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“Aeon Flux” on Blu-ray, Blockbuster

“Kung-Fu Hustle” arrives on Blu-ray by the end of the year:  Trying to get more product out before Christmas, Sony has announced that it will release the Stephen Chow action/comedy flick Kung-Fu Hustle on December 19^th.  While I applaud Sony’s commitment to getting Blu-ray titles on the market, it would be nice if they were able to release their Blu-ray player which has been delayed several times. 

HD DVD and Blu-ray coming to a local Blockbuster…maybe:  Blockbuster, the video rental chain that has been losing market share to rent-by-mail outfits, has announced that they will be renting both HD format in selected markets starting immediately.  They are rolling the program out in only 250 of its highest volume stores, and stocking each location with a mere 40 titles.  They are then planning to add 4 to 6 titles per month.  The high def discs will rent for the same price as regular DVDs.  Of course with their chief competitor Netflix currently stocking 150 Blu-ray titles and even more HD DVD discs it remains to be seen how much this will help the chain. 

Spotlight of the week: “Aeon Flux” on Blu-ray 

I first encountered Aeon Flux on MTV's Liquid Television way back in the day.  A fast, hyper-kinetic cartoon that was as action filled as it was short; creator Peter Chung took the best aspects from Japanese anime and American action films and melded them together into a set of fun and quirky shorts.  Flash forward to 2005 and a live action version of the cartoon is released into theaters under the same name.  My initial reaction was that if they did the film right, it would be too violent, strange, and opaque for mainstream audiences to enjoy.  If they did it wrong it would be just another horrible Hollywood blockbuster wanna-be.  I didn't get to see the film in the week or two it was playing locally, but the negative reviews didn't bother me.  When the movie was released on Blu-ray I jumped at the chance to see it.  I really wanted to like this movie since I enjoyed the cartoons so much and when all was said and done, there was really only one thing that prevented me from loving this film:  it sucked big-time.

Okay, here’s the setup.  A virus had infected the world.  99% of the population of the Earth died before a vaccine was discovered by a super-genius named Trevor Goodchild.  The people who managed to live, under Goodchild’s direction, formed a new Utopian city, Bregna.  There they lived in peace and comfort while Goodchild looked over them.  

Flash forward 400 years.  Bregna is still a Utopian society, but there are some problems.  People are having strange dreams where they remember things that they have never done, and a few women have disappeared.  This has given rise to a rebel group, the Monicans, who want to kill the current Trevor Goodchild (Marton Coskas) who is running the show.  In order to do that they send their top assassin, Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron) into Goodchild's heavily guarded private compound with instructions to murder him.  When she gets there however, something odd happens:  Aeon realizes that she knows Goodchild, and he knows her too. What is their connection and does it have anything to do with the missing people? 

There's really not a lot of good in this movie.  While some of the sets were nice and a couple of the action scenes were mildly exciting, the film as a whole is a mess.  It's a case of style over substance taken to the extreme.  There's no characterization, not much plot, and even the world that has been created doesn't make much sense.  The one overriding force in this movie is to create stylish images.  Take Aeon's first mission where she's supposed to sneak into a surveillance building and destroy it at night.  She knows the place will be heavily guarded so she dresses in a cool looking bright white outfit.  Stylish?  Yes.  Practical for sneaking up on someone at night?  No.  Another example is Goodchild's secret lab.  He keeps it hidden in another dimension that can be access if you have the correct device.  This is something that was lifted from the cartoon series.  In the cartoon the cross dimensional travel was used to create a whole story.  In the movie it's just used for a fight scene.  That whole plot element could have been left out and the film wouldn't have changed one bit.  

The whole movie was like that.  The more you think about it the more absurd and idiotic it becomes.  This is a science fiction film, but they throw science out the window.  One of the semi-major plot developments has to deal with clones remembering their previous lives.  That's stupid.  Memory doesn't reside in your DNA! (Don't confuse McConnell's experiments with flatworms with this, that's a different ball of wax.)  If it did, people would be able to remember fragments of their parent's lives.  

Another low point in the film was the dialog.  It was painfully bad.  With lines like "You killed my family, so I came here to kill you" you have to wonder if the writers used to write children's cartoons.  Compare that sentence, which Aeon speaks, with this one later on in the film, also Aeon's:  "We're meant to die!  That's what makes anything about us matter. Living like this is torture, we're just ghosts..."  The whole film is filled with that sort of tripe.  

The acting isn't any better than the dialog.  Now don't get me wrong, Charlize Theron is a good actress.  She won an Academy Award for Monster; you just wouldn't know it from watching this.  There is so little to this role that even an actress of her caliber can't do anything with the material.  As it is, she and Marton Coskas are as lively as two planks of wood.  

The final nail in this film's coffin is the fact that it is hard to get into.  Even a mediocre SF film can draw the viewer into the world that the writer and director are creating.  That never happens.  There are so many unanswered questions that it's impossible to concentrate on what little plot there is.  Why can't they go outside the city?  So what if "nature has taken over"?  Why are people willing to risk their lives in a rebellion when they are living in a perfect society?  Why is there no crime?  Where do they raise the food for five million people, it’s obvious that there are no fields for crops or livestock?  Why don't they turn those little rolling explosive's to Trevor's voice and make them blow him up?  After viewing it did anyone really think this was a good film? 

On the positive side, the HD image looked very good.  There was some excessive posterization which was surprising, but aside from that it was a great looking disc.  It’s just too bad there wasn’t more to the movie than a good looking disc. 
 

Upcoming High Definition Discs:  

November 14, 2006 

Blu-ray 

ATL

Behind Enemy Lines 

Black Hawk Down

Fantastic Four

Kingdom of Heaven: The Director's Cut

Kiss of the Dragon

The Last Samurai

Layer Cake 

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Million Dollar Baby 

The Omen

Speed

The Transporter

X-Men: The Last Stand 

HD DVD 

Accepted

Casablanca

Digital Video Essentials - HD DVD Edition

Forbidden Planet

Forbidden Planet: Ultimate Collector's Edition

King Kong (2005)

Mutiny on the Bounty

Waterworld 

November 21, 2006 

Blu-ray 

Annapolis

Casanova 

Enemy of the State

Flightplan

Goal! The Dream Begins

Ice Age: The Meltdown

Sky High 

The Wild 

HD DVD 

Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas

You, Me and Dupree 

November 28, 2006 

Blu-ray 

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut 

Superman Returns

Superman: The Movie

Windtalkers 

HD DVD 

An American Werewolf in London

Dune

Meet the Parents

The Mummy

Smallville: The Complete Fifth Season

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut

Superman Returns

Superman: The Movie 

December 5, 2006 

Blu-ray 

Bulletproof Monk

Flight of the Phoenix

From Hell

Rising Sun

Rocky 

HD DVD 

Miami Vice (2006)

Poseidon

Scary Movie 4

Wolf Creek 

December 12, 2006 

Blu-ray 

The Devil Wears Prada 

Kung Fu Hustle

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby 

World Trade Center 

HD DVD 

Field of Dreams

Hulk

Manilow Live!

World Trade Center