IMAX: National Geographic Extreme Review

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(More customer reviews)I saw this film six times when it played in IMAX theaters about seven years ago, often taking friends who had not seen it. Since then I have been annually pestering the people at Extreme as to when a DVD might be available. This year's email turned up gold; it's out!
I think this film is utterly extraordinary. To me it's actually a serene meditation on art, beauty, elegance, and the human spirit. I'd been hoping for a DVD release because I periodically felt a need for an Extreme "fix"; and it simply has not been available at regional IMAX theaters anymore. I would love to see it occasionally when I need reassurance as to what is worthwhile in the human spirit!
The previously released soundtrack is also one of my favorite albums. And the pairing of that music to the film is unbelievably inspired, For example, Morsheeba's "The Sea" is played during a snow/mountain episode, not during the surfing -- and it works so PERFECTLY! Whoever coordinated the soundtrack is a genius imho! It's right up there with "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" and just a handful of other movies as having perfect soundtracks (again: imho!). Along these lines, when the film was showing at our local IMAX theater, a reviewer wrote a basically good review -- except that he criticized the soundtrack. He said the music should have been more driving -- hard metal or some such. I just shook my head and wondered at how he could so totally and utterly miss the point of "Extreme." I guess he thought it should have been some kind of testosterone fest with pounding music to drive home the point. I'll stick with my assessment of the film as a meditation!

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Item Name: National Geographic: Extreme (IMAX) [Blu-ray]; Studio:Nat'l Geographic

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CHAOS Director's Cut (2005) Review

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(More customer reviews)By now everybody knows that "Chaos" is supposedly a violent, unrestrained film. It IS violent, and yet restrained, it's one of those films that promises a lot with it's hype and premise, and in this case delivers something FAR below expectations. You know your production is in trouble when the director is a guy who calls himself "The Demon," in this case David "The Demon" DeFalco. Oh DeFalco has spent a lot of time and energy defending the piece as a look at "real life" and pure evil blah blah blah, claiming this is the most brutal movie ever made eventhough Mel Gibson's "The Passion Of The Christ" outdoes the film in pure blood and violence, DeFalco and his producer have also been waging a childish print and video debate with Roger Ebert who rightfully gave the movie zero stars. At the end of the day what brings "Chaos" down isn't the subject matter, but the mere fact that this is pretty poor filmmaking. First there's the look of the movie, it looks like a straight to video production with really simple, pale lighting that doesn't even make the movie look sinister. This really looks more like a first term student film by students still learning to use the equipment. The camera work consists of a few hand held shots and pretty basic framing, nothing too intense. The actors are also very unconvincing, they deliver either performances that come off as too cheesy or too overdone. The biggest problem here though is the script which is so poorly crafted. Characters are cardboard cut-outs with no personality, they merely exist for the purposes of running, grinning, screaming and looking tough or scared. The dialogue is laughable and the story advances with such a choppy, simple rhythm that we can't take any of it seriously. The violence itself only reaches a shocking climax in two scenes, this is not a non-stop orgy of death and killing, in fact, I found the movie to be quite restrained. Oh sure the nipple slicing scene is pretty grotesque, and the final murder in the woods is also birthed from a disturbing use of the imagination, but a more intense, graphic movie would be Meir Zarchi's "I Spit On Your Grave" which makes "Chaos" look like child's play, or Pasolini's "Salo" based on the Marquis De Sade's "120 Days Of Sodom." DeFalco also needs to be a little more original, movie buffs are already signaling out all the obvious "Last House On The Left" rip-offs present in the movie. I see the film more as one of those cheesy attempts by a guy who thinks he's tapped into reality at trying to make "something real" when in fact it doesn't feel real at all. Evil is a topic best looked at when it's done with a balanced blend of violence and psychology as in "The Silence Of The Lambs," "Seven," "The Exorcist," and horror works best when it is attempted with a real sense of the disturbing and gritty as with the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." "Chaos" is more of a geek show, with scenes of pain, breasts and slobbering villains in a B-movie setting. This is not the most brutal movie ever made, or one of the best, or one worth checking out.

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