Jacob's Ladder

Jacob's Ladder (1990)

Directed by Adrian Lyne

Screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin

Stars: Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, Jason Alexander, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Patricia Kalember, Matt Craven, Eriq La Salle, Ving Rhames,  Brian Tarantina, Anthony Alessandro, Macauley Culkin and Danny Aiello

I have a completely different perception of what Jacob's Ladder was supposed to be. I thought the film was going to be a mind trip for all of the movie. I was wrong. Adrian Lyne made something other than a sexually charged thriller. This is a psychological thriller. That's different, right?

Jacob Singer (Robbins) is a Vietnam War veteran living in New York city as a postal worker with his second wife, Jezzie (Peña). He starts having debilitating dreams about his time in the war when his platoon were wiped out, his life with his first wife, Sarah (Kalember) and the death of his son, Gabe (Culkin). Nobody knows what is going on with him, including Jacob himself. The more the dreams persist, the more confused he becomes about what is real and what is not.

At first I was thinking, not another Vietnam War movie, but it's not. The movie is about mental deterioration of a man's psyche. The film was about the effects of war before PTSD was in the vernacular. Jacob was a tortured soul that wants to have peace in his life. As the movie goes along, you see what the ending was going to be. A couple of characters have hinted about the end of the movie. It kinda made the movie anti-climactic in that way.

Tim Robbins gives a very convincing performance as Jacob. A man trapped in his own thoughts. He doesn't know what is real and what is not. He wants to find answers about why is he having the dreams. What do they mean? How can he get rid of them? Is he crazy? Is he hallucinating four years after the incident in Saigon?

I liked the movie overall, but I thought the blatant clues left by several characters ruined the end for me.

My Rating

Green Lantern

Green Lantern (2011)

Directed by Martin Campbell

Written by Greg Berlanti & Michael Green & Marc Guggenheim and Michael Goldenberg

Story by Greg Berlanti & Michael Green & Marc Guggenheim

Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Tim Robbins, Angela Bassett, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong, Jay O. Sanders, Taika Waititi, Geoffery Rush and Michael Clarke Duncan.

I caught a snippet of Green Lantern when I was flipping through the channels. I looked through the information about it and it has a low rating. I heard that the movie was okay, but I didn't think that the movie was going to be that bad. When I saw the entire movie while I was waiting for DC Universe Online to download on my PS3, I thought the movie was truly awful.

As I said when I was reviewing X-Men: First Class, that I am a big comic book geek. Not a much as my older brother, but I know a thing or two. I am bigger fan of the DC Universe than Marvel. I was following this movie since it was in its casting phase when everyone was wondering who was going to play Green Lantern. Anybody from Bradley Cooper to Nathan Fillion were being mentioned. When Ryan Reynolds was cast, I was fine for the most part. Even though he played a hero in Paper Man and Deadpool in Wolverine and I made a big rant about it, but another than that, I was fine.

For those who don't know about the Green Lantern lore, a dying alien Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison) comes to Earth to find a successor. He finds it in cocky test pilot Hal Jordan (Reynolds) who gives him the ring and the lantern to power his ring. With the ring on, Hal can create constructs by using his mind against his enemies. The movie stumbles as it shows that Hal Jordan tries to be a part of this elite intergalactic police force known as the Green Lantern Corps, but is underestimated by the Corps.

My first impressions of the movie was the movie was so boring. A yawnfest! The first half of the movie meanders about the relationship between Hal and Carol Ferris (Lively). Whatever. There is also the weak relationship between Sen. Hammond (Robbins) and his son, the mad scientist Hector Hammond (Sarsgaard).

I thought that the bad guy of the movie was going to be Sinestro (Strong) like it was in the comic books, but turns out to be Parallax. Wow. This dust cloud with a head is the bad guy. Really? I guess, Hector was the bad guy as well. The Elephant Man was going to bring down Green Lantern with his ET finger. Please! The way that Hector screams in an operatic tone made me laugh out loud when he was infected by Parralax.

I thought that the movie was going to be like Iron Man. It was going to have cool special effects, dialogue or action sequences; it didn't have any of that. I was not thrilled with the action, which was clunky. The dialogue was laughably bad that I could not wait to mock it. There were four people that wrote that brick of a script. I expected more out of Greg Berlanti. I love his work. It saddens. I did not care about the characters, the action, anything. They made high ranking Lanterns, Kilowog (Duncan) and Tomar-Re (Rush) into bit players. WTF!

The only good thing about this film was that you get to see Ryan Gosling in tighty-whiteys twice. That is not enough to save this abomination to celluloid. This movie is worse than Catwoman and that is saying a lot. If you will excuse me, I have to wash the bile from my mouth.

My Rating: