Elysium is no District 9

It’s the future. Rich people live on a space station called Elysium. Poor people live on Earth, oppressed by robots, working menial jobs just to survive. The factory that manufactures the robots is where Max (Matt Damon) works. After receiving a lethal dose of radiation on the job, Max is told he’s only got a few days left to live.

On Elysium, the rich have access to med-bays which can cure any ailment including radiation sickness. All Max has to do—in theory—is sneak onto Elysium and climb into one of the bed-shaped devices. Unfortunately, Jodie Foster’s defense secretary (basically the head of border security, the “border” being space itself) is on high alert and will shoot dead any trespassers. Max, growing sicker by the second, has to have a robotic exoskeleton surgically implanted on his body just to remain mobile.

Excitement is curiously missing from Neill Blomkamp’s much anticipated follow-up to District 9. Here’s a movie which is far from terrible, but nothing really clicks. There was a wide variety of action sequences and creativity in Blomkamp’s previous film. In Elysium, it’s all about the gunfights. When you have a giant space station in the shape of a wheel, you’re telling me the most the filmmaker can come up with is standard shootouts, the majority of which take place on desolate old earth?

Is there a reason why Jodie Foster speaks in a phony accent? Even William Fichtner, one of Hollywood’s most solid character actors, is off his game. Casting Sharlto Copley (the weenie hero of District 9) as bad guy Kruger is a stroke of inspiration, but his character just isn’t realized enough for us to believe his machine-like agency. Matt Damon absolutely feels at home in a movie like this, but there’s not much for him to work with, either.

At the end of the day, I wouldn’t say Elysium scars Blomkamp’s reputation. I’m still excited to see his next movie because I still think (hope) he’s Hollywood’s ace in the hole. Hell, I still want to see what he would do in the Halo universe, which was at some point the original plan for the breakout director. I just pray he’s not a one-hit wonder.

Elysium is a solid rental, but only if you don’t have something better to do tonight. It looks great, has some interesting ideas, but that’s about it.

Can The Wolverine make up for Wolverine: Origins?

A group of guards wave a metal detector over Logan’s body. His adamantium bones, of course, set the wand off.

“Hip replacement,” Logan explains.

That scene is about twenty minutes in. By then we’ve already seen the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, the cameo of a former X-Man, a bar fight, and a sword that can slice through beer bottles. The violence is so graphic you’ll wonder how they got away with a PG-13 rating. So there’s a lot happening in The Wolverine, but it works. With a darker tone and a more tasteful approach to casting, this Logan pic quickly atones for the sins of Origins.

Logan’s no longer with the X-Men. He’s living in the Canadian wilderness while perfecting his brooding face. Shortly after avenging the death of a grizzly (straight from the pages of Wolverine #1), Logan receives an invite to Japan. There, a man he saved in Nagasaki is on his death bed. The tech CEO offers Logan the gift of mortality: “You can get married, have a family, lead a normal life.” Logan’s tempted, but politely turns down the offer. The old man dies, yakuza attack, and ninjas spring from the shadows. Somewhere along the way Logan loses his healing abilities. He becomes vulnerable at that point, but his adamantium bones still shield his vitals from bullets.

Convoluted? Kinda. Awesome? Very. We’ve seen many action sequences on top of a moving train before, but this one sets the new standard. Logan’s so determined and unflinchingly violent it seems more like the a Schwarzenegger flick than a modern action movie. It’s been far too long since we had a ‘roided action hero fist-fighting his way through an army of nameless bad guys.

I do think the film’s villain, Viper, is perhaps the weakest link, but there are enough bad guys to make up for it. Sure, the plot teeters on the edge of preposterous, but it’s a comic book movie—isn’t that why we’re all here? I wasn’t exactly expecting the sophistication of Shakespeare when I purchased my ticket.

Slight spoiler ahead…

About the mid-credit sequence: we now have a solid link between this film and the much-anticipated Days of Future Past. I have to admit I was pretty skeptical about it when it was announced (Professor X is no longer dead and Magneto has reclaimed the powers he was robbed of in The Last Stand… or perhaps they’re ignoring that film entirely), but seeing Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen return to the characters was exciting. No, it doesn’t explain their return, but a bigger question remains: Why the fuck would Wolverine even attempt to walk through airport security?

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream: The Game (1996)

I miss The Sci-Fi Channel in the early nineties. It was weird and kooky, a far cry from the tamed content that occupies its programing today. The scrappy little station introduced me to Harlan Ellison when I was like ten or eleven years old. In those early days, Ellison had been hired as the channel’s version of Andy Rooney; his brief but audacious opinion pieces provided filler, often necessary as the oddball programming rarely conformed to 30-minute slots. The incredibly egotistical Ellison never had anything to say that wasn’t a hot take, and although he was often abrasively wrong, he was almost always right.

I actually remember the first time I saw a magazine advertisement for the video game adaptation of Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. I had a similar reaction when I first heard the term “cyberpunk:” I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I instantly knew that I liked it. I am now thirty years old and I Have No Mouth is still on my short list of favorite stories of all time. It’s very much required reading before playing the game (and, luckily, it’s not hard to find on the internet in its entirety).

Ellison himself voices AM, the supercomputer which ultimately exterminates humankind, saving only a handful of humans it immortalizes for the purpose of torturing forever. In one interview for the game, Ellison insists AM is not evil, but an amplification of human nature itself. After all, humans are AM’s creator. It was our own shortcomings and self-hatred that ultimately took root and spun out of control in its circuitry.

The game deviates from the source material with Ellison’s input. Ellison initially told the lead designer he wanted a game you cannot possibly win, a game that taught you “that if you cannot win the game, at least you can lose better.” The designer pushed back, tampering Ellison’s famous disdain for his fans. I have not seen any of the good endings, but how good can they be when, at the end of the day, the player-character still lives in a world in which a computer has, for all intents and purposes, made humans extinct?

It won’t be long until the player is confronted with a “motivator switch,” just to find its sinister purpose: the torturing of six caged animals. The player-character reacts appropriately with shock, but it’s something you must do in order to progress. It’s grim choices like these that makes the game as uncomfortable as it is fun (Ellison said he wanted a game that “taught ethics”). Like a lot of games of this type, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream requires some hit-and-miss puzzle-solving, but when you stumble onto a solution, you’ll often slap your forehead and say, “Of course!” It may seem silly removing the sheets from two bunks, but here’s a hint: they make a good rope.

The artwork and the music are fantastic. The voice work isn’t the best I’ve heard (Ellison really hams it up), but for some incredibly odd reason, it works.

Grant Theft Auto V

Michael and Trevor are running from a heist gone bad. The cops arrive as the men’s getaway vehicle, a helicopter, isn’t where it was supposed to be. Michael takes a bullet and Trevor escapes across a foggy snow bank. Nine years later, Michael and his family have entered the witness protection program, living it up in sunny Los Santos. Michael has everything a superficial Beverly Hills type could want, but he was much happier when he was pulling big scores. This is the first playable character.

The second playable character, Franklin, is a young street gangster who aspires to leave the hood. He doesn’t like the life he’s “supposed” to live, surrounded by low-level thugs who often brag about doing time for unambitious crimes. During an insurance scam, Franklin meets Michael. Michael sees himself in Franklin and Franklin sees someone who can elevate him to the big leagues. Thus is the beginning of a promising partnership in crime.

When Michael later catches his wife banging her tennis coach, he and Franklin hop into a pickup truck, drive to the man’s cliff-side house, and use a winch to pull one the support structures out from underneath it (just like Lethal Weapon 2). The problem is: tennis coaches don’t live in multi-million dollar houses in the hills. It turns out the house actually belongs to an associate of the Mexican cartel. Now Micheal and Franklin have no choice but to pay off debts by pulling off bigger and bigger heists.

You’ve seen Trevor, the third playable character, in the marketing materials. For several hours of gameplay, however, Trevor is absent. It’s a wise choice on Rockstar’s part. You keep hearing about him in the meantime, amping up the hype until he finally comes blasting into the story with all the kinetic energy of a wrecking ball. As he weasels his way back into Michael’s life, he brings with him the additional heat of The Lost motorcycle gang (remember them?) and the baggage of a meth operation.

The best crime stories work in layers (see: Layer Cake, a film which took the concept literally), folding in one incongruous situation after another. In their attempts to fix one situation, GTA V’s main characters often just create more situations. It’s a heavily layered plot involving methheads, street gangs, various levels of law enforcement, and a private military.

Gone is the feeling you have to do a ton of busywork in order to unlock all areas of the game. You still have to take jobs to advance, but very few feel like filler chores. With the addition of frequent checkpoints, you no longer feel the annoyance of having to start a mission over from the very start, which reduces the urge to rage-quit. Though the ragdoll physics have been downgraded and driving doesn’t feel as realistic, this is the best GTA game yet. All three characters are just as likable as the previous game’s Niko Bellic—and boy, did I really like Niko.

Like many, I was disappointed by Rockstar’s decision to release Grand Theft Auto V on consoles only. That means I’ll have to buy it again on PC if it comes out. And for those of us who played Sleeping Dogs on PC, GTA V is a minor step down in terms of graphics. Even so, I was impressed by the art direction. It’s not quite as pretty as Uncharted titles, but as it simultaneously streams data from your hard drive and the disc itself, you can rest assured that modern technical limits are being pushed. The draw distance is a notch above acceptable and long loading times are a virtually a thing of the past.

Easily the game of the year.

A look back at Tim Burton’s over-hyped Batman picture

1989 was a massive year for movies, the kind of year that only comes around every decade or so. We got a third Indiana Jones, a second Lethal Weapon, a fifth Freddy Krueger, and an eighth Jason Voorhees. Batman was the biggest moneymaker of them all by a large margin. You couldn’t peek into a classroom without seeing at least one bat logo on a kid’s tee.

My parents had taken me to see it at the theater on opening weekend. I found myself a little less interested than I was in the aforementioned movies—perhaps it was exhaustion from the constant stream of movie-going that year. This is probably the first time I’ve seen the movie in over twenty years. It’s okay.

Long before Hollywood became obsessed with telling (and re-telling) the superhero origin story, Bruce Wayne is already Batman at the beginning of his first silver screen adventure. He’s already fighting crime, too, but has yet to establish the trust and cooperation of Police Commissioner Jim Gordon. When a shootout ensues at the local chemical plant, mobster Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson) falls into a vat of acid, which sets the character down the path of becoming the Joker. Christopher Nolan explores the idea a little more in his own Batman/Joker picture: the creation of a superhero naturally begets the creation of a supervillain. Wayne would have to feel at least a little bit responsible in a film more thoughtful than this.

It’s easy to warm to the idea of Michael Keaton as Batman, but the Bruce Wayne scenes are a slog. (Director Tim Burton greatly improves this mediocrity in the vastly superior sequel, Batman Returns, by reducing both Bruce Wayne’s and Batman’s screen time.) There’s a scene early on in which Batman-obsessed journalist Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) goes on a date with Bruce Wayne. You’d think a guy who’s worth a billion dollars could afford to take his love interest to a nice restaurant, but instead they stay home for an impersonal dinner at a mile-long table. (Later, the Joker manages to take Vicki on a much more exciting date.) If Burton is trying to communicate that Bruce Wayne’s personal life is suffering because of his latex-clad alter ego, something got lost in translation.

It’s no wonder Nicholson gets top billing (and a significantly larger paycheck) as he has all of the greatest lines. “Honey, you’ll never believe what happened at the office today” is my favorite. There’s just something about the way Nicholson says it, and the circumstances leading up to it, that makes the throwaway line one of the more effective gags. (I can’t help but wonder if Jack Palance would have made a good Joker as he’s great in his scenes. Perhaps he chews the scenery quite a bit, but is that really a crime in a movie like this?)

One thing Burton nails is the look of Gotham City, achieved mostly with miniatures, which is so arresting it more or less carries over to the embarrassing Schumacher sequels. Unfortunately, the interiors seem to belong to a much cheaper movie (which is another one of the aspects improved on in Returns). Gotham is justifiably dark yet complimentary to Burton’s more fantastical leanings. When combined with the cartoonish villains, however, the world-building doesn’t always gel.

Two-hour movies really aren’t the place to tell the Batman/Joker mythos. The relationship would be better explored in long-form television, á la Superman’s Smallville. Call it Gotham, if you will. Warner Brothers, you can just send the check in the mail.

Superman Begins (to suck)

Man of Steel is what you get when too-cool-for-school movie director Zack Synder has too little confidence in a pop cultural icon who’s been around longer than anyone reading this. Give me old-fashioned Spandex and red briefs any day of the week. In due time, this blundered attempt at modernizing the hero will prove as dorky as elastic-cuffed jeans and fanny packs. If you want dark and gritty, here’s an idea: Don’t make a Superman movie, jackass.

Conversely, the trailers for Richard Donner’s Superman promised optimism: “You’ll believe a man can fly!” There was so much love poured into that 1979 film, it was bursting at the seams with magic. When Superman takes Lois on her first flight? That’s my favorite movie scene of all time. They made no attempt to modernize (read: dilute) the only thing fans wanted to see: the real Superman on the silver screen. Watching Man of Steel, which attempts to compensate for its weaknesses with exhausting action, one gets the sense the filmmakers would be embarrassed to be seen with the real Superman in public.

The film isn’t all bad—in fact, it’s far from the worst Superman movie. I’ve gotta hand it to the casting department: Henry Cavill would be the perfect Superman in a competent movie. Russell Crowe and Michael Shannon are best case scenarios for Jor-El and General Zod. Diane Lane is far too young and attractive to play Martha Kent, but great at what she does nonetheless. Meanwhile, Kevin Costner seems bored to be here… and when they have him needlessly murdered by a tornado of all things, can you blame him? (That scene will surely become as hotly debated as the door in Titanic.)

I am beyond sick of Hollywood retreading origin stories every American already knows, but the early scenes set on Krypton are fantastic. The special effects and the action there are breathtaking. The entire movie should have been taken place on Krypton as far as I’m concerned. After a sequence like that, the audience needs a breather. Instead, Snyder immediately throws more carnage and destruction at us two minutes later. I am not exaggerating that time frame.

This is all to say this movie is full of shit. You’ve got military jets and alien invasions and far too many shots of people running away from CGI destruction. Nothing about it feels like Superman, but I guess it’s the Superman we deserve when we keep voting for this shit with our wallets. The inevitable sequels really ought to focus on Martha and Lois a little bit more and Snyder really needs to chill the fuck out.

My Favorite PC games of 2012

The end of April is the perfect time to recap last year’s best PC games, right? Hey, I’m nothing if not excessively late.

FTL: Faster Than Light
This is my favorite game of the year. It’s a merciless roguelike that has you piloting your own ship, constantly pursued by an almost unbeatable enemy and susceptible to death at every turn. Oh, and the music kicks ass.

X-Com: Enemy Unknown
Quite possibly my second favorite game of the year. Multiplayer is missing something I can’t quite put my finger on. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s game-breakingly buggy, there are some odd glitches here and there. All that aside, this one definitely activated Obsession Mode.

Legend of Grimrock
Old school dungeon crawling fun. Probably in my top three.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
I love Counter-Strike, 1.6 as well as Source. CS:GO feels the way a modern version of Counter-Strike should feel and it gets better with every update.

Max Payne 3
As far as capturing the feel of an awesome crime movie, you literally can’t top Max Payne 3. It’s the closest we’ll get to Breaking Bad: The Video Game. Multiplayer is unreasonably fun, too, at least for a week or two.

Mark of the Ninja
Probably my favorite platformer since Super Meat Boy.

Diablo 3
No, it’s not nearly as good as Diablo 2, but launch-issues aside, it’s a must-have.

Hitman Absolution
It’s not nearly as good as Hitman: Blood Money, but it’s a hell of a lot slicker. Much better than I expected, but you should know I expected absolute disappointment.

Sleeping Dogs
This is one of the best looking games on PC right now. I didn’t enjoy it as much as Grand Theft Auto IV, but then again, I like GTA even more than most people (I’m a simple man).

Borderlands 2
I didn’t dig the original Borderlands nearly as much as this one. Looting is a lot more satisfying than it is in Diablo 3 and multiplayer is a blast.

Far Cry 3
This is the best open world game in ages. It’s absolutely beautiful, too. I can’t wait until I get to play as Michael Biehn in Far Cry: Blood Dragon.

Planetside 2
I love Halo for its massive landscapes and science fiction imagery. This captures the same feeling and it’s free.

Evil Dead 2013: Dead by Yawn

“It’s a few hours until dawn.”

“We’re not going to be alive to see it.”

When the credits rolled, many applauded. Teenagers were so engaged, I didn’t see a single phone screen light up. As I made my way out the doors, I overheard a much older woman tell a friend, “I didn’t care much for the gore, but I just loved the supernatural elements.” I don’t know if that says more about the movie or the changing times, but we’ve come a long ways since the original Evil Dead ended up on the infamous Video Nasties list. I felt somewhat baffled as I made my way out to the car. One thing kept repeating in my head: That’s it?

Look, I’m probably in the wrong here as this movie is doing gangbusters. Intellectually, I know Evil Dead 2013 isn’t a bad movie. It may be exemplary for the kind of horror we’ve been getting lately. The trailers played before the film can attest to the fact: Hollywood horror is in a dull, joyless rut at the moment. I always loved Evil Dead films (when I was a kid I went as Ash for Halloween two years in a row) so it’s disappointing to report I never felt moved—even as everyone around me reacted to the jump-scares. I think I would have enjoyed it much more if it weren’t an Evil Dead movie.

This time, most of the five characters who end up at the infamous cabin in the woods are cardboard cutouts. The main character, Mia (Jane Levy), is a heroin addict who’s trying to kick the habit through seclusion. As expected, an ancient tome is found, incantations are spoken, and an evil is unleashed via flying photography. Despite the great special effects (they promised no CGI, but I feel that’s not entirely true) I just don’t care when a character cuts her tongue in two or when someone dismembers a friend.

Chekhov’s Gun states: If a gun is shown in the first act, it must be fired by the end of the third. Here it’s a nailgun, an electric carving knife, and a cellar step that’s going to break exactly when we expect it to. I’m not giving anything away. You’ll see it coming from a mile away, too.

I feel like I just left a funeral. Bruce Campbell recently announced they’re making Army of Darkness 2, but I’ve heard that one so many times I won’t hold my breath. Their tentative plans to make an Evil Dead 2 in this universe and combine the subsequent sequel with Army of Darkness 3 (yes, part 3) isn’t clever, it’s confusing. And let’s face it: it’s not gonna happen, either.

I gotta admit, though: Mia picked a hell of a day to quit heroin.

The Frighteners is a mildly likable mess

I like rules in science fiction. Any kid knows Dracula shouldn’t walk around in the daytime without slathering on a gallon of SPF 100. When Isaac Asimov invented The Three Laws of Robotics, it didn’t restrict his work, but created a rich and believable universe for his stories. You don’t feed a mogwai after midnight, you never cross the streams, and you should always be careful what you wish for.

The problem with ghosts is they have no rules. Silver bullets don’t work. You can’t hammer a stake into their hearts. They don’t have a brain to destroy. In the 1999 remake of The Haunting, ghosts could do anything or nothing at all, depending on what was convenient to the plot. Some of the same problems are present in The Frighteners, in which ghosts fall through walls when they try to lean on them, but they can walk around on floors and ride in cars.

Michael J. Fox plays Frank, a former architect who got into a car crash which killed his wife. Somehow the near death experience gave him the ability to see ghosts. Now considered a crackpot in his community, his only friends are ghosts who haunt houses so that Frank can make a buck as a conman exorcist. One day Frank notices a spectral “37” written on the forehead of a man who later turns up dead; it turns out something otherworldly is killing people and only Frank can see who’s next.

I disliked The Frighteners when I originally saw it, probably because I was an edgy teenager who cherished director Peter Jackson’s ultra-gory Bad Taste and Dead-Alive. I decided to give it a second chance today. Though my opinion has definitely softened, it still doesn’t hold a candle to those aforementioned films. During my most recent viewing, I was even invested until the tiresome climax, which seems to drag on for far too long.

Touted as a horror-comedy, the humor feels like an afterthought. Someone with money on the line probably thought it was too dark and hired a script doctor to “make it funnier.” As a comedy it doesn’t work for me. Having an elderly ghost screw a mummy is a dumb joke, far beneath the talent who made Heavenly Creatures. It’s especially confusing that Frank’s maniacal driving is a running gag, when his driving his what killed his wife in the first place.

I’m a big fan of Jeffery Combs, but here he channels Jim Carrey just a little too much as he rips off Major Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark. In that movie, there’s a wonderful gag in which you think Toht’s about to torture Marion with a mysterious device that turns out to be nothing more than a collapsible coat hanger. In this movie, Combs reaches into his jacket and, instead of the expected gun, he draws an inflatable donut. Hilarious.

So no, The Frighteners doesn’t work as a comedy. It barely works as a horror film, but it looks amazing. If you’re not watching it on a modern display, you’re missing out. The best shots are contained in the opening reel, but there are breathtaking views peppered throughout. Then there are the special effects, which must have been a logistical nightmare for the filmmakers, but they pay off in a big way. Wikipedia says:

The visual effects were created by Jackson’s Weta Digital, which had only been in existence for three years. This, plus the fact that The Frighteners required more digital effects shots than almost any movie made up until that time, resulted in the eighteen-month period for effects work by Weta Digital being largely stressed.

Also worth noting is Trini Alvarado, who doesn’t have a whole lot to do as the leading lady, but she does it exceptionally well. She’s simply one of those people you like to watch. And Michaeal J. Fox has always been underrated for the subtle physicality he brings to any role; that this is his last major performance elevates the picture to “must-see” status. As for Jake Busey… well, what the hell can one say about Jake Busey? He’s another one of those actors who command attention. While I didn’t buy his character in the slightest, it was interesting to see him paired with a brunette Dee Wallace.

The sum is much greater than its parts and it really is worth a watch despite my numerous issues with it. Pay attention to the opening shot, which floats through a window in a very familiar manner. What does that shot remind you of? If you had HBO in the nineties, you’ll probably place it in an instant. I’m guessing it’s no mistake the first credit is Robert Zemeckis Presents.

Dreamcatcher: The Cleopatra of horror movies

Dreamcatcher is fascinating—I’ll give it that. It deserves some sort of praise, considering how uniquely awful it is. It’s clearly a passion project. No one phones it in and no expense is spared (the movie cost $68 million). When you take the director of The Big Chill, the writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and adapt the most popular novelist of the twentieth century, you don’t expect a spectacular failure, but here we are.

Four friends with psychic abilities have gathered for their annual vacation in a secluded cabin. What they don’t know is an alien spacecraft has crash landed nearby. When they come to the aid of a seriously ill man who they find wandering the woods, it’s revealed he’s the host of an alien parasite. Remember the chestburster from Alien? It’s like that, only this one is a, um… assburster. Meanwhile, a secret branch of the military, which apparently deal with these crash landings all the time, are willing to massacre civilians to keep the aliens contained. And if this all sounds a little scatterbrained, let me assure you that it is very scatterbrained.

I finished reading Stephen King’s source material the same day I re-watched the movie. While book fans usually complain about the stuff an adaptation left out, I’m boggled by what they left in. Consider the fact the novel takes around 20 hours to read. A screenwriter should think carefully about how to adapt such a thing to a two-hour format, but William Goldman’s solution involves reducing entire chapters to very brief scenes as if he’d rather water the novel down than alter it.

Director Lawrence Kasdan has admitted the film damaged his career. Directing must be a pretty stressful job as it only takes a single hiccup to jeopardize your future in the business. On top of that, you have to deal with the lame bloggers who rip your hard work apart (ahem). But these things need to be discussed—that’s just integral to the creative arts: the risk of negative criticism. People can’t truly appreciate the high wire act unless there’s a risk of the performer falling.

I’m glad they made Dreamcatcher. I don’t hate it and I’ll probably watch it again someday. It’s actually very entertaining, often for the wrong reasons, and I’ll be the first to admit there’s magic to be found, sprinkled throughout (as with big dumb disaster movies, the early scenes in which the characters have no clue what’s going on are the most compelling). Where else can you see what is essentially a big budget splatter film with aliens and body horror and shades of Stand By Me? I have nothing but praise for the crazy sons of bitches who made it.

One scene that sums up how stupid the movie is takes place in a bathroom. I don’t care how much you set it up—and the movie certainly tries—I will never believe (much less like) a character who gets himself killed so that he can pick up a toothpick from the bathroom floor and stick it in his mouth. Or how ’bout the part when a character is skiing very slowly and falls for no apparent reason? Or when Morgan Freeman’s character, Colonel Curtis, sincerely tells Tom Sizemore, “Okay, you just drove over the Curtis line!” My favorite moment is when one character telepathically answers a pistol like a phone.