Tomorrowland
Does anybody else remember going out to see explorers, flight of the navigator, the last starfighter or the goonies as a child? It seems like back then there was an endless stream of adventure films featuring kids for kids arriving at the local cineplexes that we could go to see with their families period it’s not like that any more,today it feels like it’s all franchisees period it’s the latest superhero film, or the latest trend, the craze Harry Potter or hunger games or Twilight. It’s another derivative computer-generated cartoon with the same plan as last five. remember the two Coreys? Could such a phenomena and even exist in today’s cinematic universe? I’m not sure . I can’t imagine seeing something like the Dark Crystal or Dragonworld be created today period and that’s why Tomorrowland is so important period we complain of a lot about the lack of originality of lack of creativity in mannered cinema especially when it comes to genre film the service and horror and sci-fi and fantasy get hit with it the most. But have you looked at children’s cinema today? Seriously, as a father I take my kids to movies on a regular basis and it’s so much of the same stuff and I wonder what happened to the kids movie of my day. And that’s why Tomorrowland is so important. It’s the first 
time in a very long time that I’ve seen a completely original adventure movie for kids, with kids. Something that isn’t trying to set up a franchise, something that isn’t pulling from the latest teen fad, the hottest new young adult novel or most recent comic book. It’s simply a good adventure film, with an original premise period and that’s something that Hollywood at large and Disney in general is sorely lacking. The trailer covers the plot well enough, although I will admit I was frequently wondering what was going to happen next period it’s not as straightforward as it seems . the performances are well done son George Clooney is on his game here which is nice to see, it’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed him outside of the Oceans movie. Our young actresses are perfectly competent and while the film is quite indulgent and CGI it fits within this world. It’s justified by the creativity of the story. I want to encourage everybody to go see this, not just because it’s a good film not just because it’s something safe and entertaining to take the kids to. I want to encourage everybody to go see this because it’s a genuine attempt at an original idea which makes it so very different from everything else there is out there right now
Plan Nine
Plan 9 is one of those rare reimaginings that works. From the first trailer, it reminds me of the 80s remakes like the Blob or the Fly that would take a concept, throw in some homage, and then run their own way with it using modern techniques. It’s far more a re-imagining of the story then simply re-making it for a contemporary audience.
Plan 9 takes an interesting approach, I’ve always viewed it more as a sci-fi horror film – aliens, not monsters. This version of Plan 9 veers firmly in the monster 
direction, turning the film into a very zombie focused gorefest as opposed to the original which feels very much like a traditional 50s or 60s horror movie, including a lot of those tropes – the fake graveyard, the stereotypical characters, the underlit monsters. This modern retelling plants it firmly in 2016 with the kind of makeup effects and gore a modern horror fan would come to expect. It’s done with the blessing (and inclusion!) of Conrad Brooks, the last of Ed Wood’s troupe still with us which makes it all the better. I can’t wait to chat with him about this at Monster Bash!
Not everything is perfect – the CG looks like late 90s television quality FX and there are more than a few performances in the film that are less than polished. But these sins are forgivable because what the film does give us is a lot of fun. A while back I praised Midnight Syndicate’s feature film “the Dead Matter” for including not only horror actors from the convention circuit but also several Horror Hosts as well. The inclusion of Big Chuck Schdowski, and Count Gore DeVol made the film a great deal more fun and appealing to those of us into the genre. Plan 9 dives right into this same territory, casting Jerry Moore a.k.a. Karlos Borloff into a meaty role – a DJ that Wolfman Jack would be proud of. It’s a great fit for Jerry, being a musician himself and I completely buy him as the character. There’s also the indescribable Mr Lobo. Indeed Mr Lobo is the most perfect casting I’ve seen in 
a very long time. His exaggerated and intentionally stilted delivery on his Cinema Insomnia show makes him absolutely perfect to appear as the late psychic Criswell. It only takes a few moments of listening to him and watching him, it’s impossible not to believe he’s channeling Criswell the entire time! The fact that he bears is no physical resemblance to Ed Wood’s old collaborator makes no difference, Mr Lobo is absolutely perfect in this role – a role that has been expanded to include him not only as the narrator for the prologue, but also as one of the survivors fighting for their lives against the hordes of zombies that have been resurrected by our fiendish aliens.
Even the aliens have a grisly make over here, all them appearing as the same stranger, lurking in the distance. Thier true nature is only revealed when they open their mouths to reveal rows of razor sharp brown teeth (what IS it about sharp monster teeth in a human mouth that freaks me out so much anyhow?). It’s a good conceit, and director John Johnson manages to even sneak in the same motivation for these aliens as the ones in the classic film. We get a variation of that speech, “Humans using weapons beyond their ability to understand. Stupid!”. Somehow though, what sounded goofy and campy in Ed Wood’s now comes off as far more chilling here.
This is not a blockbuster like this summer’s The Conjuring 2, or 10 Cloverfield Lane. It’s not art (but then again, if you’re coming to a film remake of Plan Nine from Outer Space looking for art, you may need more help then I can give you). What it happens to be, is a fun romp through blood-soaked streets filled with fast, angry, rampaging zombies. When I was 
a teenager, this is exactly the kind of movie that I would grab off of the shelf at my local video store to watch with friends on a Saturday night. In fact, you know what? Nick’s birthday is this weekend – I might actually do just that. You should do the same. Plan 9 is available throughout the US on streaming platforms and at Wal-Marts everywhere.
-Photos unapologeticly stolen from facebook –https://www.facebook.com/plan9remake/ Post your photo with the movie and they’ll send you some goodies.
Evil Dead Rise
When the last Evil Dead movie came out, I made a big deal about how I didn’t hate it. It wasn’t a remake, and as far as I was concerned, it could easily be in the same universe as The original spirit different cabin, may be the book landed there after all the shenanigans come,
This particular one it’s real nicely with that philosophy. We’ve got a complete change of scenery, with the possessions happening at an old decrepit Apartment building instead of a cabin in the woods. It’s a good change of ocalcoma this particular setting allows for marvelous set pieces And interiors. Indeed, you can see a heavy shining influence on the whole thing. It never overwhelms, but you It is there.
It’s one of those things that also does tend to distract me a little bit. In Evil Dead 2013, I never doubted for a moment that that was Evil Dead. It was absolutely That series, that genrer and that whole franchise. I could feel it. In this one, we lose it for a little while. It’s subtle at the beginning, and almost completely vanishes for most of the 2nd act in favor of the whole “Mommy loves you to death” schtick. We spend maybe a little too much of this movie as a solo possession act. That’s not really what Evil Dead is. Evil Dead is the evil coming in and taking over Not just you, but all of your friends too.
Nevertheless, it comes back with a vengeance in the 3rd act. We get the references that I want. We get the chainsaw. We get “dead by dawn” and “I’ll swallow your soul”. We also get a gorefest that is trying its best to top the previous movie. This It’s no mean trick. Indeed, I think they may have pulled it off, with one of the most bizarre monsters that I’ve seen outside of the Reanimator.
Even the earlier acts though are peppered with call backs. We see Henrietta’s pizza stamped on one of the boxes, we see an eyeball gag that feels a whole lot like the original series. We’ve got a economic con data a slightly different and more biting one And presentations on a record. It all works.
We got a perfectly good new cast as well. I’m not really spending a whole lot of time on them, b
because while we did get some setup and character developments , they’re really here for us to burn through. Fresh meat. And they do that Just fine. We get to know them just enough to care about them before putting them through the meat grinder.
I think the only thing that is missing here would be a Bruce Campbell cameo. There really should be one… a sort of Stan Lee cameo from here on out. He would make a big difference. However, I’m ready to embrace Evil Dead without Bruce. I know there’s some fans that aren’t. I understand. That’s why you got 3 seasons of ash vs Evil Dead that you can watch again and again. On the other hand, if this isn’t necessarily a sacred cow to you, and you enjoy the things That are actually in evil debt, the blood, the Gore, and the style, you’re gonna Really like this period go to the theaters right now to see this period by it when it comes out. Let’s make sure the thing gets enough ticket sales, because I want more!
Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies
I expected a comedy.
With a name like Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies that’s kind of the impression you get (the trailer even plays it up that way)! However, while being a lighthearted and fun zombie flick, they play it straight, with a lot less camp than you’d expect. In the Austrian mountains, the owner of a ski hill is exhibiting his new snow making machine to an investor – something that will insure the hill stay open, no matter what happens with global warming. In the first five minutes, we discover that the coolant can be toxic to human beings and other living things (I’m not in entirely certain I’m on 
board with this trend of Zombifying animals in these movies… It bothered me a little bit in Scouts Guide, and while it drives the story here – it still bugs me), causing a strange sickness, blisters and eventually… well, you know. When a group of professional snowboarders stumbles upon a very “American werewolf in London” type of pub, the shenanigans begin.
Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies is very much a throwback to eighties splatter films – there is a fun yet straight tone going on here, interjected with just enough humor to keep the movie enjoyable without going full on comedy the way films like Return of the Living Dead or Evil Dead did back in the day. The lighting choices and color palette, mixed with that generally fun vibe make the movie feel a great deal like one of Charles Bands Full Moon features… but with less nudity and more gore (I’m totally good with that by 
the way). Did I mention the gore? Because there is a lot of it. It’s not quite up to The level of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, but there are definitely some scenes hear that give Romero’s Day of the Dead a run for its money – if you’re looking for entrails, torn skin, and punished bodies, you will not come away disappointed.
It’s a short film, clocking in at well under 90 minutes… But that’s okay – it doesn’t need to be longer, and in the time that they have they managed to tell a fun little horror story in an interesting and exotic locale. It works far better than it has any right to.
I caught this at the Capitol Theatre, with about six other people in the audience. That was kind of fun, you get a genuine reaction from the other folks watching the movie and it makes me feel like it’s 1981 on 42nd Street in New York all over again. I’m looking forward to grabbing a digital copy of this – it’s the sort of movie that seems like it would be best served on a television rather than a movie screen, but if you have a chance to catch in the theatre… By all means head up to see it. It’s worth the time, and these are exactly the sort of filmmakers that I want to see supported. I’m off to Imdb to see if they’ve made anything else!
The Ninth Gate
The ninth gate is really everything I love about cult films. We’ve got everything I could ask for, mystery, a Satanic order, adventure, and exotic locales, obsession and character. The film appeals to me in particular because of the bibliophile angle. I love all books, stories and if I’m at your house, you can be assured that at some point I’ve snuck away to look through your collection of books. This film understands that, and it understands exactly the sort of person I would be if I had the means these people do. Films like this, or like High Fidelity, or even the Fast and the Furious – movies that explore collections that have been obsessively accumulated and the people who curate them always fascinate me – it makes me wish I had that kind of passion and singular vision these people do
I love how intelligently written it is, and how it celebrates literacy and research. These characters are smart people, well read, you know what you’re talking about, and many are experts in their field.
The story of course is about the search for a very rare book, the nine gates – which supposedly holds the secret to immortality. It features Johnny Depp in one of his better roles. Mind you, I enjoy Captain Jack and I am a fan of his work with Tim Burton, but this is something completely different – a character with depth and smarm and purpose. It’s not a quirky character, and that in fact makes it a stretch – I love Depp in this.
It’s a film you may have overlooked because quite frankly, it’s as common as dirt – you’ll see it on every shelf in every video store and frequently on Netflix. Seriously, sit down and give this a watch.
American Poltergeist: The Curse of Lilith Ratchet
The cover art for this movie feels like a low quality Asylum movie, heading straight to Netflix. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Ratchet is a well shot film with a good script and fine actors ding a competent job. The license plates and news segments remind us that film was shot in the Cleveland area, most notably in several locations in Westlake and Akron.
Don’t be fooled by the title though. While our antagonist, Lilith Ratchet, is indeed a ghost, she acts like no poltergeist I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t a surprise then, to discover that American Poltergeist: The Curse of Lilith Ratchet wasn’t the intended title. Director Eddie Lengyel planned on calling the film simply The Curse of Lilith Ratchet, but the distribution company stepped in and decided 
they could sell more copies under a different title, tying it to an existing (if unrelated) anthology franchise.
The movie starts at Creative Apothecary in Akron, a new age store where our protagonists discover an ornate wooden box (have we learned nothing from Hellraiser or Gremlins?) containing a shrunken head (have we learned nothing from Charles Band??) and a poem. The sell it to a radio host who makes the head the centerpiece of his Halloween show. Broadcasting from a packed night club he plays hot potato with the head while repeatedly reciting the poem (have we learned nothing from Candyman???) unleashing the curse and the evil 
ghost of Lilith Ratchet.
I kid with all the horror references. While you can definitely spot Lengyels influences in things like the way Ratchet moves (a glide that really reminds me of Angela in “Night of the Demons” or even the Daleks from Doctor Who), he doesn’t wear them on his sleeve. There’s plenty here that feels original. I was particularly impressed with the boldness of using a big crowded party to unleash the curse. More often this happens in small, intimate settings. A slumber party or small gathering of friends. Doing it in a populous setting is a risk, but the kinetic energy of the lights and people at the party is also a great 
juxtaposition with the later kills, most of which happen in isolation and gloom.
It’s not a perfect film. Despite the 30 day shoot, with a budget of $15,000 some cracks will show. They are few and far between, but there are occasional clumsy segways and certain scenes that didn’t get the attention to lighting that most of the rest of the film did. Lilith Ratchet is a great looking ghost, but light is not this makeup’s friend. When she’s too lit up, she looks too much like an actress in a costume, but when she’s cloaked in shadows and darkness, those horrifying teeth and piercing eyes give me chills.
That’s the reason I’m recommending this film so highly by the way. Sure, the Conjuring movies made me jump a couple times. Human Centipede made me squirm. But I haven’t 
really gotten goosebumps from a horror movie since “Sinister”. That takes some talent. It’s got some blood, but it’s not really gory. It dosen’t rely on the gore, but rather an atmosphere and a ghost whose presence fills the room every time Lilith glides into frame.
The film ends with a requisite twist that I could mostly see an hour into it, but also manages to tie things together nicely, bringing us full circle back to the beginning. It’s a satisfying enough ending that leaves the door open for us to possibly see Lilith Ratchet again, and I for one, hope we do.
Annabelle Comes Home
While I’m a fan of the Conjuring movies, I hadn’t gotten around to the Annabelle ones until recently, but when I got invited to an advance screening of Annabelle Comes Home, I figured it was time to change that, so I sat down and watched both Annabelle and Annabelle Creation before heading out to the film preview. It’s a great universe James Wan has created here, growing it slowly and organically. It works and while the Annabelle films aren’t perfect, they’ve always been good sequel fodder. Annabelle Comes Home changes all of that.
This movie is not only a great sequel, it’s also a great film in of itself. That’s a hard trick to pull off, but this move manages to fit into the mythology and push it forward, while simultaneously standing alone quite well and giving us a movie that is every bit as terrifying as the first Conjuring was.
I went into the film cold and was genuinely surprised to see Ed and Lorraine Warren so prominently featured. They don’t stick around long and are gone before the midpoint of the first act, but it’s organic – you don’t really even notice their exit (kind of 
like those “lite” episodes of Doctor Who, like Blink, where the Doctor is really just a supporting character and not really in the episode) as the focus shifts to their daughter Judy, and her two teen babysitters as they spend a terrifying night in the Warren’s home. The premise is simple; what if all those things locked away in the Warren’s occult museum clawed their way out of their basement for the night? In this way, the film trances the Annabelle franchise and becomes something more. It’s not really ANNABELLE comes home, but rather Annabelle COMES HOME.
While the previous Annabelle films have been somewhat doll-centric, focusing on the doll and the evil spirit that travels with it (It’s not really the doll that’s the evil – this isn’t Chucky, rather the doll is an avatar and a conduit for demonic entity(s) in these films) this movie unleashes a whole host of evil spirits, ghosts and demonic influences. This is a hardcore HAUNTING and it is terrifying. McKenna Grace in particular turns out a brilliant performance as 12-year-old Judy Warren, a role that requires a level of intensity that should be beyond her years. She thwarts the evil 
with prayers and crosses and is every bit a match for Annabelle herself.
The film never fails to be creepy, even when we’re doing the getting to know you thing in the second act, with laughs and aw shucks moments (Pizza Delivery guy, YOU’RE THE REAL MVP!) you can feel the dread creeping through, and by the time we hit act three, everything has turned upside down. I watched the movie with a rowdy audience and as things rapidly spun out of control they shrieked and screamed in disbelief.
This is genuinely the best of the Annabelle movies and the only one that matters!
Ant Man and the Wasp Quantumania
Ant Man and the Wasp Quantumania is really interesting in that they’ve taken a fundamentally ensemble approach to a cosmic story. It’s important to get this out of the way from the beginning, because Quantumania is as far removed from the first Ant Man film as Star Wars is from American Graffiti. One of the things that really disappointed me about Ant Man and the Wasp , the second film of the series, was that it was such a departure from the first Ant Man. indeed, it really should have entitled the Wasp and Ant Man as Ant Man is basically a guest star in his own movie. If you want to make a movie about the Wasp, Go ahead and do that, but let me know when the title, instead of pulling a sort of bait and switch. And it’s not that the Wasp and Ant Man was a bad movie, it just wasn’t a good one. It’s not particularly memorable. It’s completely wastes the resources it has in Lawrence Fishbourne, and was really at the forefront of the MCU It fell right into the tropes of shifting focus to female characters, along with pulling gender swaps and diminishing legacy characters in order to try and make the women look better by comparison. (Which I always thought was a weird approach. You don’t build someone up by tearing somebody else down). With the exception of a few fun bits with Scott and Cassie at the very beginning, there’s just not a lot to talk about with the Wasp and Ant Man. I’ve watched that movie twice. Once in a theater, and once at home with my daughter. The first Ant Man on the other hand, I’ve watched more times than I can count. That’s the movie Quantumania really has to compare to.
So, does it?
Much to my surprise, it does. It really does. It also has the unenviable
task of kicking off phase 5, while at the same time trying to reignite an interest in the MCU that’s very much run out of steam. Sure, you can claim conspiracy theory when people talk about theaters screening Captain Marvel consistently empty despite supposedly high ticket sales. However, the advanced screening that I went to for Quantumania? It was a ghost town. We actually arrived late, and still had our pick of just about any seats we wanted. By the time the film started to roll, My daughter and I still had empty spots on either side of us. That’s unthinkable for a free screening of a Marvel movie. At least, it would be unthinkable before Infinity War. Or more of a, before captain Marvel. There is definite superhero fatigue, and the MCU has done a lot to drive its brand into the ground. What you can see though in Quantumania, is a real attempt to change that and win viewers back.
The ensemble approach works really well here. We have a cohesive team working together, much the way we’ve gotten used to seeing on the various CW shows like the Flash. Everybody gets a time to shine, everybody gets a character arc, everybody gets to grow. Everybody gets a chance to be heroic. I was particularly impressed by Cassie, Scott’s daughter, now grown up. She’s now trying to do some super heroine stuff in her own right. The film could have very easily been about her. In years past, it would have been, giving us a perfect hero, who’s instantly good at everything. Not so here. Cassie has flaws. Indeed, a lot of what’s going on in this movie may well be her fault. She doesn’t know everything, although she thinks she does. But as the film progresses, she discovers that she might just have a thing or two to learn about being a superhero from her dad. This is great characterization. There’s complexity and depth, It’s truly a breath of fresh air.
Gone also, is much of the identity politics and social messaging. Oh there’s still a bit here and there. A reference to “peaceful protesting” (but fiery?) And a quick gag about socialism. But this is the sort of stuff that we would have all pretty much just ignored and moved along with six years ago, before Hollywood sort of lost their mind and started prioritizing the message over storytelling. Indeed, the film is actually a bit self aware. It understands that you’re coming in with some skeptical predispositions. I recall seeing Modock come on screen, and thinking “oh, they’re just making him into a joke I see. Not sure I like that.” But before a 1/2 hour has passed, they’ve shifted, and he’s no longer a joke. He’s a serious threat. By the end of the film he’ll break your heart. This is a far cry from the way shows like She Hulk handled their criticism. Instead of attacking their fans and their critics 
the way She Hulk did, Quantumania takes you on a ride, seizeing your criticisms, and then addresses of them by twisting and morphing, turning into exactly what actually wanted it to be in the first place. Early on I found myself rolling my eyes wondering “who do they think they are? The next Guardians of the Galaxy?” but by the time we hit the 3rd act I was nodding my head.They had actually done it. This really is the next Guardians of the Galaxy.
Like Guardians of the Galaxy, this is one of those movies that you are really going to want to see in the theater. I don’t care how good your home theater set up is, to really appreciate the sprawling cityscapes and amazing environments of this lost universe, you have to see it on a big screen. And that’s what I’m hoping you’re going to do. Go see this in the theater. This is a genuinely good movie, And for the first time in quite a while, I have hope for the MCU. I’ll be heading back with my friends to see it again next week. I hope I’ll see you there too.
Ant Man and the Wasp Quantumania opens Friday February 17th.
Underground Entertainment : The Movie
I never actually got to see Underground Entertainment when it was still in his incarnation as a television show, which makes me incredibly glad that Underground Entertainment : the movie exists.
This documentary chronicles the exploits of a couple of lunatic actor and filmmakers as they make a crazy B-movie based cable show, complete with clips and cameos. It shows how they managed to get exposure in the convention scene but most of all it’s just a marvelous slice of life. It captures that era of the 90s in genre and reminds me a lot of what it was like to live in that period.
Early days for Jim O’Rear, but you can tell this is someone who loves the genre and loves being a part of it and much of this show was his love letter to all things B-movie and psychotronic.
If you’re a fan of documentaries or of the underground horror scene in the 90s, this is one of those movies that you’re going to just sink right into and feel right at home. I know I did, that’s why It’s a high recommend.
Marry Me
Yeah, I know. Some regular readers to this blog will be spitting out their morning coffee in shock. What on Earth am I doing reviewing a Jennifer Lopez movie? Even more importantly, What am I doing liking it!? Well sometimes over the weekend, the wife gets a hold of the TV. What can you do? Welcome as she threw on one of her ubiquitous rom com… a wedding one no less, And rather than head back to the library for a game of pool, I decided to watch it with her.
One of the first things that caught my eye was some of the talent. Owen Wilson can be really good when hes given the right roles. The trick is to let him lean into the earnest average guy thing he does so well, without letting him tip over into the awe shucks so naive it’s stupid persona that he too frequently find himself in. Sarah Silverman was right there on screen with him as well. Like Wilson, she’s hit or miss for me. I enjoy her when she’s playing somebody who’s a genuinely bad person that you still want to be around. As long as it’s not trying to normalize or justify her behavior, the baby voice saying horrible things schtick actually works well. I’m not nearly as familiar with John Bradley, but hes playing a Nick Frost type, so I’m pretty well drawn in. As long as we ignore the fact that it’s directed by the same person who did She Hu
lk, we’ll be fine.
Jennifer Lopez is about to get married to Bastion… a Latino singer, one of those guys straight out of the early 2000s Ricky Martin mold. But just before she goes on for their wedding concert, she discovers he’s been cheating on her and picks a random person out of the audience to marry insted… that would be Owen Wilson, carrying a sign that his lesbian best friend unloaded on him while she swooned. We get a nice fish out of water story for both Lopez and Wilson, the superstar singer, and the simple math teacher. Lopez is basically playing herself, and we get a lot of music through this film. That’s actually a really good thing… playing into her strengths and actually giving me some new appreciation for her 
talent. The chemistry between Lopez and Wilson builds and there’s plenty of fun moments, Definitely enough charm and laughter to keep the guys who are going to see this with their girlfriends engaged.
At the end of the day, it’s well done, fun and a little bit heartwarming with some genuinely good music. I couldn’t be more surprised at how much I liked it. It’s not the sort of thing that I’m going to run out and get A DVD of…. indeed, I can’t really see us ever watching it again. But for a nice date night movie, you could do worse.
Hack!
Former Wonder Years star (and current Hallmark/Lifetime movie darling) Danica McKellar stars in Hack as a bookworm who just kind of fades in to the background of her local college. It makes her perfect as an envoy for a pair of psychopathic fans who use her to lure a class of film students out of their private island under the guise of an extra credit project. Once there, the film students, who are all pretty much horror stereotypes are slaughtered one by one until we come up to an ending that will leave you shaking your head.
In a lot of ways, hack is a very meta film. However it doesn’t wear it’s heart on its sleeve, and it still manages to take it self seriously enough that you never feel like it’s about to develop into parody… though it skirts the edge and comes danger close a few times.
In the end, Hack is a great celebration of horror tropes and more than a little bit of bloody fun.
Beneath
Beneath was a dollar store purchase, lost in a stack of other dollar store purchases. With a stack of much more interesting looking and recognizable films. I had sort of dismissed it as just another film with a cool logo in the stack, but probably nothing special considering the MTV branding on the cover. It’s always nice however, to be pleasantly proven wrong.
Beneath manages to mix ghost story and thriller together brilliantly. I spent most of this film about a young woman looking for her sister, killed in a car crash, wondering if I was watching a ghost story or a stalker story. As she explores an old mansion and digs into the mystery of the young woman’s death and burial, I never quite thought that she was going crazy, but was never entirely certain where the story was going.
Beneath this beautifully filmed and gorgeous in its atmosphere. It manages to give you that sort of creepy atmosphere you’d expect from a Gothic ghost story or an Agatha Christie murder mystery. The plot as well thought out and well acted, and much to my surprise I’ve got nothing but praise for this film. This one’s definitely a movie you want to grab if you still see it littering the shelves of your local Walmart or dollar tree.
Alterscape
Alterscape is a sci-fi thriller about an Iraq war that with PSTD who seeks out an alternative therapy from scientists in the basement of a building with a computer that can alter your emotions. The experiment has side effects, darkening his personality and granting him weirdly undefined psychic abilities, sometimes telekinesis, and occasionally grievous bodily harm. It’s all a front to make him into a sort of super soldier weapon… I think. It’s quite muddy but that seems to be the gist of it.
Alterscape is one of those esoteric sci-fi forays, or at least it wants to be. It goes for the whole sort of head trip thing that we would get from films like The 13th Floor or the Twilight Zones “we can remember it for you wholesale”. The whole messing with the human experience harkens back to that. The problem is it fails to define a lot of its canon, so we’re never entirely sure it’s actually going on or why. It doesn’t help that they’ve bought the same cheap package of special effects vortices that I just watched in the Dean Koontz movie Hideaway. The basement office of the scientists 
feels cheap, with an old CRT computer screen and EL wire thrown about in the cramped space to give it a slightly high-tech feel.
I grabbed it off the shelf At dollar tree largely because it featured Michael Ironside, and this underrated actor can generally under elevate anything he’s in. However you can tell he was probably only on set for a day or two and even he can’t save the stinker. There’s a good idea in here somewhere, but I feel like they bit off more than they could chew, and had an interesting idea that really couldn’t sustain a full feature. This might’ve been better off as a short, but even then it’s a concept that needed to be more fully fleshed out before they put it on the screen. Without a better execution the film ultimately Falls flat.
Hologram Man
Look, I like John Amos, but even if I don’t know what he’s doing an action film like this… Of course his last billed so just because he’s on some variations of the cover might not mean anything. I’m a fan of Tiny Lister to though, and the title Hologram Man is nicely intriguing. Also doesn’t hurt that we start off with a fire fight between cops and guys in long coats in the middle of a field of burning cars.
Despite his prominence on some versions of the cover, Amos is killed by the 13 minute mark because this movie is really about his partner Decoda. Our villian is sentenced to some sort of digital incarceration and we flash forward about 10 years. It’s a nicely dystopian future and we have a domed city with lots of concept cars (like in Demolition Man) roaming the streets, and it’s all controlled by any of a corporation, The baddie up for parole. The hearings aren’t held in person, though you appear as a hologram… Hence the title. He takes this time to escape the holographic matrix as an autonomous hologram, complete with laser hands and a blue glow like 
Automan.
While Decoda trains in a goldeneye video game on the holodeck, William Sanderson from Blade Runner clones a new body out of weird shape changing rubber. It’s now up to Decoda to stop the seemingly unstoppable hologram man
Believe it or not, I actually really like this. It’s exactly the sort of movie that I would’ve rented as a teenager for sleepovers and watched in between Nintendo games at my buddy Mike‘s house. The action is good. It’s not over the top, But lots of entertaining bang bang. It’s awesome always fun to get a glimpse of the Japanese union Church from Prince 
of Darkness as a set in another movie, not to mention watching the cops in black dyed uniforms left over from the visitors in The V mini series. The biggest problem is that there’s very little original here. Joe Lara as Decoda is doing his best impression of Lorenzo Lamas. Michael Nouri is trying very hard to be Chris Sarandon in the entire movie wishes it was Demolition Man. It’s built on tropes rather than a solid foundation story, but sometimes it’s enough for an entertaining rental
Silencers
Silencers is one of those movies that’s a little confusing from the word go. they’ve change the cover in this edition, otherwise I think I would’ve recognized it from the video store days. Traditionally this has a stark white cover with the title in the nemesis on, featuring three men in black with large hats pulled down in sinister fashion over the shadowy faces. It was a blockbuster staple that you could almost always count on finding on the shelves, right next to Patrick Stewart’s Safe House and the Curse of the Blair Witch documentary.
We start off with credits over a retelling of the Roswell Landing, then go right into aliens abducting a cow (in a CGI spaceship that looks pretty good as long as it doesn’t move) and then follow up with a shoot out at a funeral between and the alien trenchcoat Mafia and the Secret Service, led by someone who looks a lot like the dad from step-by-step.
Turns out it all concerns of plot and a deal with aliens for their interdimensional travel technology. The whole thing has a very 1990s television look to it, TV level production values in special effects, stock soundtrack played under flat lighting, with a lab that reminds me a bit of Timecop and a concept that feels reminiscent of Stargate.
Halfway through, we have another alien arrive from another dimension, and fighting the assassin from the beginning. But I can’t tell who’s the good guy who’s the bad guy, because the assassin is working for some secret government agency. One act in and I’m still not sure what the hero is. But it does seem to represent a war between two alien races.
When the alien trenchcoat mafia decides they know longer want to cooperate, the military calls in the Secret Service being from the opening shoot out to take care of the problem. With the aid of a good alien he’s got to hunt down the bad aliens stop them from bringing their army through the dimensional gate to conquer the earth! (It’s an awfully small army though, only about eight people… Maybe there’s just more that we’re not seeing)
The film evolves into sort of buddy cop action flick, and they’re not stingy with the blanks or the sqibs (Red squibs AND green squibsby the way!). Plenty of action, however it moves a little slow and an hour and 40 minutes is too long to sustain the story. Still a solid classic rental and if you find it as part of a DVD set, it’s prbably the best way to grab this film!
Robs Gone Wrong
I remember seeing the trailers for Ron’s gone wrong on television. It was coming out right around the time when we were getting a bunch of these sort of cute iMac looking robots… I trend that had been kicked off in part by Wall-E. It looked interesting enough but I didn’t really know much about it and we just never got around to seeing it. Maddie scheduled it this week with her movie box of boom and off we went.
It’s the very near future where the new hot gadget is B-Bots… Basically, imagine if your iPhone was a robot. A capsule shaped android that was about 2 1/2 to 3 feet tall, with all the social media functions that your phone has. Cameras, filters, backgrounds and skins and interactivity. Every kid had one, really the logical extrapolation of where the smart phone would eventually go.
The only kid who doesn’t have one is Barney
… An outcast in middle school who sits alone at lunch and during recess. Well, his father gets him a B-Bot for his birthday… But it’s one that… Let’s just say it fell off a truck. They paid a guy in the back alley and this one is slightly scuffed and damaged. It also lacks the core code which means instead of merely “installing friendship“ where it loads up data about the owner, this little bot has to learn about friendship the hard way. Barney has to teach him.
It’s actually a genuinely good premise, and Ron is an amazing character in itself. The quirkiness and awkward missteps of the robot just make him incredibly charming. I don’t think I’ve related to a character this much since Stitch. We get a variety of shenanigans; Ron the B-Bot making friend requests by slapping stickers on people, and asking them if they want to come back to his “secret friendship shed”. There’s power tools and goat abuse, as well as great one liners and some very touching m
oments. They do a good job of making you sympathize with all the characters. One moment I am laughing at the mean girl getting some of the most just desserts one can imagine… And then the next I’m actually feeling kind of sorry for her. Barney is consistently a sympathetic character and you genuinely get fond of the bots themselves as well. There’s never any real talk about sentience… And that’s probably for the best. It would get us well into the weeds if we were to have a discussion about whether or not The robots were actually alive.
I have to admit I’ve got a bit of a problem with the ending. The way to make everything better and save everybody from the evil corporation ends up being Ron plugs himself into the cloud, and uploads his new programming… The one that they’ve basically accumulated as he naturally developed a friendship with Barney, and distributes this programming through an update to all the B-Bots connected to the net. I don’t like this. I pointed this out to Maddie and she raised An eyebrow for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, because maybe some of these people like their box the way that they are.”
That’s the thing I’d love it if this would’ve been an optional update, but imposing this philosophy on everyone because you think it’s the right thing to do… That really goes against my own philosophies of personal liberty. I’m not a fan with Microsoft does it to their computers, I’m definitely not a fan when the American government does it to their citizens,
Or perhaps I’m overthinking this.
In any event, this was an incredibly pleasant surprise. The film is really good and had Maddie and me laughing uproariously throughout the entire thing. I actually wish I’d discovered it sooner – it’s one of the est things to come out of Disney (fox) in a very long time and comes with my highest recommendations.
Decoys
Probably the best way to describe decoys is as a Species rip off at a college. We’ve got the same basic premise, alien being comes to earth to seduce men and find a mate, only with lower quality affects and how much smaller budget.
There are some good things about this film, the monster suit, when we see it, is very well done. They keep it lit properly and for a rubber monster suit, it’s nicely effective. I also have to give them credit for doing a monster movie in 2004 when we were still transitioning from the Scream and I know what you did last summer model into the torture porn model – they were ahead of the curve when it came to reviving monster movies.
The film itself however can be confusing. We have two alien seductresses and the film never quite gets around to explaining which one is the actual billing. We get in a nursing 
him out of screen time with each, but the movie is not set up as an ensemble, and it seems like the director isn’t sure quite how to shoot it.
It’s a lesser problem for our heroes, as one is clearly the good guy and one is clearly the sidekick. However our hero himself, comes off as a bit of a jerk. Rather than rising to the occasion and going through characters arc of a heroes journey, he seems to think further and further in the paranoia and panic, and ultimately comes off as a little bit crazy once we hit the climax. Some of our civilians are afraid of him and with good reason. It’s not the slapstick, lunatic crazy of someone like Bruce Campbell, it’s just a little too over the top psychotic with a flamethrower and it makes it hard to root for him. The viewers put into the decision of quotation marks yeah, I know he’s the hero, but maybe the bad guys have a point…
The real failing here though is in the special effects. The rubber suits, when they show up 
look great but most of the time the aliens revealed themselves with tentacles bursting out of a cavity about 8 inches above where their belly button should be. The east tentacles look bad. They would’ve been difficult enough to accomplish practically, shot dead on and in full light as they were, but the CG just looks like Nintendo 64 video game garbage. It’s poorly antialiased with a obvious wallpaper on it, and pulls me straight out of the movie. At no time do I feel like I’m watching anything but a poorly CGI effect. Even watching this for the first time in 2004, these FX would’ve been pretty dodgy.
Overall it’s garden-variety horror fun, but honestly in a universe where Species already exists, there’s no real reason to watch this freaky little knock off.
85% of the cast is under 25
Bad CGI (common, afterFX, same old blood packs)
Alien(s)
in love with Monster
Mirrors 2
When I bought Mirrors 2, I didn’t even notice the cast! William Katt is in this, so that’s going to make this a worthwhile purchase right off the bat! I also see Emanuelle Vaugier who played Mia, Charlie’s love interest in Two a Half Men and it’s interesting seeing her in this sort of a role.
Still, I was a little wary, once I noticed the director was Victor Garcia. This is the same person who directed Return to House on Haunted Hill, and Hellraiser Revelations. Basically, it’s the dude you get when you want a no budget sequel to an established franchise that doesn’t care about any established history or rules and throws continuity out the window.
Luckily, continuity doesn’t matter to me much with this series, I’m sure I’ve seen the first one of these, but I’m pretty sure it was 10 years ago or more, when the thing originally 
came out and I was renting a lot of movies from the library. I vaguely remember the premise, but for all intents and purposes I’m pretty much coming into this cold. From what I can tell it’s a standalone film, but I always get the impression that I’m missing something – why in particular our hero can see the phenomenon as opposed to anybody else.
The main character, played by Nick Stahl is a night watchman for a large department store/corporate headquarters… I’m never entirely sure if it’s a hybrid or a retail outlet. It’s a beautiful building, all glass and chrome… and mirrors. Stahl starts having visions of bad things happening to the executives, and those visions come true in some variation or another. The gimmick of course is the reflection in the mirror does some thing, and whatever the reflection does happens to you. If the reflection cut its throat, a jagged gash 
slashes across your throat.
They do a good job with the gre in this movie, there’s some beautifully bloody set pieces and the story keeps up at a good pace. We get our reveals later in the story as to why this is happening, and a hint as to why the hero can see things happening. Everything eventually fits together quite nicely, but it occasionally feels just a touch too long. Mirrors 2 feels more like an average Twilight Zone episode with extra blood. It’s a good little horror flick though, but what really makes the stand out happens to be the special features on this desk. You see, the story is actually based on a Koren film, and on the flipside of the desk they actually include that Koren movie! It’s got a longer running time then the original and you can really see the influences. It’s brilliant. All of it absolutely makes me want to go back and watch the original!
Hideaway
Hideaway is a 90s horror movie based on a novel by Dean Koontz, and it really feels like it. There’s something about a film based on a novel, we see it in a lot of Stephen King adoptions as well, something about the tone, pacing, and style of the film that just feels like it’s an adaption. Indeed, this movie actually reminds me a lot in its construction and tone of the mangler, whether it’s a jumble of recognizable names pasted across a pastiche of 90s horror tropes complete with dodgy CGI that may have looked cool at the time, but never looked realistic.
Hideaway is the story of a man – Jeff Goldblum – who experiences a near-death event, and comes back connected to other psychics. One of them happens to be a sociopath with his eyes on Goldblum’s daughter and it’s up to him 
to stop the psycho killer by any means necessary.
Hideaway also features Alfred Molina and Alicia Silverstone. If you’re expecting much from Silverstone though, you’re going to be in for disappointment. She is a vast with a couple of the story line seems to herself.
It’s weird timing for that too, seeing as this movie came out a year after Jurassic Park, when Goldblum would be at the height of his power, and the same year as Clueless, which would catapult Silverstone to stardom. I suspect it was shot a bit earlier and then somebody suddenly realized they just happen to have a 
film on the shelf starting the hero of last year‘s Blockbuster and this year’s it girl, which would explain why Silverstone is so prominently featured in the poster, but is largely absent from the film.
This is absolutely Goldblum’s movie. The problem with using Jeff Goldblum though, is you have to cast a really strong actors who can hold their own against him. That’s not the case here. The wife, even when she’s complaining about him bringing a gun and indignant about having to leave, feels hollow, and Silverstone really just sleep walks through the film. Instead of feeling dread when watching our villian up to his own machinations, I find myself frequently just a little bored and waiting for 
Goldblum to come back on and continue the story.
At the end of the day, it’s not that this is a terrible movie, it’s just not the sort of them I’m into – it’s too many of the 90s clichés with no monster, Lawnmower Man levels of bad CGI, and a certain indifference to the genre. It was worth the one dollar that I paid for it, but the shelf of the dollar tree store is exactly where this thing belongs.
Halloween Kills
I really enjoyed the Halloween reboot a few years ago. It was a genuinely good relaunch, tense and scary, one that embraced a lot of the lore, but without getting bogged down in the minutia. It was straightforward and did what it needed to do, reinvigorate the series and reinvent it after we got the taste of Rob Zombie out of our mouth (I’m not a detractor of those movies by the way, I like them, but they’re more Rob Zombie films than they are Halloween ones).
*Mild Spoilers*
Halloween Kills doesn’t quite land the second swing. It’s still maintains a lot of the feeling that we get from the reboot, but it misses the point in a lot of places. It wants to be a message movie, about how humanity is the real monster, the mob is the real evil, and The insertion of this subplot, takes up way too much time and is way too heavy handed to be effective.
Picking up immediately after the events of Halloween 2018, Laurie Strode is being raced to the hospital, and the firefighters are on their way to put out the fire in her house. We’re introduced to some of our characters through flashbacks, and of course, the charge to destroy Michael is led by Tommy Doyle. 
Chants of “The evil dies tonight!” are pervasive. Michael is on a rampage, killing his way through the town as he carves a path back home. Michael is all about home. About looking through that upstairs bedroom window… Or perhaps he’s not looking through the window, perhaps he’s just looking at his reflection and into himself. Either way, this is where he’s headed, and it’s where the ultimate showdown will be.
The film is heavily loaded with reunions. Tommy Doyle, this time played by Anthony Michael Hall (Part of me is upset they didn’t bring back Paul Rudd, but then again, he hasn’t aged a day since part six back in 1995 and actually might not look OLD enough for this version). Charles Cyphers police chief, and Tommy’s young sleepover friend Lindsay from the original… we even get a quick nod to the Silver Shamrock masks from the unrelated part three! However, we spent a lot of time on reflection and reunion and retelling, and much like the heavy-handed “the mob is the REAL monster” subplot, the stuff gets very old. It’s not that I don’t wanna see these characters back, it’s just that there’s so much of this family reunion stuff going on that it distracts from the film.
Jamie Lee Curtis for her part is sorely under used. They keep her at the hospital for the entire film… And this is no Halloween 2, where Michael is stalking the hallways. She’s just out of the way. We get a mob scene at the hospital where they think he might be coming to get her, but it’s all a red herring. Michael’s not after her, he just wants to go home. It almost feels like one of those movies like the direct to video Hellraiser movies, where they bring in the lead actor for a day or two, that way they get the name on the cover, but they shoot all the coverage separate from everybody else in their own little corner of the set and get it over with. Honestly, the easiest way to solve the pacing issues would be to drop a lot of the hospital stuff, and give Jamie Lee Curtis basically all the lines and actions that Judy Greer (playing her – Laurie strode‘s – daughter) has in this film. Give her a chance to really be the hero again.
That’s not to say this is a bad movie. Horror fans and gorehounds alike will be thoroughly satisfied with the amount of blood constantly thrown at the screen as well as the levels of the torn flesh that we get to see. Michael is brutal as ever, perhaps even more than usual, and this Director loves the spectacle of the violence. If you don’t see the night go in, you’re still going to see blood spraying 
towards the camera. It’s everywhere. It’s also frequent. There is an enormous amount of action here, almost with a comic book pacing. The problem here is, there’s very little actually thats frightening. But that’s OK, you’re not coming to this movie to genuinely be scared… You’re coming to visit familiar faces. The familiar heroine in Laurie Strode, and the familiar villain in Michael Myers (by the way, there’s a certain brilliance in the way the Shatner mask has been burned and weathered. It ages Michael up, giving him the same character lines on his face that mirror those on Laurie), even the familiar legacy of Doctor Loomis. And in those respects, it really does deliver and makes a fairly good companion piece to the 2018 reboot. However, the film can’t stand on its own and feels a little sloppy (not to mention about twenty minuets too long). It’s a little poorly put together, with an ending so bleak that it genuinely bothers me. Then again, we knew there was another one of these coming out already. It almost makes me wonder if the ending had been altered in someway to make that happen.
I wish I could say this was a definite go to on opening night, but it really isn’t. I wouldn’t be opposed to streaming it, or renting it when it comes out, but in many ways it feels like this is a step backwards in quality. A real shame considering how far this series has come.
Halloween Kills opens in theaters on October 15th
Black Widow
I’m not sure who out there is paying the premium Disney+ subscription fee… I mean, that extra $30 would just piss me off. I’m already irritated enough that my friends insisted on us going to see movies at Midway Cinemas instead of Amherst Cinemas, where the tickets are three dollars cheaper. (On the other hand, the riffraff has been showing up a lot in Amherst, where as at Midway, we ARE The riffraff.)
I came home pretty tired that day and half wondering if I could just blow it off. After all, Black Widow is not a movie I was seriously stoked for. But, it was the first time this crew had gotten together for a film in over a year, and my daughter met me at the door to remind me how excited she was for our movie today. So off we went, looking for people that we looking around to see if we could spot anybody we knew in a theater. Maddie tapped me on the shoulder and asked me
“Why is there a Deadpool right behind us? “
I looked, and sure enough, Deadpool was sitting right there, arguing with a 10-year-old boy about whether the DC universe was better than the Marvel universe.
“My friend over there says your movie sucked.”
“Well your friend obviously has terrible taste.”
“Why weren’t you in infinity war?”
“They couldn’t match my qoute.“
“Why don’t you ever do any DC?”
“Maybe if you wore something green” I chimed in.
Deadpool swung around jabbing an angry finger in my face.
“Now that’s going to far!”
I realize I’m talking more about the experience of going to the movie than the movie itself. There is of course, a reason for that. The whole point of the outing was really about getting back to the movies, and getting back with friends. The movie was secondary, and so was it’s quality.
Black Widow is at best, and average movie. My buddy Josh really hit the nail on the head when he described it as feeling like a Brosnan era bond film. There’s some superhero elements in it, and some Marvel characters floating around… but most of them are kind of marvel in name only. Like they threw a bunch of names in a hat and just decided “OK these are the ones we’re going to use…” and then try to fit the square pegs into whatever round holes they could successfully pound them into. Red Guardian isn’t really red guardian, Taskmaster has been significantly changed just to be a better fit for this film thematically, at the cost of his character. Black Widow for her part, well, Scarlett Johansson never plays her the same way twice… So it may not be fair to suggest she’s different in this movie.
In an adventure that takes place immediately after Civil War, Black Widow teams up with her sister to find and destroy the red room, a facility that brainwashes women and turns them into assassins just like she was. It’s a thin plot, with a bit of origin thrown in a flashback…and it’s kind of unnecessary. We needed this film to have come out right after Civil War. That would’ve given it legs and momentum, and wouldn’t have felt quite as shoehorned into the MCU as it does. It would make a great double feature with the Wasp and Ant-man. But plugging it in now, retreading this ground so late in the MCU, it just feels shoehorned in… With this unknown adventure, and the secret sister that we’re only finding about now… I can’t help but wonder, did Black Widow really need her own movie in the first place?
This is a valid question . Watching this film, it’s obvious that Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow cannot carry a film by herself. Fortunately they’ve surrounded her with an excellent cast that outshines
her in almost every scene she shares with them. I’m totally into the sister, despite the fact that this is the first thing that I’ve seen Florence Paugh in.
Black Widow is an excellent supporting character. She’s really the glue that held the MCU together (Far more so than Agent Coulson ever was) but she’s not solo material. I’m not even sure that it’s necessary… She’s been in more MCU films than Thor or the Hulk, and if you go outside the MCU, she still has more screen credits than the Punisher or Daredevil, or the Fantastic Four! More credits than Marvel’s first family! She’s been in as many movies as 
Superman! The first superhero, the original, recognized worldwide. Black Widow has had roles in just as many movies as he has. She’s not lacking for exposure or respect.
All that said, this is not a terrible movie. It’s fine. Pointless, but fine. It doesn’t do much to push any story further, it doesn’t do much as far as world building, he genuinely feels like someone just pitched “We need a Black Widow movie! Just do whatever, as long as you don’t break canon. Maybe have a woman directed to because that’s popular right now.”
Still, tt gave us a reason to get back out in the theater together, and it also gave us Natasha’s sister Yelena… who I’m quite eager to see show up again in the upcoming Hawkeye TV series. This one’s not a film that I would go out of my way to see in the movie theaters unless you’re doing it to get together with people like this. As far as just watching it as a Marvel movie I’d actually be perfectly content to wait until Disney+ takes down the premium fee for it and just adds it to their collection.
Mortal Kombat vs. Mortal Kombat
I’ve been struggling with how to talk about the new Mortal Kombat movie. I’m not huge into doing reviews a big blockbusters anyhow, because everyone and their brother does it… This little blog in the right hand corner of nowhere probably isn’t going to provide any new or meaningful insight.
The other problem is because this is a franchise actually have a certain weird attachment to. Not a sacred cow like Superman, but I was there when Mortal Kombat took over the world as a video game. You were either a Street Fighter guy or a Mortal Kombat guy… and I was definitely a Mortal Kombat person. I was there when the first movie came out… and became widely considered the first good video game movie. I still have great affection and nostalgia for it. Yeah this new film is good. In fact it may objectively be a better film than the original… But do I like it better?
When the first Mortal Kombat film came out it was at the height of the 
franchise popularity. They really could’ve done anything that they wanted and slap that label and characters into it and been successful. I mean, just look at the success of that dreadful cartoon they half heartedly put together. But for the live action, they chose to basically rip off Enter the Dragon… And if you’re going to copy, steal from the best. They created a fun buddy cop sort of film with the relationship between Liu Kang and Johnny Cage, with it being very much a martial arts tournament movie. That’s where the new film really diverges. The fighting, the tournament, it’s all secondary. We do get some one on one matches, but their montage and we blow through them surprisingly quickly. The focus here is more on an almost superhero fantasy.
The big problem with the new movie is there’s no story. They drift from set piece to set piece, and the narrative is a very weak string that ties it all together. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie, Star Trek first contact, arguably considered the best of the next generation films, is very similar. Light on story, heavy on spectacle. That’s what this is. The characters look great, most of them looking very much like they should.(I’m a little unnerved to see scorpions real face… And not just a skull) There is an attempt to really build some drama and pathos between the subzero and scorpion story, something that was missing from the original film. Back then, I remember liking the fact that those two are the only ones who look like they should, but simultaneously being pissed that they were on the same side. Definitely not a mistake they make here. There’s some influence that’s obviously been taken from the Mortal Kombat Legacy DVD we talked about earlier this week, and really, it would’ve been nice if they brought Michael Jai White over as Jax. Casting Mechad Brooks from Supergirl instead… Yeah, I just don’t buy it. However the rest of the roles feel right.
One of the things I kept thinking was “they could’ve done this in the original if they just had the technology”. The original Mortal Kombat 
makes innovative use of CG and puppetry, cutting edge at the time but limited by today’s standards. The new film really leans into the FX for the powers… Especially with Subzero. The ice effects are brilliant, and they genuinely look good. Ice is a tough sell, but they manage to nail it every time.
At the end of the day, I’m really pleased with this movie. It’s not necessarily my Mortal Kombat. It feels less like a comic book, it takes itself way more seriously, but I enjoy the fact that it’s harsh and bloody… Delivering on the promise that we got from the original video game. I’m eager to see more, and I hope that they’ll actually throw more money at the sequel. The greatest downfall of the original Mortal Kombat is that they slashed the budget for the sequel, going direct to video and devolving into what looked like a weekday afternoon kids show – Power Rangers or VR troopers. Mortal Kombat Annihilation just fails to work on most levels, not to mention killing one of your main characters in the first scene is always a downer from the word go. The new franchise hopefully has learned from the missteps of the past, with the promise of more characters from the franchise to come.
For the moment, I’ll just leave you with this bit of snark. (It made me laugh)
Zack Snyder’s Justice League
The Snyder Cut to me feels like very much the same movie, but more of it. The episodic chapter breaks help, because this isn’t paced ANYTHING like a normal film.
Ever see that episode of Family Guy where Brian meets George RR Martin? There’s a line where Martin tells him “You just got high and slapped together a bunch of sci-fi and fantasy tropes!”
“You could tell I was on drugs when I made this????”Brian asked, shocked.
“Oh yeah,” Martian relies. “thing is, Drugs don’t make you write good, they just make you write LOTS.”
Special Director cuts are kinda thier own drug….
But like I said, It really helps (me anyhow) to see it broken up and almost presented as a mini series rather than a film. You can definitely see the path Snyder is taking. I will say this – it kept me watching, the whole time through. A five min pause here or there to hit the bathroom or refill my cup. Some chatting online with others watching it at the same time and jotting down my thoughts in a FB thread, but no real distractions. No painting and building a costume while I watched (I was going to finish the BvS helmet while I screened the film, but ended up never touching it), no fast forwarding, 
no folding laundry, no stopping it and picking up a couple hours later. It kept me engaged enough to do the whole thing in one shot.
I think my great frustration with justice league has very little to do with the Snyder cut itself, it’s that people didn’t give The theatrical cut more of a chance. I’m more than four years old. I remember the whole of fandom hating on Snyder, calling him a hack, saying he didn’t know what to do with these characters, and rejoicing (I mean it. Cheering and celebrating) when he left the DC movie scene. Those same people are calling this the greatest epic in….ever! A different movie! It makes me angry that Whedon’s cut was ever released! (all actual comments I’ve heard).
I didn’t hate the original. I thought it was fine… just not spectacular (which is really what everyone expects). The CG erasing Henry Cavill’s mustache never bothered me (I can’t even really see it unless it’s pointed out to me), and you know what? I still stand by my defense of the Martha moment and BvS as a whole. A lot of people who hated the original however, seem to love this one – which is what I find perplexing, because all the things I hear people saying they see in the Snyder cut, I saw in the original. Affleck is still an amazing Batman, Cyborg was always the heart of this team ( I didn’t even care about Cyborg in the run up to the movie. The actual theatrical film MADE me care about him because he was done so well)… And a brilliant representation of the character. The theatrical cut was still epic, still had tones of 300 in it. But I genuinely believe people went into the theatrical cut expecting and intending to hate it (in the wake of Batman versus superman) as well as comparing it to much better films. All the criticism that I saw though, too dark, mischaracterizations, overblown, it’s all still here in this Snyder cut. All the good, and all the bad from the theatrical cut. Clownfish TV made a good point – the Snyder cut is still a mess, just like the Whedon cut, it’s just that this mess makes a little more sense.
It’s not the praise for the Snyder cut the bothers me. It’s the t
rashing of the theatrical. Both have the same DNA and far more in common than difference. It’s kind of like the outsized praise Wonder Woman got. That’s a good movie. But it’s not the ultimate triumph it was lauded as (In equal parts because it was female led and directed, and because it was the first DC movie that was better than “okay”). It feels like the Snyder cut is being given outsized praise because of all the good will that went into getting it released, not necessarily because of the film’s merits in of themselves.
Steppenwolf is still a lame villain, and I got to say, I absolutely hate everything that they did with the apocalypse characters. I hate the design. But that’s nothing new, I hated it In the original one too. I also seriously do not care for CGI barbarian Darkseid….fortunately his appearance improves greatly later in the film. On of my friends objects to my characterization of Steppenwolf as a wierd choice for the villian.
“You obviously don’t know much about the Fourth World.”
I have a passing familiarity with it but no, I’m not steeped in the lore – and that’s kind of my point. If I’m not completely up on Kirby’s New Gods saga, the general public DEFINITELY isn’t! That’s what makes it an odd choice to me. Loki was a good choice for Avengers since he’d already appeared in Thor and was an integral part of his mythos (Like say, if Lex Luthor or the Joker were a villian in JLA). Steppenwolf though….The Projection Booth podcast had a good observation. Marvel took 20+ movies before they got into the crazy, out-there stuff like Thanos and infinity stones and gauntlets and such. DC gets four movies in and throws Jack Kirby’s wildest creations right at you. This is advanced DC lore, not the entry level stuff we should be seeing at this stage in the game.
As the movie went on, this thing just stopped dead in its tracks right in the middle while they come up with a backstory for cyborg and flash (I will say this about the flash, I agree with him… I too, am a black hole for snacks – a true snack hole). I understand they had to do that, 
because then established in the previous films, but man it just kills all momentum. I remember always being perplexed that they didn’t use the CW shows as a jumping off point. They already had a universe built, which would have made a great foundation here, even with the tonal difference. They also had a far less annoying Barry Allen. like there’s this scene when Barry was trying on different hats, and asking Aquaman what he thought, I really wanted to see Arthur just backhand him and tell him to get in the truck. I was also kind of waiting for them to say “run Barry run” just before he activated the mother box.
I really do like this version of Commissioner Gordon, and wish we had gotten More of it. (of course I really wanted more of everything with Affleck’s Batman!). However, this movie really does get laden down With having to produce an enormous amount of backstory. I can see why so much of this got cut. The episodic format here actually 
works in his favor with all this extra stuff. Definately a better ending yes, and I really needed more Darkseid. I’m glad we got him. But I think Batman’s always been done well in these (I don’t get why people never saw that before), and I honestly don’t see how flash and Cyborg got shortchanged in the theatrical or how they were better here, there was just more backstory – all of which ground the movie to a screeching halt and should have happened elsewhere. I’d also say the only difference between this Leto Joker and the other was the lack of tattoos and gold teeth. Yes, I realize that it’s tough to look past that misguided appearance and actually watch the performance, but that performance in JL was EXACTLY the same one I praised in Suicide Squad.
All of this brings me back to my original impression. This really is the same movie. just more of it. And by the way, that’s not an insult. All the way back at the beginning, remember, I said, I liked the theatrical. It was fine. This is too. But I still have all the problems that I did with the original – the darker tones, and the general feeling of “I waited all my life for a Justice League movie – it’s a shame, this dark and gritty version is the one we ended up getting”. Gary at Nerdrotic actually had a great take on this – in the tradition of DC, this is an Elseworlds story. And it’s a spectacular Elseworlds tale, an imaginary story much like the stack of injustice trades I’ve been reading lately, but it’s not what I’d prefer as the prime timeline. that would look a lot more like the CW shows, but without the Social Justice. Indeed, I remember looking forward to the arrowverse crossovers like World’s Finest even more than BvS or JL. I recall thinking, “This FEELS more like the real JLA than the movies – and isn’t that kind of a shame?”
I’m also not thrilled with where things would go. According to the Projection Booth podcast, Snyder is on record as saying the next installment would be the Knightmare film – Batman would have fallen in love with Lois Lane, but would be unable to sacrifice himself for her and she dies at the hands of Darkseid, causing the dictator like Superman we see in the dreams. The next film would be him trying to turn back time and set things back to normal. That’s right. It gets darker. That’s not really what I wanted.
but at the same time being glad just to get it and being especially glad that for once, the film industry heard the cries of the fans, and finally gave them what they wanted.
Oceans Eight
I recently caught Ocean‘s Eight on cable, and I have some thoughts.
It’s been years since I saw it… I caught it when it was originally in the theater, and just wasn’t impressed. It’s not that it was terrible, it’s just that it wasn’t great. I do think that it suffers from the whole “doing a girl version of this film”, conceit that was already getting played out when this premiered. But I think there’s more to it than just that.
I enjoy a lot of the supporting characters. Awkwafina is actually fairly good here. It shows that she’s best when you give her a script. In her own show, she pushes the obnoxiousness so far that she becomes unlikable. This script knows exactly what to do with her, and rains her in just enough that it’s quirky without going over the edge to ugly.
I’m a huge fan of Rihanna in this film. She comes off real harsh at first, and then you just fall in love with her. This woman is channeling the style and bohemian grace of Lisa Bonet, and by the end of the film she was very possibly my favorite character. Likewise, Helen Bonham Carter has A fun quirky role here that she actually gets to sink her teeth into. I love that they’re acknowledging age, but still giving her so much vitality. The 80s Madonna look that she’s got going on just adds to everything in her performance, and she knows when to be attentive, want to be awkward, and want to run with the scene. It’s a brilliant performance, and great to see her outside of Tim Burton‘s world.
For my money though, one of the most interesting transformations here is Anne Hathaway. I’ve enjoyed Hathaway in a lot of her roles growing up, all the way back to 
the Princess Diaries. At times she gets too much credit, and at other times not enough. It’s been a weird career, and someone really needs to feed the poor girl a sandwich. In between movies she frequently seems very pale into thin. Watching her in this self-centered, almost oblivious role is interesting. It almost feels like this is the culmination of her character from the Devil wears Prada. As if this is who she could’ve ultimately become had she stayed in Miranda Priestly‘s thrall, and it’s a fascinating mixture of high society with touches of girl Next door frankness. It’s a genuinely good role for Hathaway, and one of the better things that I’ve seen her do since the Devil wears Prada.
On the other hand we have Mindy Kaling and Sarah Paulson who are both really just 
doing their thing, blandly through the whole film. They’re good actresses, but they both feel like they’re not sure why they’re here. They each have one moment, one purpose, and then sleepwalk through the rest of the film.
They’re not the only ones sleepwalking, Sandra Bullock also doesn’t quite seem to understand how to play a role like this. She’s the lead, she’s the star, but at the same time she’s playing a bit of a villain. Bullock is excellent at what she does, but what she does is the relatable female lead… And this is more of an aloof role where she doesn’t seem entirely comfortable. As a result, she wanders through the movie, aimless and unsure.
The core of the Ocean films, has always been the easy back-and-forth between George Clooney and Brad Pitt. They try and replicate this with Bullock and Cate Blanchett, but Bullocks not sure what to do here, and Blanchett is simply not up for the task. She’s tough as nails and hard as diamond, with a handsome beauty that seems out of place in this role. The two are never convincing in the buddy comedy trope and every time that they’re on screen together, I find myself waiting for something else to happen… Eager to get to the next scene.
The disappointing thing here, is that this is a good idea. It’s a good concept with an A-list cast, but at the same time it’s trying very hard to be in Ocean’s Eleven movie. I think that ultimately does it a disservice. I love that they address why they’re creating a team of female con artists… “Men get noticed, and women don’t.” Whether you agree with that statement or not, with that one line I am ready to buy into the conceit and I 
am totally on board. It makes sense and it liberates it from the unintentionally sexist attempts at predominantly female casts like Ghostbusters or Supergirl. Nevertheless, shoehorning this in with clumsy cameos by Elliott Gould’s Reuben and Shabo Qin’s Yen feels almost as forced as the scenes taking place at Danny Oceans grave. It also kicks the story off with a real drag, knowing that Ocean is dead… and so is the series. After all, these sort of sidequels never have a chance to become franchises themselves… especially when they’re as gimmicky as this. No, I think Ocean’s Eight would’ve been better served as an original story. And that’s really why it fails to satisfy for me.
On the other hand, it’s certainly better than ocean’s 12!
Argo City Comics 