The Core, the worst movie with an Oscar-winning actor since Big Momma's House

Almost hardcore
The battle between Mother Earth and the human race rages on in 'The Core.'
by Joy Hepp
Published in The State Press on Thursday, March 27, 2003

The earth is angry. Something has violated her inner core and she is having a bitchfest. Birds fall out of the sky and cause traffic accidents, there are horrific lightning storms, and people with pacemakers are dropping dead all over the place.

So, NASA designs a phallic-shaped vessel to penetrate the earth's surface deeper and deeper into the red-hot magma. When the vessel's crew finally reach the center, they are sweaty and exhausted. But they are still able to fire four nuclear bombs into the liquid metal core. The Earth reacts with a shudder of seismic activity across her entire surface. Her anger dissipates and she is satisfied at last.

The Core, written by Cooper Layne and John Rogers and directed by Jon Amiel is rated PG-13 for death images and brief violent language. It seems the director averted the R rating by leaving fornication out, even though the main characters, Joshua Keyes, played by Aaron Eckhart [Erin Brockovich, Nurse Betty], and Lieutenant Rebecca Childs, played by Hilary Swank [Boys Don't Cry, Karate Kid 3], have eye-contact orgasms throughout the film.

This movie has all of the elements of a true blockbuster in the Armageddon, Deep Impact vein. There's an exorbitant amount of explosions, a threat of the world ending, and an overkill of special effects. But it is set apart from other big-budget films in that it is a refresher course in eighth-grade physical science.

When hundreds of people suddenly drop dead within a five-mile radius of Boston, the feds call on college geophysics professor Dr. Keyes and his former colleague, Sergei Leveque, played by Tcheky Karyo [The Patriot, Operation Dumbo Drop], for some sort of explanation for the madness. Dr. Keyes, a swarthy, blonde, unscientific-looking dude, concludes that all of the victims had pacemakers, and confirms to a military representative that this is no act of war.

Whew!

The scientists are sent on their way, but Dr. Keyes cannot dissuade his intuition that there is something wrong with the bigger picture. When he gets back to his lab he conducts research on the Earth's electromagnetic field and concludes that the earth's inner core has stopped moving and the entire planet is royally screwed.

Meanwhile, somewhere in space, "Beck" Childs is the youngest person ever in space, as well as the first to maintain perfect eye make-up throughout her entire mission. She is the mission navigator and when the shuttle is set off course on its landing by the same crazy electromagnetic nonsense, she cleverly averts the shuttle's landing to the Los Angeles River, thus saving the lives of countless Angelinos.

Shortly after Childs' landing, Keyes presents his findings to a panel of distinguished military blow-hards. They are baffled. Huh? Luckily, someone brought a fruit basket to the meeting. Keyes picks up a peach and slices it open. He explains to these short-bus heads of state that "the skin is the crust, the fruit is the mantle and the pit is the core," and that it will be nearly impossible to navigate a way to the pit/core in order to stop the eventual destruction of the planet.

But the government is resilient and determined to find a way to be heroes. They devise a plan to build a heat-resistant phallic-shaped ship to travel to the center of the Earth and deliver enough nuclear weapons to blitz the entire continent of Africa in order to re-stimulate the core and put the planet back on track.

[Reviewer's note: By the way, the correct pronunciation of nuclear is Nuke-Lee-er - NOT Nuke-YOU-ler! Dr. Keyes, a so-called world-renowned scientist uses the incorrect pronunciation twice! I know that even Big Baby Bush has taken to pronouncing it this way without fail, but he's the guy who made up words like "suiciders," "strategery," "subliminable" and "embetterment." Not only are we currently at war, but this movie is supposed to be based on a highly scientific concept. The least the actors could do is know how to correctly pronounce our weapons of mass destruction.]

I digress.

As the earth maddens, the Golden Gate Bridge melts and the Roman Coliseum blows to pieces, the crew pops open a bottle of champagne and boards their vessel. They enter the earth through the Marianis Trench, which is surprisingly inhabited by friendly whales, and begin their adventure.

I think the vessel ended up getting the core's phone number, but you're just gonna have to see the movie to find out if he ever calls her back.

Fiction Plane Review

My dad sells coffee for a living. Joe Sumner's dad just played halftime at the Super Bowl. My dad goes to church every Sunday. Joe Sumner's dad owns a yoga studio. My dad's name is Mark. Joe Sumner's dad goes by Sting. Joe Sumner's band, Fiction Plane, just released an album called Everything Will Never Be O.K. on MCA. I'm just writing about it.


To the band's credit, there is no mention in either the liner notes or the self-produced material of the familial linkage. And while Sting's old band relied on catchy hooks ("Sending out an SOS") and an airtight structure, Fiction Plane's style is anti-pop, with few repeated verses or simple chords. Any utterance of "doo doo doo" or "da da da" would be unthinkable on a Fiction Plane track like "Do I Feel Loved," a fidgety interlude in which Sumner broods like Thom Yorke.

But that's where the incongruence ends. The lyrical similarities between Pops and the kid, for instance, are uncanny. The Police addressed the issue of political unrest in Northern Ireland with the song "Invisible Sun" on their 1981 album Ghost in the Machine: "I don't want to spend the rest of my life/Looking at the barrel of an Armalite." More than 20 years later, Joe Sumner's emotive lyrics about knee-jerk militarism on the Third Eye Blind-sounding "Soldier Machismo" are eerily familiar: "I wanna put glue down your gun/Imagine pointing that thing at your son."

If that's not convincing enough, explore Sting's ode to self-pity, "King of Pain" ("I have stood here before inside the pouring rain/With the world turning circles running 'round my brain"), and place it next to Fiction Plane's "I Wish I Would Die" ("To wallow in pain/Used to make me feel like/I wasn't the same").

Whatever. So what if Sumner coasts on his dad's musical coattails? I bet he doesn't get free cappuccino.