From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sat Aug 10 22:32:34 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!02-newsfeed.univie.ac.at!01-newsfeed.univie.ac.at!Austria.EU.net!EU.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!netnews.worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.att.com!cbgw3.att.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: srenshaw@leland.stanford.edu (Scott Renshaw) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: ESCAPE FROM L. A. (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 9 Aug 1996 15:24:08 GMT Organization: Stanford University Lines: 92 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <4ufl6o$9k8@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: srenshaw@leland.stanford.edu (Scott Renshaw) NNTP-Posting-Host: mthost1.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #05763 Keywords: author=Renshaw Originator: ecl@mthost1 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5114 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1045 ESCAPE FROM L. A. A film review by Scott Renshaw Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw Starring: John Carpenter, Stacy Keach, George Corraface, A. J. Langer, Steve Buscemi, Cliff Robertson, Valeria Golino, Peter Fonda, Pam Grier. Screenplay: John Carpenter, Debra Hill, Kurt Russell. Director: John Carpenter. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw. "Snake is Back" proclaim the posters for ESCAPE FROM L. A., and from multiplexes across the nation, I can hear the answering cry of, "Who?" Let's face it, this isn't exactly Indiana Jones we're talking about -- Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken last graced theater screens fifteen years ago in ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, when a significant percentage of today's action film audience was somewhere between puberty and mastering solid food, and that film was not what one would call a classic of the genre. But Russell is a born again action hero after the success of STARGATE and EXECUTIVE DECISION, so he has once again donned the eye-patch (as well as the titles of co-writer and co-producer) for another futuristic adventure. The result is an attempt at self-satire which comes off as a tiresome exercise in pyrotechnics and cheap blue screen effects. In ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, Snake was forced to rescue the President of the United States after Air Force 1 crashes inside a prison colony which once was Manhattan. This time around, the location is Los Angeles, broken off from the continent after a massive earthquake and turned into a dumping round for undesirables by a morally authoritarian President (Cliff Robertson). But it isn't the president Snake needs to find; instead, it is the First Daughter (A. J. Langer), who has stolen an experimental weapon in an act of defiance. She intends to bring it to Cuervo Jones (George Corraface), an international criminal who rules Los Angeles and plans to invade the U.S. Snake is made an offer he can't refuse: bring back the weapon in ten hours, or die of a designer virus introduced into his blood. It is a good thing Carpenter, Russell and company waited so long between NEW YORK and L. A., because even those who actually saw the first film probably have forgotten enough not to notice that ESCAPE FROM L. A. is virtually a point-for-point remake of the original. In New York, Snake meets Brain (Harry Dean Stanton), a former running buddy who once left Snake high and dry and whom Snake insists on calling by his real name; in L. A., Snake meets Hershe (Pam Grier), a transsexual former running buddy who once left Snake high and dry and whom Snake insists on calling by his/her real name. NEW YORK had snake on a time clock before something introduced into his body kills him; ditto for L. A. Both find Snake chatting with a sympathetic woman who is promptly blown away, and both find snake in an athletic contest for the amusement of the villains. The number of duplicated details is quite astonishing, actually. At least everyone involved did their homework. The twist they try to place on ESCAPE FROM L. A. is that it is supposed to be funnier, almost a parody of the original. I say "supposed to" because John Carpenter may be one of the most humorless directors of the last twenty years, taking even bizarre material like BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and deadening it with his brooding style. His idea of a joke in ESCAPE FROM L. A. is showing every possible Southern California landmark (Hey, it's Universal Studios!...Hey, it's the Queen Mary!) or making a quick reference to every possible stereotype of Los Angeles living, and to show that he isn't taking anything seriously with some low-tech special effects, including a computer-generated submarine voyage which makes TRON look positively state-of-the-art. A few of the gags are clever, like a shot at L. A.'s front-running sports fans; others can't find a comfortable place between gruesome and silly, like a gang of cosmetic surgery victims always in search of fresh body parts. ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK was overly somber, but it was lean and efficient and quite good at creating its desolate urban landscape. ESCAPE FROM L. A. finds Carpenter making scattershot attempts at humor, and the experience is like being tickled by a robot. There are a few simple pleasures to be found in the performances, including Kurt Russell's laconic Snake. It's one of the best (if unintentional) jokes that despite the fact that everyone in the world seems to know who Snake Plissken is, he has probably been able to escape capture because he has no discernible personality. Russell does a guttural Clint Eastwood impression, and makes a solid anti-hero. Steve Buscemi also has fun as Cuervo's sniveling assistant Maps-of-the-Stars'-Homes Eddie, and Bruce Campbell makes an almost unrecognizable appearance as the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills. Mostly, though, ESCAPE FROM L. A. is a collection of fragments and missed opportunities where it is expected that a multitude of sins will be hidden by big fireballs (motorcycles tend to explode as though hit by nuclear warheads upon contact with the ground in a John Carpenter film). Snake may be back, but he doesn't have much to say, and what he does have to say has been said before. On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 California splits: 3. -- Scott Renshaw Stanford University http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Mar 25 15:40:52 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!newsfeed.luth.se!news.luth.se!erix.ericsson.se!erinews.ericsson.se!cnn.exu.ericsson.se!uunet!in1.uu.net!207.172.3.52!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uchinews!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: syegul@ix.netcom.com (Serdar Yegulalp) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: ESCAPE FROM L.A. (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 18 Feb 1997 15:52:58 GMT Organization: Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers Lines: 57 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5ecj8q$697@nntpa.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: syegul@ix.netcom.com (Serdar Yegulalp) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06963 Keywords: author=Yegulalp Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:6364 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1217 ESCAPE FROM L.A. A film review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1997 Serdar Yegulalp CAPSULE: A giddy, wild sci-fi farce that keys in on a ROBOCOP-style view of the future and contains more laughs than you might expect. The original ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK was a halfway-serious futuristic thriller that turned Manhattan Island into a giant maximum security prison, and then dumped the President of the United States into it. To rescue him, we had one-eyed Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell, who up until then had a roster mostly of Disney movies), and the combination of fairly unique ingredients made the movie a long-standing pulp-SF-and-fratboy favorite. ESCAPE FROM L.A. is not simply a sequel, but a sly self-parody that has endless fun inverting the same conventions it seems born to exploit. There are some scenes that are just impossible to take straight: how about Peter Fonda teaching Snake how to catch a tube in what looks like the post-apocalypse version of Big Sur? Or a basketball game to the death? Or a plastic surgery clinic filled with Beverly Hills zombies? The plot is the thinnest of excuses onto which to graft one weirdly hilarious sequence after another. The President (a far-right lunatic) drafts Plissken for a mission: rescue his daughter, who's absconded with the control block for a doomsday device. She's hijacked Air Force Three and sent it screaming right into the heart of L.A. -- which in this world, has not only been forcibly seperated from the rest of the country by an earthquake, but is a dumping ground for "undesirables" (i.e., anyone who would look even slightly out of place in a Norman Rockwell painting). You have the choice of deportation or electrocution at the border. They also have a nifty little coercion for Snake: a fast-breeding disease that will kill him in eight hours unless he gets back to them with the goods. Nice of them to think of everything. We're in overdrive right from the start. Snake is jammed into a one-man sub and shot at L.A., and skims across all manner of submerged and trashed landmarks. If you live in the area, you're guaranteed a few laughs at seeing your least favorite eyesores in ruins. (The biggest eyesore of all is at the very end of the movie, along with a line of dialogue that will convulse all comers. I am not ruining that one.) EFLA is almost like a slightly bigger-budgeted version of the kinds of SF movies that used to come out more often, like REPO MAN and ANDROID. While EFLA isn't nearly as much of a real cult item as the former or as emotionally involving as the latter, it's nice to see that John Carpenter still has a good soupcon of the anarchist/indie-producer spirit in him. The last scene in the movie should be a clear indication of that -- it leaves us wide open for endless possibilities. Like, say, ESCAPE FROM PLANET EARTH. Heh heh heh. Three out of four eyepatches. ____________________________________________________________________________ syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei http://serdar.home.ml.org another worldly device... ____________________________________________________________________________ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Aug 22 15:22:14 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!newsfeed1.telia.com!masternews.telia.net!newssrv.ita.tip.net!ubnnews.unisource.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-hh.maz.net!unlisys!fu-berlin.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!howland.erols.net!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.220.251.22!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Laurence Mixson Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Retrospective: Escape From L.A. (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 17 Aug 1997 15:36:05 GMT Organization: Datasync Internet Lines: 99 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5t75p5$g9o@nntp5.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: jarls@datasync.com NNTP-Posting-Host: homer16.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08614 Keywords: author=mixson X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer16.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8022 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1495 Escape from L.A. (1996) Starring Kurt Russell, A.J. Langer, Steve Buscemi, Georges Corraface, Pam Grier, and Cliff Robertson. Review by Laurence Mixson (jarls@datasync.com) ** out of **** Escape from L.A. is like a xerox copy of something. When viewed at a distance, or by people who haven't seen the original, it looks okay. But when examined close-up by those who dealt with the first one, the flaws and imperfections are gaping. Escape from L.A. follows the return of Snake Plissken, who Kurt Russell first brought to the screen 16 years ago in Escape from New York. Back then, Kurt was trying to break away from his Disney-status in a raw, unconvential film, directed and written by one of my favorite directors(if you're a regular reader of my reviews, you'll know, my favorite directors are Ridley Scott, Quentin Tarantino, John Carpenter, James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, Steven Speilberg, and Kevin Smith.) Snake Plissken is the classic anti-hero, a guy who breaks the rules but won't kill innocent people and eventually winds up going on heroic missions. His two distinguishing features are his eye-patch and the snake tattoo on his chest. Oh yeah, and those cool threads: black combat boots, tight leather pants and a vest. As a matter of fact, he's kind of like a biker, only smaller and with less hair. And no hawg. Escape from New York took place in 1997, when Manhatten Island had been turned into a maximum security prison where all of the US criminals were dropped. Snake, a recently-convicted criminal headed for New York, opted to go in and save the President, who had been kidnapped after an emergency landing there, in return for a full pardon. Then again, he didn't have much of a choice. The doctors implanted him with a poison before he went that would detonate in a certain time period, and only administered the antidote until he had safely rescued the President. What set the film apart back then was that it wasn't your typical action flick. Shot on grungy sets with B-lists stars and a relatively low budget, it had a grainy, film-noir feel to it. Unfortunately, Escape from L.A. doesn't try too hard to recapture that feeling. Like I said earlier, Escape from L.A. is like a copy of Escape from N.Y., right down to the plot. Except this time, it's set in the year 2013, when an earthquake has seperated L.A. from the rest of California. For some reason or another, L.A. has also been turned into a huge dumping bin for America's scuzziest criminals. Also, America isn't the America we know and love anymore; it's now a virtual dictatorship, run by a President-for-Life(Robertson), who oversees the US in an amusing extreme-right wing fashion: There's now no cursing, drinking, smoking, violence, red meat, etc. It turns out that the President's daughter, Utopia(Langer)has helped hi-jacked Air Force 3 and crashed it in L.A., and is holding The Doomsday Device, which, with one press, will shut down all of the earth's power. So the government thinks to itself, "Hmm, we need someone who can go in, get the device, and get back out. Let's see, Plissken did the same exact thing in New York 16 years earlier, so why don't we use him?" Fortunately for the government, and the plot of this movie, Snake Plissken has committed some sort of crime and can, in return for a full pardon, go in and attempt to get the Doomsday Device and the President's daughter(so the President, a real strict parent, can execute her). Of course, they've once again injected him with a virus. And bad one-liners. Anyway, the movie never picks up, even when Snake hits L.A. It looks a lot like New York, only the buildings are shorter. And they're more people. And, for some reason, the special effects are really, really bad. You'd think with a big release like this, they'd give it a decent FX budget. Of course, knowing John Carpenter, he could be using the bad FX to give the movie a more campy feel, which it definitely revels in. But if that's what he intended, it sure doesn't work. Not that this movie is totally bad. I did give it **. There are lots of amusements and high points. Like, for example, at the L.A. Deportation Center, where people who are going to be sent to L.A. have the option of being electrocuted instead. Or the scene in which Snake is kidnapped to be the donor of parts to people who've had one plastic-surgery too many(this scene has Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead film in a cameo as a mad doctor). Steve Bescumi is good in his role as Map-to-the-Stars Eddie, as is Pam Grier, playing a trannsexual who Snake used to hang out with and was called Carjack. Now he, uh she, uh, IT is known as Hershe Las Palmas. It's just too bad that these few small moments of humor and wittiness don't make up for the serious defaults this movie has, like a boring villain named Cuervo Jones(Corraface), bad FX, and a horrible ending that not only rips off the first one, but does it poorly and carries it on WAY too long. Plus there's that feeling I kept getting while watching it that I was basically watching the 1981 movie, except with a few plot changes and a general dumbing-down of the script. I do save a little hope for this series, however. A line that's been used both in the ads for Escape from L.A. and in the movie itself is, "He survived Cincinatti. He escaped from New York. Now he must face...L.A." I seriously hope this is hinting at sequel set in Cincinatti BEFORE Escape from New York. Because I know that, just like Chasing Amy did with Kevin Scott's New Jersey trilogy, the third film can overcome the deficiencies of the second film and recapture the magic from the first. From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:43:44 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:23:16 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!02-newsfeed.univie.ac.at!newsfeed.de.ibm.net!ibm.net!newsfeed.Austria.EU.net!EU.net!howland.erols.net!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Phil St-Germain Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Escape From L.A. (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 11 Aug 1997 03:54:03 GMT Organization: VTL Lines: 51 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5sm2cr$rk1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer13.u.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08520 Keywords: author=st-germain X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Cc: philgal@videotron.ca Originator: grahams@homer13.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:7927 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1480 Escape From L.A. Science-fiction/action/comédie 1996, 100 minutes Critique: B (bon) Réalisé par John Carpenter Mettant en vedette Kurt Russell, Stacy Keach, Peter Fonda, George Corraface, Pam Grier, Bruce Campbell Écrit par Kurt Russell, John Carpenter et Debra Hill Produit par Debra Hill et Kurt Russel Résumé: Nous sommes en l'an 2000. Un tremblement de terre dévastateur vient de sévir sur la côte ouest. Le Président des États-Unis décide alors que Los Angeles, maintenant une île, ne fait plus partie du pays. Il utilise donc cet espace comme zone de détention, où les criminels les plus dangereux seront envoyés. Maintenant, en 2010. Snake Plissken (Russell), un criminel ayant fait des siennes plus d'une fois, est rappelé pour qu'on lui soumette une mission: aller sur l'île et ramener aux États-Unis une unité ayant le pouvoir de déclancher une arme extrêmement puissante qui est maintenant entre les mains d'étranges individus. Réussira-t-il sa mission? Critique: Voici un film de science-fiction divertissant, même si à la base il n'a rien d'extraordinaire. C'est un film bien fait et honnête qui se distingue. L'idée de la zone pénitentiaire sur l'île de Los Angeles est bien pensée, et les cinéastes explorent fort bien les possibilités du sujet. Nous suivons les aventures de Snake Plissken avec intérêt, alors qu'il rencontre des personnages plus bizarres les un des autres. Bien sûr, on se doit d'établir une certaine comparaison avec son prédécesseur, Escape From New York, même si le budget était inférieur de 40 millions. J'ai personnellement aimé un peu mieux le premier, mais pas par beaucoup: l'atmosphère de l'original était plus intriguante. Mais les amateurs du premier film ne seront pas déçus. Les acteurs s'aquittent bien de leur travail, et plusieurs acteurs connus (Fonda, Campbell, Grier) font des apparitions amusantes dans de petits rôles intéressants. C'est donc un film qui plaira aux spectateurs recherchant un film divertissant et sans prétention. Le film n'est pas incroyable lorsqu'on regarde sa substance, mais à la fin, on sort de la salle de cinéma avec un sourire, et ÇA c'est plus important. Évaluation de Phil St-Germain, écrivez moi à: philgal@videotron.ca