Premonition: The Asian Early Edition

(Tagline not true)

So does anybody get the reference in my review title? If you do, this movie plot would sound familiar to you. I’m all for this movie, because I was all for that show back in the day. Kyle Chandler’s a pretty good character actor, and in one of my up and coming reviews, I’m going to discuss Super 8, a good role for his style of acting. Anyways, for those who don’t know, the plot of this movie and the plot of Early Edition is one and the same. One is just horror. In the short version, man finds a newspaper. It predicts terrible things that will happen that day (AKA day the newspaper dictates). Guy has to stop these bad things from happening for his own good. A perfect mix of the morality of stopping something before it happens and the supernatural. Let’s get it goin’.

So, in this particular film, Hideki Satomi is at an outing with his wife Ayaka and daughter, Nana. (Reference to anime, perhaps?) Stopping at a phonebooth in order to get service to submit a project he was working on like the unaware

This dad just cares too much.

working dad he is, disaster strikes. Hideki finds a newspaper clipping, quite old, of a 18 wheeler accident at their location. Not understanding, he turns around to find his wife out of harms way, but his daughter trapped in the backseat of the car. With no time to spare… Hideki doesn’t save his daughter.

Feeling like a failure of a dad, Hideki loses whatever job he had and goes to the degrading work of high school literature teaching. His wife, being as crazy and illogical as most mothers in situations like this, divorces her husband in pursuit of psychics and other fortune telling newspapers. That’s something I just really don’t understand. Why would parents divorce over the loss of their children, or, more to the point, the wife wanting to leave the husband. Maybe I’m not old enough or experienced enough to understand, but that would create a bond between me and my wife over that tragic loss. Unless it has something to do with seeing his daughter in his wife or something…

A husband and wife, reunited.

Anyways, Ayaka starts to discover a past of these predicting newspapers while her husband attempts to shut out all thoughts of the child he couldn’t save. In some way or another, the two are reunited and begin their journey to discover just exactly why these two were able to see and understand these newspapers. But all that is revealed is not necessarily good. In a spiraling torrent of evil and unearthed past, Hideki and Ayaka must escape the future in store for them for their pursuits of the deadly paper.

So, in comparison to the other Asian horror films I’ve been watching, this one probably takes the cake. Coming from Japan, the usual suspects of good horror films, this one had the most amount of jumpy parts and disturbing images. The plot was straight ahead horror. Unearthing a secret that changes their lives forever horrifically. Check. Discovering a not so good background. Got it. It’s all good. The acting is dec, (short for decent, get used to it) and the special effects are right there in the middle of the road, not spectacular, but good enough to make me squirm a bit.

A true dad sees his dead daughter, no matter the place.

But what this movie boils down to, as I’ve been told I’m good at deciphering, is the role of the dad. The father in this movie deserves to be subjected to exactly how good of a dad he is. For the record, there are three reasons he’s a good dad:

1. At some point in the film, Hideki attempts to/sacrifices his life in order to save his daughter. This gains any dad instant “dad martyr status.” In truth, if this happens, the surviving wife will tell their children about the courageousness of their father and just how great of a dad he was for dying for them.

2. Hideki’s life spirals into a terrible depression at the loss of his daughter. Any time a dad will grieve an entire life for their child just proves how much they care.

3. Last but not least, Hideki sees images of his dead daughter and it gravely shakes him. This achieves “prophetic depressed dad” status. Any dad, if they truly cared for their child, will never get over the last image they had of their deceased child.

Combine all 3 of these criteria and you have one great dad. Subtract those parts of the film in which Hideki departs from the path of the true dad, and Hideki ends up with about 145 dad points. (100 points if you sacrifice your life for your child.) There’s no particular cap on dad points, but that’s a pretty damn good score. (If you enjoyed this segment of my blog, please like this post or let me know through comment and this’ll come back in the future.)

Not this, Sandra, not this.

And now the rating. I’ll give Premonition (not the Sandra Bullock film) 6.8 out of 10.

Gulliver’s Travels: Jack Black at His Worse Worst

So there are very few reasons why this movie was at least decent. But the biggest reason this film flopped, straight up, is Jack Black. His atrocious act of not acting is what plain and simple killed this movie. It might’ve had a chance at being a decent children’s film if it had been any other comedic actor. Hell, Paul Rudd (my favorite comedic actor) would’ve made me buy this film before I watched it. It would be more

You suck Jack Black. Period.

entertaining with Cedric the Entertainer. I think this was Jack Black’s attempt to make a bit more bank on another terrible children’s film. I dread the day that Kung Fu Panda 2 comes out. And that’s soon. Ugh.

Besides Jack Black, there were some decent actors in this film. Jason Segel pulled off a more than decent English accent, which I commend highly. He is, I would say, one out of three actors that made this film okay. (It was only 85 minutes long, but any scene of Jack Black alone was agony.) Emily Blunt

You capture that Princess, Chris O'Dowd. You rule.

was quite beautiful and charming in this film, and, not having seen a lot of her films, this movie didn’t destroy her career. And, most importantly, Chris O’Dowd of The IT Crowd was in this film. He is, quite literally, the backbone of comedy in this film. He had more comedy in his moustache in this film than Jack Black had in his entire, gelatinous body. (And he was 100 times their size.) He was cynical, and always in the position of protagonist, and it worked out great for him. I’ve never seen him in a villainous role, but this was great. He keeps getting better.

Okay, now I should probably fill you in on the plot. Lemuel Gulliver (Jack Black) is a mail room clerk who wants to impress an editor at his work, Darcy (Amanda Peet). In order to do so, he fakes a travel piece, and then travels to the Bermuda Triangle to do a piece on the area. He is sucked into a reverse whirlpool and lands in Lilyput, the island of the small people. There he meets Princess Mary (Emily Blunt), her soon to be husband General Edward (Chris O’Dowd) and her father, King Theodore (Billy Connolly). He’s imprisoned, released, and saves the town with the help of fellow small person and Princess Mary’s true love, Horatio (Jason Segel). And that’s basically it.

Wedgie the shizz out of that waste of time actor.

I give this movie credit for one thing besides the supporting cast. The effects. In whatever way they had Jack Black interact with the small people, it looked spot on realistic. The interactions looked real, I mean. The tiny sets meshed perfectly with the close up shots on the smaller characters and the set uses were interesting. So I give the special effects crew a lot of credit for really creating a backbone for some of the comedy. (i.e. Urine fire) So, accompany that with a great performance from Chris O’Dowd and you have yourself a barely B-rated kid’s comedy. 4.4 out of 10.