Alan Cumming) almost runs them over, decides they look the part, and within a week they’re the #1 band in the country.

It’s completely illogical, of course, but the film is completely self-aware that it’s illogical, even going so far as to have the girls address the ridiculousness of their sudden fame in the movie. That kind of knowing wink to the audience goes a long way to making JOSIE a completely enjoyable movie. You know it’s ridiculous, they know it’s ridiculous, but it’s also besides the point. If you want a realistic rock and roll girl band movie, this isn’t the film for you.

At its core, JOSIE is about fame – who produces it, who gets it, and who consumes it. The Pussycats can go from unknown to superknown in a week because the record company simply decrees it. They plant subliminal messages in the girls’ songs that continuously tell people that they love Josie and the Pussycats and that they want to buy or believe whatever Mega Records and their Government allies want them to buy or believe. Importantly, the message of the film seems to be that who gets the fame (the Pussycats) is the least important part of the process because their music is just the feeder system to get consumers to buy more stuff. When girls from home who hate them show up at their hotel shrieking their love of them, the girls’ reaction is like, “Something is wrong,” but Cumming tells them, “What’s the point of fame if people who hated you in high school don’t kiss your ass now?”

Lest you think this is a message film, however, JOSIE successfully pulls off the “eat their cake and have it, too” move, as it critiques consumer culture at the same time it’s constantly putting consumer culture in front of your eyeballs. It seems like every scene has some kind of product placement, and according to the Never Wrong, none of these companies paid for their product placement.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide how McDonald’s feels about being plastered all over the Tara Reid shower scene.

The movie succeeds on its bubbly approach – the girls might question how they could possibly get this famous, this fast, but they don’t exactly want to go home and play in the bowling alley, so they roll with it.

The movie is rather perfectly cast. Rachel Leigh Cook plays Josie and makes an official bid to be the Cutest Woman Ever; her mix of self-doubt and artistic talent makes her a very grounded character to center all of the nonsense that’s going on. Rosario Dawson is the partner that’s discovering she’s now a sidekick. The label renames the band by putting Josie’s name out front, and there’s a running gag with Alan Cumming’s character completely forgetting about Valerie even being there. Tara Reid plays Melody as completely naive and childlike and it’s actually a pretty effective character conception. Throw in Parker Posey at her over-the-top best and Alan Cumming as the band’s particularly upbeat but oily manager and there’s just the right mix of likability and irritability.

The girls eventually discover what Mega Records is doing with their music and they rebel, not knowing that rebellion means the record company will kill them to keep them quiet. (The film opens with a pre-credits sequence that sees the band the Pussycats replace as their label’s favorite getting offed.) Josie chooses her friends over fame, there’s a big fight, and they play their music without subliminal messages for the first time and everyone still loves them.

JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS isn’t a great movie at all, but it is a good, shut-your-brain-off time, and the songs – sung by the great Kay Hanley – are plenty catchy enough. There’s a message in the movie, but it’s submerged behind the idea of having a good time, which is what I had watching it.