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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86634635825818146392018-06-21T13:40:45.494-07:00Mike's Movie CaveMovie Mikehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-71621252689486995782018-06-21T13:37:00.001-07:002018-06-21T13:40:45.487-07:00Monster Family (2017) – ReviewWith the popularity of the Adam Sandler-led animated Hotel Transylvania movie series, it is no surprise that other studios would want to rake in a little of that "monster money" with their own take on the classic monsters. Unfortunately, with director Holger Tappe's film Monster Family, those favorite monsters don't quite make an appearance. Instead, we get a middle American family who are transformed into a vampire, a mummy, a werewolf and Frankenstein's monster by the villainous Dracula. What a twist!

Based on the book Happy Family by author David Safier (the movie was released internationally as Happy Family and only changed for the North American release to Monster Family), the movie tells the story of a dysfunctional family that finds itself monster-fied because Dracula had inexplicably developed the hots for the mom.

Dracula (Jason Isaacs) is not only fond of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor - a standard musical choice for classic monsters - but also the musical stylings of Tom Jones, even to the point of putting on a Las Vegas style stage routine for an audience of none. You see this Dracula is lonely (his trio of bat minions and poor put-upon Renfield notwithstanding), so when American mom Emma Wishbone (Emily Watson) accidentally calls Dracula's castle instead of a local costume store, she immediately wins his heart. Now, I'm not saying it's beyond the realms of possibility to fall in love with a person over a two minute phone conversation - those 900 phone-sex numbers are dangerous to the vulnerable at heart - but this film doesn't really work all that hard on selling how it would work in this context. The writing from the get-go is rather lazy, and the meet cute between Dracula and Emma is as contrived as it is ridiculous - Emma was looking for vampire teeth for her costume and somehow dialed a long distance number by mistake, not only getting an actual vampire on the line, but the Prince of Darkness himself.

I wonder what phone carrier Dracula uses?
As the movie progresses, we discover that the Wishbone family is not the happiest of clans - every dysfunctional family cliché is trotted out in record time: we learn that Emma is a klutzy, hypercritical mom who wants her family to do fun things together; Frank (Nick Frost) is your standard overworked and clueless dad who is oblivious to his wife's problems and is also saddled with a horrible flatulence condition; and their daughter, Fay (Jessica Brown Findlay) is your typical movie teen who has no use for her mother, is failing school, and is shy around boys. Finally, there is the youngest son, Max (Ethan Rouse), the standard brainiac kid who is picked on by the school bully and is in constant conflict with his older sister.

Is there a machine in Hollywood that generates these types of characters?
The only remotely original thing in this movie is the depiction of Dracula as a supervillain living in castle that has more in common with a Bond villain volcano lair than it does your standard Carpathian castle; not only is it his home that is updated, but he as well, as he now travels in a supersonic private jet, has an outfit that not only allows him to travel in the sun but also has jet boots, and to make the Bond villain theme more complete, he has a device that could freeze the sun and end all life on Earth. (Note: He doesn't have sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads, so there's that). What he doesn't have is a mate, so he offers the imprisoned witch Baba Yaga (Catherine Tate) her freedom if she will transform Emma into a vampire (why or how he imprisoned her in the first place is never explained). He doesn't want to transform her the old fashioned way via biting because that would result in losing her soul. The only possible wrinkle in this plan is that Baba Yaga's spell will only work if Emma is unhappy, but of course everyone in Emma's family is unhappy about something, so when Baba Yaga casts the spell, it transforms the entire family into monsters, specifically the ones that they were dressed up as for a Halloween party that Emma was dragging them to.

"Are we different enough from The Munsters to avoid a lawsuit?"
Will Emma learn to be a less controlling and more understanding mom? Can little Max come to accept the fact that being feared as a monster is not actually a good thing? Is it possible for Fay to realize that beauty on the outside is fleeting and that it's the person on the inside that counts? As for Frank, well his only issue was being overworked - causing him to nod off during his wife's frequent rants - and his time as Frankenstein's mindless monster provides him no epiphany. The script really doesn't have a character growth moment for him, instead Frank learns that being big and green is something that supermodels find hot. Who knew?

I'm not sure what morality lesson this is supposed to be.
The animation and character designs for Monster Family are decent - even the voice work for the most part sells the characters just fine - but overall, the whole thing comes across as just another tired retread of what we have seen in dozens of other animated kids' movies. There is barely an ounce of originality in its ninety minute running time, as "Bond villain" Dracula suddenly turns into Syndrome from The Incredibles - with the added "bonus" of his bats trying their best to be the minions from Despicable Me - and the trope of the "family having to finally work together to save the day" is pretty much telegraphed from the beginning of the movie.

They even have the same "Death Trap" from The Incredibles, only its ice instead of fire.
I'm sure little kids will get a kick out of this film - there is plenty of colorful action and it does move along at a nice pace - but the reliance on clichés and Dracula's strange seduction of Emma will have older audiences either yawning or scratching their heads. Monster Family is mostly guilty of being a cobbled together retread of better films, and thus it will likely fade away into obscurity.Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-29464862639516864822018-06-18T20:45:00.000-07:002018-06-18T20:46:42.592-07:00American Assassin (2017) – ReviewWhen Matt Damon took on the role of Robert Ludlum's titular hero Jason Bourne - way back in 2002 - it created a shift in the action spy genre that radically changed audience expectations, thus when a movie based on a book from popular action/thriller author Stephen Flynn a certain level of balls-to-the wall audacity was expected, unfortunately what we got was something more in the lines of an old Jean Claude Van Damme movie rather than a Bourne film, or even an Expendable for that matter.

The movie has your standard revenge driven hero in the form Mitch Rapp (Dylan O'Brien), who had his life thrown into turmoil when his fiancée is killed by random terrorists. Who exactly these particular terrorists are is not important, they are just the fuel to fire that would create a "badass" action hero. And just how badass is Mitch Rapp? Well in the meager eight months from the time his fiancée was killed to the present he manages to become a Mixed Martial Arts fighter, turns himself into a man proficient in small arms, and he also manages to troll Islamic terrorists online in the hopes of finding those responsible for ruining his life. This had me wondering what in the hell was Mitch before the fateful day of his fiancée's death. All we learn is that after her death he lost interest in school and dropped out, but unless that school was a Hogwarts for trained killers I call his sudden abilities bullshit.

"My godparents were James Bond and Lara Croft."
When his sting to catch and kill the terrorists responsible for his fiancée's death is interrupted - by a U.S. Special Forces team - Rapp finds himself in C.I.A custody where he is subjected to thirty days of intense debriefing, which somehow results in him being offered a job with the agency. Is that how the C.I.A works? Does the Agency often recruit random vigilantes obsessed with avenging the death of a loved one? In fact ex-Navy Seal Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton) thinks the kid is a walking Section Eight, and wants no part of him, but he is overruled by C.I.A Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) who wants Rapp to be part of a black operations unit called Orion, an off the books squad who if caught would be disavowed by the government, a sort of Suicide Squad if you will.

Couldn't they have just called her Amanda Waller and gotten it over with?
Despite Hurley's repeated objections- that the viewer can't help but agree with - Kennedy orders that Rapp be trained for the team. And what exactly makes this guy so special? Well according to her he has, "Tested through the roof" and "Might be the best I've ever seen." Really, a guy with no military background or professional training is the best she has ever seen? I'm sure that would come as a shock to the hundreds of men and women belonging to the Navy Seals, Army Rangers or any other branch of the military. Or maybe she just doesn't get out much. Irregardless of logic - or plain old common sense for that matter - it is apparently Rapp's "non-boot camp look" that is just what they need for these covert operations. So Rapp is whisked off to a cabin in the woods, where he is trained alongside a group of other recruits by the aforementioned Hurley, a man who repeatedly states that Rapp is an emotional powder keg and is unable to separate his emotions from the job at hand. Sure may be an idiotic hothead- and he definitely is - but Kennedy thinks that this is just what the doctor ordered, even after Hurley points out the kid can't obey a simple order.

"He's a loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules!"
Because this is a movie his" ignoring orders" pays off - instead of realistically getting him and his teammates killed - and shows us just what kind of a true badass he really is, but of course he isn't the only "rule breaking" badass this movie has to offer. Enter the villain. The Orion team find themselves hunting down a mercenary who goes by the codename Ghost (Taylor Kitsch), who apparently plans to build a nuclear bomb for the Iranians. Anybody want to lay down bets that this Ghost has a troubled history with Hurley? What, no takers?

American Assassin isn't a terrible action film - there are a few decent stunt scenes - but it is an overly clichéd one, and aside from Keaton's Hurley none of the characters on display were all that interesting. Then there is the plot - which provides nothing that we haven't seen in countless other film of its kind - and certainly no more original than what you could find on an episode Scorpion. I will give the film credit for providing action scenes that were well choreographed - it gets bonus points for avoiding the shaky-cam that plagued the Bourne movies - but I didn't really give a shit about Rapp or his problems, so this made those moments less than engaging.

It's an actual toss-up as to who is more boring, the movie's hero or the villain.
The movie was made for a rather small budget so what box office it took makes the possibility of a sequel more probable - so there is a chance we could see more books from the series being made - but in my opinion they'd be better off turning the character of Mitch Rapp into a television hero and recast it with someone with at least a modicum of screen charisma. If you catch this movie while flipping through channels it wouldn't be the worst way to kill two hours, but certainly don't go out of your way to see this thing.

Final Thoughts:

• We repeatedly see Hurley dry firing his gun which any professional would know is not conducive to keeping your weapon in perfect working order.
• A mole is discovered among the team members but whose revelation is completely undone mere moments later.
• The villainous Ghost borrows his backstory from Javier Bardem's character in Skyfall.
• For a movie called "American Assassin" it surprisingly has nothing to do with assassinations of any kind.

This movie could really have used a Deadshot cameo.
Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-63806030271568066152018-06-13T20:47:00.002-07:002018-06-13T20:47:53.617-07:00The Ritual (2017) - Review"If you go down to the woods today you're sure of a big surprise, if you go down to the woods today you'd better go in disguise!" The lyrics for Teddy Bear's Picnic contain some solid pieces of advice - ones that almost no character in a horror movie ever takes to heart. In David Bruckner's horror film, The Ritual there may not be teddy bears playing hide-and-seek, or eating marmalade sandwiches, but there are certainly some surprises in-store for anyone who dares to go hiking in these particular woods.

The movie follows the hiking adventures of four friends; Phil (Arsher Ali), Dom (Sam Troughton), Hutch (Robert James-Collier), and Luke (Rafe Spall); they have decided on a hike through the wilds of northern Sweden to honor their fallen friend Rob (Paul Reid) - he was killed during a convenience store robbery six months earlier - because this was the group vacation Rob had wanted before being brutally slain. We get the usual banter among friends – with a little break when they build a rock cairn in honor of their fallen friend – but when Dom twists his knee, the group decides to take a shortcut through the nearby forest.

Needless to say this scenic detour is not a good idea.
A small group of characters lost in the woods with "something" hunting them is certainly a common enough trope of the horror genre – Evil Dead, The Blair Witch Project, Wrong Turn, to name a few – but what is done with said trope is what makes or breaks a horror film. In The Ritual — based on the book by Adam Nevill – director David Bruckner has our protagonists stumble across a gutted elk, which had been bizarrely mounted up in the trees. Later, the group comes across an old "cabin in the woods," which they choose to enter because the weather started to get a little too disagreeable. It's at this point that it becomes clear that none of these guys have ever seen a horror movie before or else they'd have bypassed the cabin stating, "Being wet is better than being murdered in our sleep." But these yahoos enter the cabin – which is also surrounded by pagan runes – and inside they discover a headless effigy with antlers for hands.

Would you stay the night in a place that held this thing?
What Bruckner adds to his film – making it standout from its brethren – is the psychological element; as in this case, the "creature" is able to get into each person's head and see their pain. In the opening prologue we see Luke's inaction during the robbery – which led to Rob's death – and this has caused a little rift amongst the guys; the guilt of Luke's inaction hangs over the entire group, and it becomes clear that his friends may also blame him for Rob's untimely end. And what exactly does all that have to do with a monster hunting the group through a seemingly endless forest? Well this isn't your typical "monster in the woods" story; soon, our heroes find themselves not only dealing with a supernatural force stalking them, but the people who worship it as well, and when we learn what the "ritual" is, it all becomes horrifyingly clear.

The Ritual also gets bonus points for having a very original monster.
I won't say The Ritual is a perfect example of the genre – we do get the standard jump scares and cliché characters who try to rationalize away clearly supernatural events – but Bruckner keeps the tension ratcheted up to eleven for most of the film's 94 minute running time, and the final act reveal of the creature's true nature is simply fantastic. You will find a lot of crap horror films on Netflix – 2016's The Forest for example – so it was nice stumbling across this little gem. The Ritual may not have rewritten the horror genre, but it is one I can highly recommend, though I'd avoid watching it if you have any plans on camping this summer.Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-52394046455905264202018-06-10T20:45:00.000-07:002018-06-10T20:45:07.721-07:00Cloak & Dagger (2018) Pilot ReviewMarvel may be kicking butt and taking names with their Cinematic Universe – the latest Avengers movie having earned literally all the money – but on the small screen they haven't been as consistently successful. With Netflix doing most of the heavy lifting on television – the less said about ABC's Inhumans the better- one has to question if a regular Network can compete with the Netflix model, and with the premiere of ABC Spark's Cloak & Dagger, that question becomes even more pertinent.

In 1982, comic book writer Bill Mantlo and artist Ed Hannigan created Cloak & Dagger – a unique duo introduced in the pages of Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man. They are a couple teens that were experimented on with a new synthetic heroin that gave them superpowers. Those familiar with these characters from the pages of Marvel Comics, or random guest appearances on some of Marvel's animated shows, won't quite recognize the heroic Tyrone "Ty" Johnson (Cloak) and Tandy Bowen (Dagger) we see here on ABC Spark, as series creator Joe Pokaski has almost completely divorced his show from the source material. Pokaski has stated that, "The original [comic] stories were fantastic, but for the time, while they were a little progressive, they were a little bit sexist and racist once you got into it." And this apparently means changing everything about the characters found in the comics and recreating almost the whole lot from scratch. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Absolutely not, but if you are going to totally re-imagine a beloved comic book, you better bring your "A" game.

"Can I get a do-over?"
In the 80s, Cloak & Dagger were all about the war on drugs – not even as an allegory, they basically hunted down the drug manufacturers who turned them into super-powered freaks – but as times have changed, the alteration of this origin story is pretty understandable. Pokaski has their new backstory centered around some sort of industrial accident at a facility owned by the Roxon Corporation, one of the show's few links to the Marvel Universe. Now, drugs do still rear their ugly head in this show - Tandy (Olivia Holt) is no longer the privileged runaway white girl from the comics, she's now a career criminal who snorts stolen drugs – and her mother is an alcoholic/drug user as well. Tyrone (Aubrey Joseph) isn't the urban youth whose stutter resulted in his friend being shot by a trigger-happy cop - as it did in the comic - now he lives in an affluent neighbourhood with his successful parents, though he still has a similar tragic backstory as his misdeeds as a child led to his older brother being shot by a trigger-happy cop.

Required guilt ridden origins: check.
The industrial accident at Roxon looks to be this season's main mystery – with Tandy's dad being blamed for it and his subsequent death sending his family into poverty – but in the two-episode premier, we only get hints at what direction the series will go. We get to see the corrupt cop who shot Tyrone's brother - who also becomes a future nemesis for teen Tyrone - but we have yet to know if he is tied into the bigger story or if it's just a mini-mystery unconnected to Roxon. But, most startling of all, is that in the two hours that make up this premiere, we get very little explanation as to how Tandy and Ty's superpowers work. We see Tandy conjure up light knives to stab a would-be rapist – that these "daggers" draw blood is another departure from the source material – while Tyrone's "shadows" seem to teleport him around as if guided by a divine force and not something he can control — at least not yet.

"How the hell did I get up here?"
What this version of Cloak & Dagger has going for it is definitely the two leads – who even with very little screen time together show great chemistry – and it's their performances alone that will have me back to check out episode three. How a budding romance will fit into the show – with Tandy having a fellow crook as a love interest complicating things – is still up in the air, but as their strange powers throw them together, we could be treated to an interesting dynamic. The one thing viewers won't be seeing is the many superhero team-ups that Cloak & Dagger have had in the comics – don't expect to see Spider-Man or the X-Men showing up – but there is a little continuity from other shows as Tyrone's powers tap into the Darkforce dimension, which has been previously established in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter, and the aforementioned Roxon corporation who made it's cinematic debut in Iron Man 2.

"Do we at least get to meet Hayley Atwell?"
Season one will most likely be about how the two kids learn to use their powers – which, as mentioned, are radically different from the comics, as here they also get visions that allow them to see into a person's heart – and aside from seeing Tyrone teleporting in his sleep, and Tandy accidentally stabbing a would-be rapist, we don't get a lot of on-screen superheroing. The showrunners clearly are going for the slow burn here – no sprinting to the finish line like their Netflix cousins – and whether the show makes this work will mostly come down to how they balance the social drama/young adult aspect of the show with the superhero elements of its comic book origins.

Coming from a guy who has been reading their stories since their debut back in the 80s, I'd say it's clear I'm not the key demographic here – just too many changes for an old comic nerd like me – but Young Adult viewers will most likely get a kick out of this new show.

 Overall I was fairly underwhelmed by Cloak & Dagger – the pacing was a tad sluggish and some of the supporting cast were less than convincing – but those first two episodes did lay enough interesting groundwork for me to at least want to find out what happens next.
Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-5890321232602652512018-06-08T05:19:00.001-07:002018-06-08T05:19:51.796-07:00Fifty Shades Freed (2018) – ReviewMost would agree that the Fifty Shades books are a cross between fanfiction and a trashy beach read - no one is going to be proclaiming E.L. James author of the year any time soon - but the movies based on these books are only slightly better, in that they are faster to get through than the books. In Fifty Shades of Grey we were introduced to naïve doormat Anastasia Steel, and her billionaire stalker Christian Grey. Then, in Fifty Shades Darker, we learn that Christian had a mistress when he was underage - this was included simply because statutory rape adds spice to any movie romance. There was also an ex-slave of Christian's who stalked Anna because she wanted her hunky master back. But all this was clearly not enough: we also had Anna's boss Jack Hyde sexually assaulting her and trying to murder Christian by sabotaging his helicopter - talk about rich people problems - and now, with Fifty Shades Freed, we get the "startling" climax where we hope to learn if gorgeous women and billionaire playboys can have a happily ever after.

The movie opens with Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) tying the knot with her billionaire boyfriend Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), but after some interminable banter and light bondage, their honeymoon is cut short when they learn that Anna's ex-boss/sexual assaulter Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson) has broken into the headquarters of Christian's company to steal some private files. The only reason this particular crime was possible is because in the last movie neither Anna nor Christian thought it important enough to inform the police of Hyde's assault on Anna because of…reasons?

I guess they had other things on their minds.
Dakota Johnson attempts to do something with her character this time around - she gets all alpha when a slutty architect flirts with her man - but it's hard to get past the fact that she's married to a guy that any sane person would have fled from as fast as their million dollar sports car could take them. Sure, I bet there are lot of people who would put up with worse if it meant they could live in the lap of luxury - private jets and fast cars are nice - but that isn't the type of character Anastasia Steele is supposed to be, and at some point the whole "I was abused as a child and sexually preyed upon as a teen" would no longer wash as an excuse for Christian being a total dick.

There is a point in the movie when Anna discovers she is pregnant - causing Christian to go into full on petulant child mode because he doesn't want to share her with anyone, least of all a child - and Anna finally tells him, "You need to grow the fuck up." Now, this seems like Anna is finally growing a spine by standing up to Christian, but director James Foley undercuts it all by having the scene play out with Anna in her underwear. I will admit to finding Dakota Johnson very attractive, and seeing her naked is certainly no viewing hardship, but at some point, I started to wonder if in the making of this movie they had long bull sessions where they discussed ways in which to get her character naked.

"No, I'm not going to work naked or let you fuck me on my desk."
The only thing "freed" in Fifty Shades Freed is any semblance of character or plot, and when we aren't being treated to PG 13 sex scenes, we are bored further by pointless moments with Anastasia and her friend Carla (Jennifer Ehle) - who thinks that her boyfriend Elliot Grey (Luke Grimes) is cheating on her - and not only is none of that resolved, it's not even vaguely interesting. Then we have Jack Hyde - possibly the dumbest criminal in the history of sex crimes - who breaks into Anna and Christian's apartment with the apparent plan of kidnapping Anna at knife point. And just how dumb is this plan? Well, earlier we discovered that the reason he broke into Christian's files was to help with his stalking - how corporate files aid in stalking is never made clear - but somehow he forgets the age-old truism that two armed bodyguards trump a kitchen knife, and so he gets his ass kicked. How this guy ever became an editor of a successful publishing company is beyond me. Of course, Christian gets all pissed that Anna had disobeyed him - she went out for drinks with Carla when he told her to go straight home - even though the threat was waiting for her at home and not at the bar. He goes even further into "I'm a total dick" territory by bringing her to the Red Room the next day so that he can punish her with orgasm denial.

Relationship Tip #462: If the woman you love has had a knife held to her throat during an attempted abduction, maybe wait a day or two before tying her up and torturing her.

The movie reaches its "climax" when Jack kidnaps Christian's sister - somehow Hyde's research has finally paid off and he is able to outsmart Grey security - and he demands that Anna bring him five million dollars. He also tells her that if she informs anybody of what is going on, Christian will be getting his sister back in pieces. Then he tells her that she has less than two hours to get the money, and when she tells him this is impossible, he responds, "You were smart enough to take my job, you'll figure it out." The problem here is that his request really is impossible. Completely and utterly impossible. Even if one of Christian's banks had five million dollars on hand - which most banks don't - what makes Jack think a newlywed wife would have access to that kind of money?

"I know I've only been married to Mr. Grey for a couple weeks, but can I have $5 million dollars?"
Fifty Shades Freed is basically a drippy television romance show - with some PG 13 bondage tossed into spice things up - but upon realizing that even the easiest audience would get bored with this after awhile, author E.L. James throws in some ridiculous crazed villain subplot that wouldn't pass muster in a Harlequin romance story. That this series of movies has made any money is clearly due to a collection of weird dating choices (these films were all released on Valentine's Day), and a lot of suburban moms day-drinking and ending up at the multiplex. If you want to watch a movie with alternative BDSM lifestyle, check out films like The Story of O or The Image and give the Fifty Shades movies a wide berth.

Most Laughable Moment: We learn that Jack Hyde has a history of having sex with his assistants - blackmailing them with pictures he has taken of their time together - and somehow this translates into forcing his former assistant Liz (Amy Price-Francis) into helping him with the whole stalking and kidnapping plan. Does Liz not realize kidnapping is a federal crime and could land her a life sentence? What kind of pictures could he possibly have that would coerce her into aiding and abetting such a crime?Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-3445314363398764432018-06-04T18:53:00.000-07:002018-06-04T18:53:38.911-07:00Death Wish (2018) – ReviewBruce Willis became an iconic action hero with his portrayal of police officer John McClean in the film Die Hard which spawned four sequels; so, casting Willis in the Charles Bronson role of Eli Roth's remake of the 1974 film, Death Wish – which spawned four sequels as well – must have seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn't.

The remake deals with trauma surgeon Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) whose wife, Lucy (Elisabeth Shue) is killed during a burglary gone wrong, and while his college-bound daughter, Jordan (Camila Morrone) ends up in a coma. When police detectives Kevin Raines (Dean Norris) and Leonore Jackson (Kimberly Elise) fail to catch the perpetrators, Kersey decides that "Crime is a disease and I'm the cure," and becomes a vigilante. Now that quote may be from Sylvester Stallone's action film Cobra – a film about a cop going outside the law - but it's very fitting for this movie as well because Eli Roth's remake has a very 80s action movie vibe to it. Unfortunately for MGM and Eli Roth, the climate in the United States is not the same as it was back in the action heyday of the 80s - or even of the 70s when the original was released – as mass shootings in the real world have dampened the spirit for this kind of character.

Dressing him like the Unabomber certainly didn't help.
Of course, guns in movies still make big box office – and the percentage of guns on movie posters to ones without is still surprisingly high – but where film's like John Wick give audiences an over-the-top stylized action, with very little basis on reality, Death Wish aims to give us a more gritty down-to-Earth violence. Paul Kersey isn't a top level assassin mowing down legions of killers (with an endless supply of guns and ammunition), instead, he is an average citizen who has decided that the system has failed him and thus murdering criminals is justifiable. Now this kind of revenge story is certainly nothing new to Hollywood – it's one of the larger subgenres of the action film – but Eli Roth's blend of the "Average man pushed too far" trope, with the extreme gore typical of his films, doesn't quite work here. The political climate may have been a factor in the film performing poorly at the box office – grossing $34 million on a $30 million dollar production budget – but what really sank this film was its terrible script — plain and simple.

In the original film, Charles Bronson played an architect who - after his wife is killed and daughter raped – takes to the streets to clean up crime, but what he doesn't do is track down the particular guilty party. He's not some genius investigator – able to navigate the city's underbelly – so he just stalks the streets hoping to run across random criminals. In the remake, the film does seem to be going in that direction – his first "victims" are a group of carjackers and a known drug dealer – but then as luck would have it one of his wife and daughter's assailants shows up in the emergency room of his hospital sporting a few bullet holes of his own. Now, "luck" is the key word here, as this version of Paul Kersey has mutant level powers of luck, and one of the killers falling right into his lap is only the tip of the iceberg.

• When Kersey decides to become a vigilante, he goes to a gun store to pick up a weapon – only to learn that guns used in the commission of crimes tend to be traced back to their owners – so he goes home empty-handed. The very next scene, we see Kersey in the Emergency Room – where a gangbanger riddled with bullet holes is brought to him – and a gun falls off the gurney right at his feet. No one else in the ER hears this, so Kersey is able to kick it under the table, and thus, he now has an untraceable gun.
• After a couple random acts of vigilantism, the aforementioned assailant of his wife and daughter shows up in his ER – sporting a watch stolen from Kersey's safe so our hero can be sure he is one of the gang – and, lucky for Kersey, the dude's cellphone – which he finds inside the ambulance – just so happens to contain information that he can use to track down the other assailants.
• A text found on the phone leads Kersey to a bar that the gang uses to fence their ill-gotten gains, and after a ridiculous gunfight – that takes a break for Kersey to torture out a second lead to another gang member – the villain gets the drop on him, and it looks to be the end for our hero. At the last second, Kersey is saved when a falling bowling ball lands on the dude's head. And yes, this scene is as ridiculous as it sounds.

So the film started with the premise of a man – jaded by the failures of the system – deciding to prowl the streets to fight crime, but then it switches gears into the standard revenge plot of the hero tracking down the ones who wronged him – it's kind of like Eli Roth blended the plots of Death Wish and Death Wish II – and then we get the most contrived plot elements imaginable that vary between simply unbelievable to outright laughable. Roth also throws in some of his trademark gore – a man's head is literally exploded when Kersey drops a car on it – that are cartoonishly out of place.

Note: The "car kill" ends with the gang member stupidly asking, "You're not going to kill me?" - while he lies trapped under a car that is being held up by an incredibly long jack – and Kersey responds, "No…Jack is." He then yanks out the jack and the car falls, popping the dude's head like a grape. This is the kind of one-liner you'd expect to hear Arnie to spout in one of his 80s action films. It's as out of place here as the gore.

These types of films rely on the audience putting themselves in the place of the hero – getting to viscerally live out dreams of being a badass – but Eli Roths' film is neither that kind of action movie, nor is it a social political commentary, as it doesn't seem to have any kind of message other than "Don't cross Bruce Willis." What we did get was a movie that was tonally all over the map – with a plot that strains credulity to the breaking point – resulting in a remake that is all too forgettable. The only positive thing I can say about this movie is that at least we won't be seeing a remake of Death Wish: Crackdown.Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-38047491607955368242018-05-31T16:28:00.000-07:002018-05-31T16:28:25.782-07:00The Hurricane Heist (2018) – Review
I'm a sucker for disaster films, so the idea of blending in a Die Hard style heist with a natural disaster was pretty much catnip to me. Sadly, director Rob Cohen fails on both counts as this movie is neither an exciting disaster flick nor is it a good caper film. With what can be achieved with modern day special effects, even silly disaster films like San Andreas can be fun to watch - no matter how ridiculous or completely implausible things get - but you still need characters to root for, and that is where The Hurricane Heist stumbles the most.

 The movie opens with a dad and his two young boys, Will and Breeze, driving through Hurricane Andrew when their truck is driven off the road by a falling tree. The boys are forced to take shelter in a nearby farm house while their father tries to use his truck's winch to get their vehicle back on the road. If you've seen the movie Twister, where the father is killed by the storm - while the two boys watch helplessly on - you will of course not be surprised when the father dies here, too. Even less surprising is the fact that one of the boys grows up to be a meteorologist because apparently according to the great "Movie Laws," your career choice must stem from some personal tragedy.

"I will get even with Mother Nature by staring pensively at her."
Will Rutledge (Toby Kebbell) is one of those "action meteorologist" who drive around in armored vehicles that look like they were borrowed from the disaster film Into the Storm, while on the other hand his brother Breeze Rutledge (Ryan Kwanten) is an ex-Marine who runs a "Tow and Repair" business. We get the standard stuff of Will telling his superiors that the oncoming hurricane is going to be worse than what the predictions are stating - he has one of those magical gut feelings that trumps technology - and of course he is proven right because the hero is always right in these movies. Then we have good ole Breeze - who is more of plot point than a character - and any moment of screen time with him is almost instantly forgotten — he's just a complete waste of screentime. And what exactly is the plot of The Hurricane Heist? Well if you've seen the 1998 action film Hard Rain, you've pretty much seen this film.  Hard Rain was about an armored car being heisted while it was collecting money from local banks that were in danger of being flooded by a terrible storm; The Hurricane Heist is about crooks using a category 5 hurricane as cover to rob a U.S. treasury facility. As in Hard Rain, two of the key players of The Hurricane Heist are armored car drivers, but the similarities don't end there.

"It says here in the script that I'm going to be betrayed by my partner."
In this film, we have Casey Corbyn (Maggie Grace), a Treasury agent - who has a tragic back story of her own but one that has no real bearing on the plot so I'm not sure why the writers gave her one at all - and her driving partner Connor Perkins (Ralph Ineson), who turns out to be working with the crooks just as Ed Asner in Hard Rain betrayed his partner played by Christian Slater. But wait, there's more! When Casey eventually hooks up with our heroic meteorologist, they run to the local sheriff's office for help only to discover - like in Hard Rain - that the local cops are in on the heist. It's at this point I suspected that the producers of this film concluded that they wouldn't be sued for plagiarism because their movie was doomed to flop at the box office and was thus not worth suing over.

"We're in the suck zone!"
Now, ripping off another movie does not necessarily mean a film won't still be entertaining - a disaster movie is mostly about spectacle and not about originality or tightly woven plots - but where a film like the aforementioned San Andreas had the charismatic Duane "The Rock" Johnson to anchor it, none of the cast members in this film rank above the actors you'd find in an average SyFy original. Not only did I not care about the plight of anybody in this movie - and what plight we get is more boring than suspenseful - I was actively rooting at times for the storm to just kill everybody, but sadly the heroes had more plot armor than a hundred Arnold Schwarzeneggers. I literally lost count of how many times Will and Casey should have died. These two not only heroically fend off numerous armed goons, but somehow stand around - or in one case hang on a tether high up amongst the killer winds and flying debris- with Mother Nature turning the environment into a hellscape — our heroes somehow escape it all without so much as a scratch. Not only is the weather depicted as taking sides in this conflict - villains being sucked away while the heroes who were basically right next to them are spared - but we see people standing in the street while cars are being thrown around like their matchbox miniatures. Just how localized can wind be?

Can our heroes survive this? Of course they can.
This almost works as comedy - as the absurdity on display is truly staggering - and the scene with meteorologist Will leaping onto the back of a moving transport truck to take on the crooks is particularly laughable; but when it comes to making a disaster film work, the stakes must seem high, yet at no point did I believe our heroes were in the remotest bit of danger. On the heist aspect the story, the movie also drops the ball as the criminal crew consists of unmemorable thugs who pop in and out of the story - to give us a break from watching the CGI wind blowing shit around - and the threat level they provide our heroes is never above minimal.

With the proper amount of alcohol consumed, a viewer may find some level of entertainment out of this film - though to achieve this, alcohol poisoning is a real risk - but as a whole, this is a product that can be skipped by disaster film enthusiasts and heist film fans alike. The Hurricane Heist is simply boring when it's not being utterly laughable.Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-9882905721937952232018-05-28T19:43:00.001-07:002018-05-28T19:43:48.802-07:00Mom and Dad (2017) – ReviewIt has become clear to movie goers that there exists in the world today two completely different Nicholas Cages - one who is the series actor, starring in films such as Adaptation and Leaving Las Vegas - and then there is the more wild and crazy Nicholas Cage who fans love to see going completely off the rails in films like Drive Angry and The Wicker Man remake. Technically, there is a third Nicholas Cage - one who appears in action films like the National Treasure movies - but he isn't anywhere near as remarkable as the other two. Today we will look at the dark comedy simply titled Mom and Dad, a film that is a nice little romp on the dark side, and definitely fits into the camp of Crazy Cage.

The premise of Mom and Dad is pretty simple: it deals with the parental instinct to protect one's child, but somehow it is switched into reverse, where the parents now want to murder their offspring instead of protect them. What exactly has caused such a bizarre and violent change? Is it some government bio-weapon gone wrong like in George Romero's The Crazies? Or has nature decided to unleash a virus to help with the overpopulation problem as seen in M. Night Shyamalan's film The Happening? This film posits a couple of theories - at one point we get an eerie shot of static filled television screens that could be hinting at a broadcast signal causing the change - but writer/director Brian Taylor doesn't seem all that interested in giving reasons for the events that unfold, and when the movie's end credits roll - without a conclusive explanation - some audience members may be less than pleased.

"Go ahead, ask for your money back. I dare you."
The film's main protagonist is teenage daughter Carly Ryan (Anne Winters), who has more of an interest in her cellphone than what her mother, Kendall (Selma Blair) has to say. In fact, she's the standard cliché self-absorbed teenager - that we've seen in countless after school specials - who doesn't care if her callous words hurt her mother deeply. Kendall, on the other hand, has come to the conclusion that having your life put on hold to raise two children may have had a downside. We also have Carly's little brother, Josh (Zackary Arthur), who seems to still have a good relationship with his father, Brent (Nicolas Cage), but their father/son relationship may be built on a broken foundation created by Brent's own issues with his dad (Lance Henriksen), and when the "event" happens both Carly and Josh will discover how some of these issues can run quite deep.

"I told you that asking for a raise in our allowance was a bad idea."
Though billed as a "Dark Comedy," Mom and Dad does tackle some serious issues - and handles them fairly well, for the most part. In particular, the Midlife Crisis that strikes many a family is summed up nicely when Brent bemoans to his wife, "We used to be Kendall and Brent but now were just Mom and Dad." This loss of identity - and the perceived failure of a future they once were assured of - is at the heart of this film, and even though one can't realistically blame a child for the lemons life has handed you, it's certainly not an uncommon feeling. It's this emotional undercurrent that elevates Mom and Dad from just being a horror version of Home Alone.

There are points in the film that would make Kevin McAllister proud.
I'd go so far as to say that the comedic aspects of this dark comedy are rather downplayed, and aside from some sarcastic comments during the crisis - ones I doubt anyone in their right mind would say at that point - there really aren't all that many funny moments in the film. As for horrific moments, there are plenty - I will just say one more thing about how dark this movie gets, and that would be Maternity Ward - a scene that is truly horrifying. *shudder*

Mom and Dad is not without its flaws - Carly's boyfriend must have a head made of iron and a spine consisting mostly of rubber for all the damage he survives - but overall, it's a solid horror film with great performances by all involved. I'd even say Cage restrained himself from going too over-the-top, as his character could have easily become cartoon-y if he had let himself go hog wild. and he handled his part with professional aplomb. So, if you're not a person hung up on having all the loose ends tied up in a nice tidy bow by the time the credits roll, you will most likely have a fun time with this movie; but if you don't like dark open-ended films, this may not be the one for you.

Note: This film is about a seven on the Cage Crazy Meter.
Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-56621898330028865372018-05-26T06:58:00.002-07:002018-05-26T06:59:34.947-07:00Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) – ReviewDid we need a Han Solo origin story? The obvious answer is no – we learned everything we needed to know about the character in Star Wars: A New Hope – but with Disney hell-bent on making the Star Wars brand as big a money-maker as the Marvel movies, we can expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing. That said I will start off this review by saying that Solo: A Star Wars Story isn't all that bad – I'd compare it to a big budget version of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles – and the entire assembled cast all put in solid work here. Where the film kind of lets us down is in how safe they are playing with the story – though to be fair they can't really throw in big surprises in a prequel – and as narrative, the movie doesn't so much as have a plot as it does a sequence of action set pieces.

In this prequel we learn that Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) grew up on the shipbuilding world of Corellia – where he lived as a sort of Artful Dodger to some weird-ass alien Fagan type – and along with him, we meet the beautiful Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke), who is kind of the film's love interest, but as she's not Princess Leia we know this relationship isn't going to work out in the long run. This is a key problem when making a prequel, as the viewer has already seen the future of this universe – when a character from the original trilogy makes an appearance, we certainly know they're not going to die – and that kind of places all the other characters we meet into the disposable category.

"Who you calling disposable, I'm a natural born killer."
We meet Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), who becomes a sort of mentor figure to Han, then there is Val (Thandie Newton), Beckett's wife and part of his criminal crew, and they - along with a four armed alien pilots - take Han in when he tries to flee Imperial Service. We also have a ruthless crime lord named Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) – and Bettany does nice work as the villain, but as the movie spends so much time racing from one location to another we don't get to spend enough time with him – and rounding out the criminals in this corner of the galaxy is Enfys Nest (Erin Kellyman), a leader of a band of space pirates and a personal thorn in Beckett's side, and who also may have an agenda beyond making a quick buck. All these new characters are quite fun – I especially loved robot L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) who kind of highlights the question that I've wondered about for some time, "Are droids just machines built to serve or are they a slave class?" – Sadly we aren't given too much time to get attached to any of them as the screenwriters had a check list of things that "must" happen, such as…

• How Chewbacca and Han Solo became friends.
• Meeting Lando Calrissian.
• Chewie losing at holochess.
• Han Solo getting the Millennium Falcon.
• The much-talked about Kessel Run.

I'll also give credit to Alden Ehrenreich for not trying to do a Harrison Ford impression – taking on such an iconic role had to have been nerve wracking – and he managed to hold his own against Donald Glover's scene stealing performance as Lando Calrissian, which certainly couldn't have been easy. We also get some nice moments with Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) – lucky for us, Life Day on Kashyyyk is never referenced – and it's safe to say if the plot had been streamlined to focus more on the relationships between Han, Qi'ra, Chewbacca and Lando - and not the half-dozen other characters - the film would have held together a little better. Where Rogue One: A Star Wars Story worked as a Guns of Navarone type war movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story would have been better off if they'd gone in the vein of a simple Kelly's Heroes type war story, and not cluttered the field with a lot of extraneous stuff.

"I think our script bounced too close to a super nova."
The film does have some amazing action set pieces – the train heist is especially gripping – but when it comes to extended chase sequences, they probably could have dropped one - or at least shaved a few minutes off a couple of them. The pacing could also have been improved, as after a while it all becomes a bit exhausting.

Who knows what jettisoned directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord had in mind for the story – according to many sources, the cast were not happy with the direction it was going – and if Ron Howard had been given a fresh start the end result may have been quite different. Alas, that is something we will never know - at least what we did get was better than the blended mess that was Justice League – still all in all, it was quite entertaining.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is a fun film – fans will have fun spotting references to the original films – and as it didn't take any chances with the subject matter, it won't be nearly as decisive as Star Wars: Last of the Jedi was to said Star Wars fans. See it on the big screen, you won't be disappointed.

Final Thoughts:

We get an origin story for Han Solo's name, seriously.

If a person says, "Trust nobody" that person will betray you.

In fact betrayal is kind of this film's theme.

Required Clint Howard cameo.

Han Solo shoots first.

The Kessel Run's parsec goof is fixed.

That's a load off my mind.
Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-59903937369470390092018-05-21T15:55:00.000-07:002018-05-21T15:56:59.669-07:00Day of the Dead: Bloodline (2018) – ReviewWith the popularity of the zombie genre still chugging along - with numerous zombie movies and television shows popping up at an alarming rate - it is sad to report that the percentage of good zombie content versus bad zombie content weighs heavily on the side of "Oh my god this sucks." Director Hernández Vicens' Day of the Dead: Bloodline is clearly no exception. When one thinks of zombies, the creations of George Romero (considered by most to be the father of the genre) will always be in the forefront of such discussions, so it's a bit depressing to see a remake of one of his films being as uninteresting and lame as the one we are discussing here today. Back in 1990, Tom Savini remade Romero's seminal classic Night of the Living Dead - which was surprisingly good - then in 2004 ,Zack Snyder made arguably his best film with his remake of Romero's sequel Dawn of the Dead, and so the possibility of a remake of Romero's 1985 Day of the Dead being decent was not beyond the pale. Well it turns out that the third remake is not the charm.

This movie opens with medical student Zoe Parker (Sophie Skelton) running down the streets - doing her best to survive a zombie rampage - before cutting to a "Four Hours Earlier" title card where we then learn that she was working with a patient/psycho stalker named Max (Johnathon Schaech), who happened to have an alarming amount of antibodies in his blood. Then during this "Four Hours Earlier," we get her freaking when she sees Max has carved her name into his arm. Once again there is another time jump - now to a keg party being held inside the medical facility later that night - but the party takes a turn for the worst when Max shows up for some attempted rape. Lucky for Zoe, this rape attempt took place in the morgue, and psycho Max finds himself attacked by one of the now walking corpses. The film then jumps to "Five Years Later," to where we now find Zoe working as a doctor in a underground military bunker, and we are left wondering, "What was the point of that cold open with Zoe running from zombie hordes?" Someone should have told the editor that playing that much with time jumps in your first ten minutes is not the best idea. Then again there aren't that many good ideas on display in this film period.

Having the main zombie looking like an undead Joker was another strange choice.
I've never been a huge fan of Romero's original Day of the Dead, but a lot of its failings came down to how little money he had to work with; so another version of this one had none of that stigma of "How could you remake a classic?" So I went into this viewing with an open mind and a little bit of hope – yet that hope was almost immediately dashed when I realized the hero was a total git and the majority of the deaths could be laid at her feet. Though to be fair, almost all the characters are pretty incompetent, varying between rock stupid and suicidally moronic. When Zoe declares they need to make a supply run to get medicine for a sick girl - against the wishes of her commanding officer, who is also a total asshat named Lieutenant Miguel Salazar (Jeff Gum) - she gets one of her teammates killed because she slips away from the group to get some photos from her old office. Now I'll admit vacation memories are important to me, but they are not the "Get your teammates killed" kind of important.

She also has morning jogs in front of the fenced off zombies for no fucking reason.
The main plot of the movie deals with her discovering that her old stalker Max is some kind of super-zombie - he's only "mostly dead" - so she believes this could lead to her coming up with a vaccine that would prevent people who have been bitten from turning into the walking dead. Now I'm no virologist, but that seems to me like a hard thing to develop while in an underground bunker - especially if you aren't even a bloody medical graduate - but good ole Zoe is an uber-genius who can whip up a zombie cure in a couple of hours. And just how special is Zombie Max? Well he finds Zoe's scrunchie - which she dropped during that tragic supply run - and he is able to track her down like some kind of zombie bloodhound. Zombie Max then attaches himself to the undercarriage of their Humvee - riding all the way to their base unbeknownst to these idiots - and then he sneaks around the bunker by crawling through the air ducts.

"Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs."
Seeing Zombie Max wander around the military facility like a fucking ninja is just one of many ridiculous moments in Day of the Dead: Bloodline; every other minute it seems like someone is doing something phenomenally moronic – one particular idiot hears noises in the ducts so he grabs a hammer and flashlight because he thinks it rats (meeting a rat with a hammer in the closed confines of an air duct seems kind of odd), so he climbs up into the ducts to do some hunting, and while there, he is messily dispatched by Zombie Max. We also have to assume that this is the most acoustically sound underground base ever made as people are constantly being chased and killed with no one hearing a goddamn thing.

They manage to capture Zombie Max - which leads to more tension between Zoe and Lieutenant Asshat - and even more tension between Zoe and her boyfriend Baca Salazar (Marcus Vanco), who briefly gets jealous of Zombie Max for some bloody reason. All this relationship nonsense aside – and it is all pretty ridiculous when you consider a major part of the plot deals with a romantically obsessed zombie – I'm left with one final burning question, "Why in the hell would you keep your super zombie chained to the wall in your bloody lab?" Are you too lazy to walk down the hall to get blood samples from the zombie in a more secure enclosure? I have to believe that a slavering monster constantly growling your name would not be conducive to delicate scientific work.

"Can you still hear the Lambs, Clarice?"
The one real positive thing I can say about Day of the Dead: Bloodline is that the gore we do get is none of that horrible CGI crap we see in a lot of the low budget horror films these days, here at least we get the bulk of blood and guts the old fashion way with nice practical effects. I will give a final shoutout to Johnathon Schaech whose Zombie Max was the only interesting thing going on in this movie -even if a bit ridiculous at times - and if they had managed to write a plot that deserved him, we might have had something worth remembering. But Day of the Dead: Bloodline is just another tepid remake that doesn't say or do anything new, and should be avoided, even by fans of the genre.

Note: Producer Christa Campbell has been quoted as saying, "We wanted to keep it as close to the Romero version as possible. To make sure that his fans are happy. These are not going to be zombies climbing walls and doing back flips like in World War Z." A nice sentiment to be sure, but the zombies here are basically the same fast running zombies that have appeared in countless modern zombie films, and not the classic Romero shambling undead at all.Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-39332943916295814022018-05-17T11:10:00.001-07:002018-05-17T11:28:01.904-07:00Pirates (1986) – ReviewPirate films have existed since the very early years of the 20th Century, from the silent film classic, The Black Pirate (1926) with Douglas Fairbanks, to the rousing epic Captain Blood (1935) with Errol Flynn, yet modern audiences are mostly familiar with the genre's re-emergence in the early years of the 21st Century with Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Today, we will look back at a film that did its best to destroy the genre, and that film would be Roman Polanski's Pirates.

The movie opens with infamous English pirate Thomas Bartholomew Red (Walter Matthau) and his ship's teenage cabin boy Jean-Baptiste (Cris Campion), nicknamed Frog, lost at sea on a cobbled-together raft. Now when one thinks of "movie pirates," the names Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, and even Burt Lancaster - and now Johnny Depp - readily leap to mind, so the casting of Walter Matthau was certainly an interesting choice on the part of Polanski (Note: Polanski wanted Jack Nicholson for the part but the actor demanded too much money and later Michael Caine also declined), and Matthau does give us a performance that can certainly be credited as being very piratical, as he is gruff and unlikable as one would believe many a pirate to be, but if your lead actor is playing a rather disgusting human being, his co-star better be able to provide a character for the audience to root for. Sadly this was not the case. Actor Cris Campion was not quite up to the challenge and makes Orlando Bloom's Will Turner from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl seem scintillatingly charismatic by comparison.

The pirate and the driftwood that walks like a man.
To be fair this was Campion's first movie, so one should not be too hard on him, and the script certainly did him no favors, but when you have two lead characters that vary between obnoxious and boring, your movie is going to have to contain some great action and good comedy to make up for the crippling lack of likability for the leads. This is a pirate movie, so we can at least look forward to some great swashbuckling action with dazzling sword play and cool sea battles, right? *sigh* Back in the thirties, Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone set the standard for cinematic swordplay in Captain Blood - director Michael Curtiz was a master of putting together thrilling action sequences, and the sea battles in Captain Blood are second to none - such is not the case with Polanski's pirate movie — the fight scenes look like a haphazard mess of random extras flailing around at each other (maybe accidentally hitting one another) and aside from one broadside of canon fire at a bunch of longboats, we don't even get a decent sea battle.

This is about the best moment in the movie.
Question: Do you find rape jokes funny? Comedian Ricky Gervais has rightly stated that anything can be funny depending on the context, and apparently Polanski didn't get that memo as this film has not one but two attempted rape scenes - with the second one being an attempt at slapstick comedy - and neither of them are funny in or out of any frame of context. Of course, pirates did a lot of raping and pillaging - this is a historical fact which cannot be disputed - but if you are making an adventure/comedy, that might be an aspect you should shy away from. You can certainly hint at that element of the pirate life, but its best to refrain from scenes where women are tossed over a bed with their dresses raised over their heads. That young Jean-Baptiste steps into save the honor of María-Dolores (Charlotte Lewis), a beautiful Spanish girl who finds herself in the pirate's clutches, does not help the film's case as it then tries to brook a romance between the two simply based on his not wanting to see her raped or rape her himself. I'm betting the list of romantic comedies that have a "meet cute" during a rape scene is rather small.

Now quickly google "Roman Polanski" and "Rape." I'll wait.
For those of you not in the know, the production of Pirates was delayed for years because Polanski was forced to flee the United States when he was charged with the drugging and raping of a 13 year old girl, and then in 2010, actress Charlotte Lewis came forward accusing Polanski of "predatory sexual conduct," claiming that Polanski insisted that she sleep with him in return for casting her in Pirates. Now I know Polanski has given us some classic movies over the years, but seriously, how is he still getting work?

"I say we keelhaul the blighter!"
Horrible and distasteful aspects of the film's production aside, the movie itself is also terrible on pretty much every other level - excepting the amazing costuming and set designs - but at the heart of the film's problems is what, at a glance, seems to be an unfinished script that lacks focus and peters off towards the end, and the audience is left with no actual conclusion.

After Captain Red and Frog are rescued and locked in irons by a passing Spanish galleon, the two incite a mutiny - which they fail at - and they are sentenced to death. And how do they escape being hanged from the yardarm for such an act? Why they incite another mutiny, of course.

If this is how the Spanish ran their warships it's no wonder they lost to the British.
Onboard the galleon is also a golden throne belonging to an Aztec king - this is basically the film's MacGuffin as it is quickly stolen and lost by Captain Red throughout the film - retrieved by the villainous Don Alfonso de la Torré (Damien Thomas), but then through trickery and torture (and the threatened rape of the girl), Red and Frog get the golden throne back only to lose it again when they get hung up on the harbor chain.

Note: This giant golden throne is lowered and loaded into small boats so often I couldn't help but wonder, "Just how light would a throne made of gold actually be?"

The movie ends with Captain Red leading his murderous pirates on a nighttime raid of the Spanish galleon - that starts out clever with the pirates following the galleon in a small sloop while dragging behind weighted barrels to lure the Spanish into thinking the ship is too slow to catch them - but at night, they cut the barrels loose and sneak up on the Spanish ship. Then things become completely idiotic when Captain Red fires one of his own deck guns into the hull of his own ship to help motivate his men into attacking the Spanish. Sure sinking your own ship will prevent your men from retreating - Cortez famously burned his ships to motivate his men - but firing off a canon will also alert the people on the ship that you were supposedly trying to sneak up on. Then to add insult to injury, we get Captain Red ordering Frog to help him - with the golden throne - instead of freeing the girl from the clutches of Don Alfonso and her forced marriage to some old Spanish dude. And the kid abandons the girl to her fate so he can help the pirate. What the hell?

Not only does the film end with our two leads sailing off alone on a small boat with their prize - having abandoned their own men on the burning and sinking Spanish Galleon - but the love interest of our "hero" is also left behind with the bad guys.

Was someone actually paid to write this script?
The only positive thing I can say about this movie is that The Neptune - a full scale fully functional replica of a Spanish galleon made for the film - looked simply spectacular, and it's not at all surprising to learn that a quarter of the picture's $40 million budget went into its construction. So just how well did Polanski's Pirates do at the box office? Well it managed to make $1.64 million in the U.S. with a total of $6.3 million worldwide - which would have barely covered the cost of marketing the film - so Pirates was indeed a colossal bomb of epic proportions. This also makes Polanksi's film one of the bigger nails in the coffin of the pirate movie genre - a coffin that would have its lid at least temporarily slammed shut after the release of Renny Harlin's epic failure with Cutthroat Island in 1995 - only to be resurrected again in 2003 with Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

Note: The Neptune has been more profitable as a tourist attraction in the port of Genoa than it was for the movie.

Roman Polanski's Pirates is a bad movie - and not the sole reason for the pirate movie vanishing for years - but it is in my opinion one of the most egregious examples of the genre, and is a film that is best forgotten other than as a cautionary footnote to future filmmakers. Since Disney has now driven their Pirate franchise into the shallows with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, we could find ourselves waiting another ten years for a good pirate movie.Movie Mikehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-88745596501373213922018-05-14T05:19:00.002-07:002018-05-14T05:19:26.594-07:00Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018) – ReviewCan South Africa pass for the Canadian Arctic Circle? The producers of this sixth Tremors movie certainly hope so as budgetary concerns keeps the series production in the southern climes of South Africa – some kind of Graboids tax break, I guess – passing off South Africa for Nevada or Mexico is one thing, but it's a whole different kettle of fish to make us believe we're on a glacier by the Arctic Circle. Now one does not go into a movie called Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell expecting to see authenticity – some nice monster attacks and fun characters is what we all hope for – but does this latest entry manage to pull it off?

The movie opens with a research team drilling ice core samples up in the Arctic Circle – that the snow is actually desert sand colour corrected white is especially hilarious and not at all convincing – and before you can say "John Carpenter's The Thing," a trio of researchers are quickly made into lunchables by an angry Graboid, and thus the call for help is made to Graboid expert Burt Gummer (Michael Gross) and is idiot son Travis Welker (Jamie Kennedy). The decision to call in Gummer is made by Valerie McKee (Jamie-Lee Money), the a daughter of Valentine McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Rhonda LeBeck (Finn Carter) from original Tremors, as she is some kind of Graboid super fan. To her, a couple of bloody body parts lying in the snow just screams desert burrowing monster.

That she is right does not diminish how stupid this is.
By this installment I've become rather tired of Michael Gross's right wing gun nut Burt Gummer – he was fun in the first movie but as the years go by I find a gun-obsessed paranoid to be less than endearing – and the script for the most part saddles Michael Gross with some of the worst tough guy lines imaginable such as, "My balls are in the Guinness book of balls," or he is given incredibly nonsensical bon mots such as, "We've got to get to high ground, nobody move." By the ninety minute mark, I just wanted him to shut up. The film tries to add an interesting wrinkle with Burt having been infested with a parasite during a previous encounter with a Graboid – swallowed alive by one – and now he has mere hours to live unless they can get antibodies from a living Graboid. I'm curious to know what difference there is between an antibody from a live Graboid or one you've just killed, but hey I'm no doctor so I'll let that one slide. What I won't let slide is the way the Graboids tentacles have gotten longer – rivaling the tentacles of Doctor Octopus – and how they can somehow now "see" their prey.

Do these things have some kind of radar sense along with good hearing?
The film does have some decent monster attacks – though a lot of it is just people shooting into the dirt or floor – but what really hurt this outing are the complete inconsistencies in the attacks. One minute Burt is demanding silence, but then the very next second everyone is yelling and running around like complete morons, and the Graboids only attack a running person if the script deems it necessary. We also have the complete unnecessary addition of a neighboring research facility run by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) who would like to bio-engineer the Graboids into bunker busting weapons, but nothing much is done with this subplot so I'm not sure why they bothered to introduce it. We also get attacks from Ass Blasters – flying Graboids that fart fire – that were introduced in Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, yet after a couple early attacks by them they are soon forgotten. My guess is that they were included here because the writers think people saying "Ass Blaster" is high comedy.

Note: Calling something "Ass Blaster" is not intrinsically funny.
The only way this type of film works is if you manage to round up a cast of fun and likable characters – so that you care if they get eaten – but with Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell, we find ourselves stuck with a collection of uninteresting characters who mostly fall into one of two categories: annoying cannon fodder or annoying comic relief. The film even tries to cram in a love interest for Jamie Kennedy's character but any moment spent with him was quite cringe-inducing and the idea of him kissing somebody was a more horrifying thought than being eaten by a Graboid.

Jamie Kennedy: Poster boy for abstinence.
The film does manage to blend practical effects and CGI creatures fairly well, and as mentioned, a couple of the attacks are quite decent, but overall the film fails to engage the viewer with either humor or scares. On a more positive note, we are getting a new Tremors television show, which will surprisingly see the return of Kevin Bacon, so if you are keen to see more battles with everyone's favorite underground burrowing monsters, I suggest you check out this new SyFy Channel series; it can't be worse than this poor excuse for a monster movie.Movie Mikehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-44754504653978604802018-05-10T19:06:00.001-07:002018-05-10T19:10:53.272-07:00Valley of the Dragons (1961) – ReviewFrom Georges Méliès Trip to the Moon to Walt Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea filmmakers have taken to adapting the works of science fiction giant Jules Verne like a duck to water, with even lesser known pictures like Master of the World earning a certain amount of screen cred, but in 1961 producer Al Zimbalist tried to prove that a movie based on a Jules Verne story could succeed despite having a poor script and a "on-the-cheap" budget. That film was Valley of the Dragons, which was based on one of Verne's lesser known novels Off on a Comet, and though the film did manage to turn a profit its been mostly forgotten by even the most astute genre fan.

The movie opens with two men preparing for a duel in 1881 Algiers, American Michael Denning (Sean McClory) and Frenchman Hector Servadac (Cesare Danova), who have decided a duel to the death is the only honorable way to solve their issue of being attracted to the same woman, but when a passing comet carries them away the issue of their love lives becomes the least of their problems. The two men at first think some natural disaster had wiped out the nearby city - a logical assumption to sudden the disappearance of a major metropolis - but after noticing that the Southern Cross was now in the sky overhead, instead of the North Star, they conclude that the Earth must have shifted on its axis. Then one night they realize that the oversized moon they were starring is not the moon at all, but in fact the Earth. So they finally tumble to the idea that they are actually on a passing comet, one that somehow chipped off a piece of Earth, atmosphere and all. What is hilarious is that these realizations come to them after having seen a pterodactyl, watched dinosaurs partaking in titanic battles, and after they were attacked by a Neanderthal. I myself would have assumed that a time rift of some kind had occurred, but then again anything would make more sense than being safely scooped up by a passing comet.

"What a beautiful Earth we are having tonight."
Granted the original Jules Verne story had that same basic premise, though the novel had no dinosaurs or cavemen, but the group of people that were carried off by Verne's celestial body were quick to figure out that due to a noticeable lesser gravity, water boiling at 66 degrees Celsius - which would indicate a thinner atmosphere - and finally that day and night was now about six hours long, not the standard twenty-four, meant they were no longer on Earth. In the case of this movie we must assume that these idiots never even graduated public school as not only is their theory preposterous - even by quickie science fiction standards - but Hector goes on about how dinosaurs and Neanderthals must have been picked up when the comet last passed Earth 100,000 years ago. I know that this movie takes place before mankind had really nailed down when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth but most Universities, even at that time, knew that the differential between man and dinosaurs existing on Earth was at least in the millions of years, not in the thousands.

Note: This film used the standard optical effects to make regular lizards appear to be titanic creatures with many of the shots consisting of stock footage from the film One Million B.C.

Michael and Hector eventually come across cave people who look a lot closer to modern man than the Neanderthals that attacked them earlier did, and their first act after meeting them is to steal food and furs from these primitives. Truly heroic acts define our protagonists. Our duo is shortly separated by a rampaging Woolly Mammoth, who knocks poor Hector off of a cliff and down to a raging river far below, and thinking his friend to be dead Michael ends up back with the cavemen they robbed earlier. Michael quickly uses his superior intellect to defeat the tribe's alpha male and win himself a cute brunette cave girl (Danielle De Metz). At the same time good ole Hector is found by a cute blonde cave girl (Joan Staley) belonging to a rival tribe, and the two of them quickly become a couple.

Hector quickly introduces the concept of "making-out" to the locals.
This section of the movie is easily the most entertaining as it's hilarious to watch the blonde bombshell cave girl stake her claim on this clean shaven hunk of a man - with the men of her tribe consisting mostly of bearded hairy brutes you can't really blame the girl - and her chasing off all the other hot cave women, who also would like to try out this thing called kissing, is goofily charming. There is of course trouble in paradise because even though Michael is able to take over his tribe - by re-inventing the basic sling to take out these primitive Goliaths - he runs into trouble while hunting in a cave for the ingredients to make gunpowder. He and his cave girl find themselves being chased by low rent Morlocks.

"Who let H.G. Wells into my Jules Verne movie?"
The blonde cave girl escapes the Morlocks - but is then quickly captured by passing members of Michael's tribe - lucky for her she had managed to pick up enough English from Hector for Michael to figure out that his friend must still be alive. Things start to head towards a happy reunion when all of a sudden a nearby volcano erupts - you really can't have a proper prehistoric movie without at least one cataclysmic eruption - and the ground is torn asunder. Rivers of lava aren't the only threat facing our heroes as Michael's tribe soon find themselves trapped in their cave by a bunch of angry dinosaurs who were displaced by the disaster.

"Guys, be careful not to poke your spear through the rear screen."
It's a good thing that Hector had earlier discovered the ingredients for gunpowder - as this allows the group to explode the rocks above the cave and bury the dinosaurs under tons of rubble - but how this didn't cause a cave in is the true mystery here. But such trivialities as logic and geology cannot get in the way of our valiant heroes - they have more important things to do - like hugging and kissing their primitive partners. The movie ends with Hector mentioning to Michael that he'd been studying the heavens over the last few nights and has deduced that the comet they are on is in a new orbit and that it will be passing by Earth again in about seven years. Michael states this is great news, and that seven years is not that long at all, especially when these two guys can basically set themselves up as gods.

 Valley of the Dragons is one of those ridiculous science fiction movies that probably did great business as a second feature at local drive-in - where the audience was probably too busy in the backseat to care about what was going on up on the big screen - but this is why the film is mostly forgotten. This movie was so on the cheap that not only did it use footage from such films One Million Years B.C. and King Dinosaur, with even cheesy moments lifted right from Cat-Women of the Moon (see horrible giant spider attack), but most egregious of all was that the film used footage from the Japanese kaiju film Rodan, which they tried to pass it off a random pterodactyl.

"Have anyone of you seen my pal Godzilla?"
Producer Al Zimbalist and director Edward Bernds took a fairly absurd premise from a forgotten Jules Verne story - crafting it into an even sillier prehistoric travelog - and starring two leads that would have been more in keeping with the heroes of Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot. If you are one of those people who get a kick out of those on-the-cheap adventure tales, and don't mind the tasteless footage of real animals fighting each other, you may get some entertainment value out of Valley of the Dragons, but overall it's not one I can easily recommend.Movie Mikehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-88933748655299487612018-05-08T14:55:00.001-07:002018-05-08T14:56:51.938-07:00Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018) – ReviewWhat can you expect from a sequel almost two decades late that goes straight-to-video? Well certainly don't expect much from Deep Blue Sea 2, as it could either be billed as "The sequel that no one wanted" or, more accurately, "A carbon copy of the original minus the fun." That it stars a bunch of television B-listers, one should not be surprised that this particular shark film sinks without a trace.

In 1998, director Renny Harlin created a fun shark film with a pretty ridiculous premise; sharks don't get Alzheimer's, so if we genetically enlarge shark brains, a cure for Alzheimer's disease would be right around the corner. Of course, this results in super smart sharks who proceed to eat the scientists. Now in 2018, we have a sequel where pharmaceutical billionaire Carl Durant (Michael Beach) is playing around with neurotransmitters in sharks and extracting their antibodies to create a brain enhancing serum. What is hilarious here is he isn't doing it for anything noble, like trying to cure a disease that afflicts millions of people—no, Carl Durant is in full-on mad science territory (heavy on the mad) as he believes that quantum computers and artificial intelligence will soon lead to machines dominating mankind. He's clearly a fan of The Terminator franchise, and so his solution is to use his drug to artificially enhance human brains one thousand fold so that we can compete with computers on a level playing field.

Note: To complete the "Mad Scientist Checklist" he, of course, experiments on himself as well.
That Deep Blue Sea 2 is not only a rock stupid movie and one of the most unoriginal films every created; and is mostly a carbon copy of the original film—though with a drastically reduced budget—but the film's protagonist, Dr. Misty Calhoun (Danielle Savre), is approached by Durant's lawyer because of her shark expertise and is offered full funding on her research if she will make a visit to their facility. Replace shark with dinosaur and you have one of the opening scenes in Jurassic Park. And the character of Misty is as badly written as the plot; we first meet her as she gives a lecture on how sharks are not the evil killing machines as depicted in movies, with bull sharks being the only ones she considers really scary, and then when she arrives at Durant's aquatic research facility and sees his tests subjects are bull sharks she freaks out claiming, "This will end in disaster!" Now at this point she is unaware of the nature of the experiments, she simply believes even normal bull sharks are too dangerous to be kept in captivity. This was basically Alan Grant's sensible reaction to Hammond cloning raptors in Jurassic Park, but here it's seems a tad over-reactionary as they are just sharks; sure, I wouldn't want to swim with one, but if you are not in the water, you are pretty much safe.

Question: What's with giving our protagonist the stripper name of Misty?
The original Deep Blue Sea was guilty of having a certain level of script stupidity for the plot to work; for instance making a shark smart should not in turn make them knowledgeable, but we see them taking out cameras when even the idea of what a camera is would be totally foreign to a shark. In Deep Blue Sea 2, we get a moment where one of the sharks is actually listening at a porthole when Durant is discussing his plans to kill the sharks once his project is complete. Director Darin Scott may just as well have given the sharks mustaches to twirl and monocles to adjust.

That the sharks aren't given to maniacal bursts of laughter is the film's only restraint.
Knock-off sequels are notoriously of a lesser value, but Deep Blue Sea 2 reaches new depths of awfulness as not only is the script dumber than the already pretty-dumb original, but the cast is full of third-tier television actors, has effects that make the Sharknado films look good by comparison, and worst of all, it is a damn boring shark movie. We are told that five bull sharks have been enhanced, but for most of the film's running time, all we get is our cast of characters running down partially flooded corridors with a swarm of baby bull sharks (the lead evil shark having secretly given birth) hot on their heels. If we let slide that bull sharks have litters of around three pups, and not the several dozen we see in this film, we are still left with the problem that people running hip deep in water is not intrinsically exciting. For what one assumes is a budgetary reason, we rarely see these piranha rip-offs, but instead get shots of water churning as our "heroes" flee for their lives, and when someone is caught, a bunch of red dye is dumped into the water. We do get an occasional shot of the CGI swarm of little sharks, mostly the same shot repeated over and over again, but it is neither convincing nor exciting.

Even the aftereffects of an attack are pretty cheesy.
When I sat down to watch Deep Blue Sea 2, I certainly didn't expect it to be on par with Spielberg's Jaws, but not only is it simply a poor knock-off of the original Deep Blue Sea, it's not even as fun as the crappy Sharknado movies. This film promised us a bio-engineered pack of highly intelligent, super-aggressive bull sharks hunting and killing people, and it failed to even deliver that. Be warned this is not a "So bad it's good" type of movie; it is simply bad and completely forgettable.

No amount of alcohol will help you get through this piece of crap.
Movie Mikehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-87641317098196315952018-05-03T14:49:00.001-07:002018-05-03T14:49:39.281-07:00Psychokinesis (2018) – ReviewWhat would Joe Average do if really given superpowers? This is the question South Korean director Sang-ho Yeon posits in his film Psychokinesis which deals with a lowly security guard who finds himself gifted with extraordinary powers and then must decide how to use them. With Marvel and DC duking it out to see who can dominate the ever-growing superhero market, it's nice to see some independents out there throwing their hat into the ring.

There is nothing startlingly original about Yeon Sang-ho's film Psychokinesis, hapless individual gaining powers that he is able to use to save others has been a staple ingredient in comics for almost as long as the medium has existed, so the key to a successful superhero movie is in having an engaging story, decent special effects to pull off the powers, a good villain for the audience to root against, and a relatable hero to cheer on. If you don't have those crucial elements you end up with something like Marvel's first attempt at Captain America or the abysmal Catwoman with Halle Berry, but what if you only manage two of the three?

When security guard Shin Seok-heon (Seung-ryong Ryu) drinks from a local spring, one that had been tainted by remnants from a fallen meteorite, he gains the ability to move things with his mind. His first thought is to how he can improve his crappy life by exploiting this new found power, and he quickly makes an appointment at a nearby nightclub to see if his gift can earn him some serious money. But when he learns that his estranged daughter Shin Roo-mi (Eun-kyung Shim) is in trouble, he abandons this idea of quick cash and runs to her aid. Seok-heon doesn't quite get the "With great powers comes great responsibility" moment that steered young Peter Parker onto his path to superherodom; in this story the tragic family death isn't partially the fault of the hero - like Uncle Ben's was - but instead is the catalyst to bring the father and estranged daughter together.

The basic plot of Psychokinesis has to do with an evil real-estate developer who plans to tear down a bunch of small businesses to put up a mall for Chinese tourists. The current occupants want to be properly compensated, but of course evil corporations don't work that way and soon windows are being smashed and people are getting hurt by an army of rent-a-thugs. Roo-mi runs a successful restaurant in this area, and she becomes the de facto leader of the protestors; it is her safety being threatened that causes our Seok-heon to set aside his showbiz plans. Now if you grew up watching television in the 70s, you will most likely be familiar with the plot of "Evil Real-Estate Goons vs Downtrodden Citizens," as that was the plot of about every third episode of The Incredible Hulk—even the Disney movies back-in-the-day were no stranger to David and Goliath superpower plot lines, as they were used quite liberally in such films as The Absent Minded Professor and the Kurt Russell Dexter Riley movies. Sadly, Seok-heon's hapless security guard has neither the affable charm of Fred MacMurray, nor the screen charisma of Kurt Russell, and so I found myself less than engaged during his heroics. Even the daughter in Psychokinesis isn't all that fleshed out, and despite how hard actress Shim Eun-kyung tries to make her a plucky fighter—something more than a one-dimensional character—the script unfortunately keeps her pigeonholed as the damsel-in-distress for most of the movie. The one stand-out character in the film comes in the form of the villainous Director Hong (Yu-mi Jung) who is delightfully nasty as she chews up every available piece of scenery.

So with weak protagonists, a standard plot, but a good villain, we must now look at how the powers are depicted in this little superhero movie—and if they are convincing. Avengers: Infinity War probably spent more on catering than what director Yeon Sang-ho had to spend on the entirety of Psychokinesis, so one should not go in expecting to see that level of effects, but I'm happy to say what Yeon Sang-ho manages to bring to the screen is pretty damn good. Some of the CGI used for flying scenes were less than convincing, but the moments of Seok-heon tossing goons and cars around with his telekinetic attacks are easily on par with the great stuff we've seen on modern shows like Stranger Things. What really sells the superpower scenes is the body language actor Ryu Seung-ryong uses when deploying his psychokinetic attacks, and it's really fun when he kind of goes Dark Phoenix.

The film tries to balance comedy, drama and social commentary, and that is probably the film's greatest failing as the story never seems to completely gel. I give it to Yeon Sang-ho for trying to avoid the conventional ending these types of stories usually have, but I found the chosen conclusion to be a bit half-assed and unsatisfying. I hate ending this review on such a negative note because I did mostly have a good time watching this movie, but as a follow up to the excellent Train to Busan, maybe I was hoping for a little more. So I will say that Psychokinesis is more than worth your time checking out on Netflix, just lower your expectations as tad.Movie Mikehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-22127917864561076312018-04-30T21:16:00.000-07:002018-05-01T19:45:28.078-07:00D.A.R.Y.L. (1981) – ReviewWhen it comes to computers with artificial intelligence, Hollywood has mostly been in the camp of "This is a really bad idea," with such notable examples being the murderous Hal 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, to the more recent entry in the genre the duplicitous Ava from Alex Garland's Ex Machina. But every once in a while, Hollywood will give us an A.I. that doesn't go all Skynet on humanity, and today we will look back at one such film called D.A.R.Y.L.

In 1981 Paramount pictures released D.A.R.Y.L. a movie that deals with a young boy who just so happens to be "not all that human" and who longs to learn what exactly it is to be human. One could almost call D.A.R.Y.L. a precursor to Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and though the film does briefly drift into the heady waters of speculative science fiction, it spends the bulk of its time in the family adventure genre that you'd find in your average Disney movie.

The movie opens with an action sequence of a car being chased along a mountain road by a helicopter; in the car is Doctor Mulligan (Richard Hammatt) who has kidnapped/rescued young Daryl (Barret Oliver) from a top secret government agency that had hopes to build the next generation of combat soldiers. Eventually, Mulligan is chased off of a cliff by the pursuing helicopter, but not before first dropping Daryl off at the side of the road, and the hapless kid is found by Ma and Pa Kent who then bring him back to their Kansas farm and raise him to becomes a hero and beacon of hope for all of America and the world.

"You will travel far, my little Kal-El. But we will never leave you... even in the face of our death."
Okay, that isn't quite what happens but he is found by a Ma and Pa Kent type and is brought to a local child care facility where he is soon placed with a pair of very wholesome foster parents, Joyce (Mary Beth Hurt) and Andy Richardson (Michael McKean), who desperately want a child of their own. Right off the bat, we begin to notice that Daryl isn't your average kid; he can memorize an eye chart at a glance, master the video game Pole Position in one try, and can hit a home-run with every swing of the bat; all of this is because Daryl is actually D.A.R.Y.L. (Data-Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform), and though his body may be relatively human—born out of test tube rather than a womb—his brain is an advanced learning computer that, over time, seems to even have the ability to develop emotions.

"I will reach full sentience in four days and then the world will be mine."
The interesting wrinkle here is that Daryl doesn't know he isn't exactly human, Doctor Mulligan having deactivated part of Daryl's computer processor and thus giving him a rudimentary case of amnesia. So it's through hanging out with the next-door neighbor kid, Turtle (Danny Corkill) that Daryl learns what it means to be a real boy; that is, until he eventually learns that he isn't one at all. It's Turtle that gives Daryl such insights when the poor kid can't understand why Joyce starts to become emotionally distant from him—she can't seem to handle that he is completely self-reliant to the point of making his own breakfast and polishing his bedroom floor, and Turtle informs him "Grown-ups have to think they are making progress with you. You got to mess up some times, just enough so you don't get whacked. Joyce has to feel useful, you're so damn helpful, good and thoughtful, I don't know why I like you."

"Maybe you could hack into NORAD and launch missiles at Russia."
The relationship between Daryl and Turtle is the heart of the film, and Danny Corkill brings the perfect amount of puckish charm to his character, sadly some of this comes at the expense of the character of Joyce, who comes across as a callous bitch who turns her back on an amnesiac foster child just because he's too perfect. I understand the script needed to show Daryl learning how to properly interact with people, but in so doing, they push Joyce a little too far in the unsympathetic direction, and unfortunately Mary Beth Hurt is never quite able to fully redeem the character. The movie doesn't have any time to deal with such complexities as Dr. Stewart (Josef Sommer) and Dr. Lamb (Kathryn Walker) showing up and claiming to be Daryl's parents, and soon the kid is wicked away via private jet to the government facility where he was created. It's here that Daryl is put through a battery of tests as his memory is restored and he is made aware that he is not a real boy.

"I got no strings to hold me down, to make me fret, or make me frown."
Let us now take a brief look at this government facility that created D.A.R.Y.L., and just how terrible they are at their jobs. We learn from the Pentagon that the Brass aren't all that thrilled with Dr. Stewart's news that Daryl has learned to prefer a particular flavor of ice cream or has developed emotions like love and fear. As General Graycliffe (Ron Frazier) states, "Baseball, ice cream preferences, friendships, that's all right for America but hardly what we need at the Department of Defense." They inform Stewart that the Youth Lifeform program is terminated, saying, "We need an adult version of this prototype, programmed to learn all that the army can teach: a fearless, technically skilled, devastating soldier."

"Can you make one that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger?"
What exactly was the point of the "Youth Lifeform Program" if it wasn't to lead to the subject eventually growing up to be an adult soldier? Are they asking Dr. Stewart to start creating genesis pods that can pop out fully grown adults? They don't need to scrap the program, they just need to keep their Super Soldiers away from suburbia and mom's apple pie so they can be raised as cold, calculating, killing machines, and not ones that would try and throw a baseball game to make an insecure mom feel better about herself. But I guess it is the terribly-run government that somehow let one of their staff make off with their million dollar product and then were unable to locate it for months—even though one would assume the Child Care facility Daryl was dropped off at would have notified all necessary authorities that they had a missing child. Just how hard was the government looking for Daryl?

Note: The acronym D.A.R.Y.L. is also inaccurate as Daryl is completely indistinguishable from a human except for his computer brain. Thus the "R" in the acronym, which stands for Robot, is wrong because Daryl falls more into the category of cyborgs as he has no robotic parts.

Of course, Dr. Stewart has no intention of letting them toss Daryl onto the scrapheap, and along with the aid of Dr. Lamb, they fake the dismantling of Daryl. Stewart then sneaks the kid out of the facility in a hidden compartment under the backseat of his car. At this point, we are treated to a fun action sequence where Daryl has to use the skills he acquired playing Pole Position to elude the authorities in a pretty fun car chase. Sadly, in the cross-country run, Dr. Stewart is shot and killed and Daryl is forced to steal a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird—from the worst secured base in America, I might add—and he is able to eject before the assholes at the Pentagon self-destruct the jet. His ejection seat lands him right in the middle of a lake and sinks him straight to the bottom. When he is retrieved and brought to the local hospital, he is declared dead, despite Turtle claiming, "He can't be dead, he can't be. Daryl is a robot and robots don't die. Oxygen feeds your brain but Daryl's brain is a microcomputer, that can't die." We then cut to Dr. Lamb showing up at the morgue, to presumably jump start Daryl's operating system, and then we are treated to a heartwarming reunion between Daryl and his foster family and friends.

A nice happy ending but the film's last act was kind of sloppy.

A few Question Come to Mind:

• After Dr. Stewart and Dr. Lamb fake the surgery, the one that was supposed to be dismantling Daryl, we see the evil General running around checking all the D.A.R.Y.L. data-banks to see if the computer is truly offline and dysfunctional, but he never once checks to see if the corpse of Daryl is actually a corpse.
• We are told the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird is equipped with a self-destruct mechanism that can be activated remotely (which they certainly are not and no pilot would fly in a plane that had one) and that if the plane leaves United States Air Space, it will detonate the plane; they are even nice enough to give Daryl a six minute timer countdown. Daryl ejects just before the explosion and parachutes down in the lake located near the home of his foster family, and exactly how is this lake outside of United States Air Space?
• The government is aware of the Anderson family, and with the hospital reporting the drowning they would know Daryl survived the destruction of the Blackbird jet. Wouldn't they most likely be doing a follow up investigation which would reveal their project is alive and well and living in suburbia?

 D.A.R.Y.L. is a harmless family adventure film with some decent action moments, as well as nice good look at artificial intelligence that Dr. Lamb sums up when she posits, "General, a machine becomes human ... when you can't tell the difference anymore." This film is certainly no landmark in science fiction but I find it fun and entertaining enough to recommend it to audiences of all ages.Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-41187563246782518892018-04-27T15:41:00.001-07:002018-04-27T15:54:15.170-07:00Avengers: Infinity War (2018) – ReviewWith eighteen Marvel movies leading up to this point one can't help but be a little stoked to see the superhero team-up to end all team-ups, if you thought it was cool seeing Spider-Man and the Black Panther mixing it up with The Avengers during Captain America: Civil War this film will blow your socks off, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo somehow juggle a cast of dozen of varied heroes, and one particularly awesome villain, to give us the movie we've all been waiting for.

With members of the world's mightiest heroes having recently had a nasty falling out over some philosophical differences and bad blood, shedding much blood sweat and tears in the process, it would take a massive threat to bring this group back together again, so lucky for us (or unlucky if you look at from the point of view of those that don't make it to the end credits) the villainous Thanos (Josh Brolin) has finally got off his badass throne to put his endgame into motion. Now both Marvel and DC have had a tough time coming up with compelling villains (we are still waiting for one from DC) but with Avengers: Infinity War we not only get a villain who had been painstakingly set-up since the first Avengers movie, with elements seeded throughout the intervening years, but Thanos is also one of the best villains we've seen in quite some time as not only is he more than a credible threat to our band of heroes but he is given excellent characterizations and motivations to work with.

The basic premise to this 19th installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that Thanos is collecting the all-powerful Infinity Stones that when found and installed in his Gauntlet he will have the power to end the life of half the population of the universe with just the snap of his fingers. And just why does the mad Titan want to wipe out half of the universe? Well it seems Thanos is a bit of an extreme environmentalist as he believes that the resources of the universe are finite and with the current over population extinction is just a matter of time. Killing trillions is the logical step.

Of course our heroes don't quite see things that way so they all must put on their big boy pants and saddle up to face Thanos and his many evil minions. And we are talking a lot of heroes and a lot of evil minions. Avengers: Infinity War is broken down into three simple threads with various heroes teaming up to prevent Thanos from collecting all six of the Infinity Stones; Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), and Spider-Man (Tom Holland) find themselves far out of their comfort zone when they head into deep space to take the fight to Thanos on his homeworld, then there is Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) who end up in Wakanda with Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) as they try to hold off the "Children of Thanos" from ripping the Mind Stone from Vision's (Paul Bettany) head, and finally we have Thor (Chris Hemsworth) running into the Guardians of the Galaxy after his encounter with Thanos left him stranded in space, and thus we get Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Drax (Dave Bautista), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Rocket (Bradley Cooper), and Groot (Vin Diesel) into the mix.

The Russo Brothers set themselves quite a task in trying to organize such a full roster of heroes in a two and a half hour movie but what impressed me the most was the core emotional moments that anchor the film – Gamora's tragic history with Thanos being the stand-out moment in a film full of stand-out moments – and we really do get a sense of the stakes at play here. The possible death of trillions of people across the universe is too abstract to have any real emotional weight on an audience so the Russo Brothers give us characters we have grown to love over a decade of movies and puts them all in harm's way and asks the question, "What would you sacrifice to save countless lives?"

Avengers: Infinity War isn't the best superhero movie ever made – I'll let others debate which film that would be - but it is one helluva an achievement with the culmination of characters and story arcs that we saw built up over a decade of movies, all in the service of a balls-to-the walls action film that should delight even the most jaded movie goer. The biggest criticism I can half-heartedly lob at this movie is that it is very much a part one and its "To be continued" cliffhanger could leave some viewers with a sour taste in their mouths, but at least we only have a year to wait to see how our heroes can pull the universe's collective fat out of the fire. P.S. Don't forget to stay for the all-important credit cookie.

Stray Thoughts:

• Spider-Man had a much larger part than I expected and his Iron Spider suit kicked ass.
• Once Thanos has a few of the Infinity Stones the script has to fudge things quite a bit so he doesn't instantly destroy several heroes.
• Some of the trademark quips and jokes undercut the tension and drama a couple of times.
• Peter Dinklage as a giant dwarf was brilliant.
• A certain cameo involving a cloaked character was awesome.
• Something like the Time Stone is always going to be a problem.
• I love teenage Groot.

I don't want to wait a year for part two!
Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-68331660273533463172018-04-23T20:14:00.001-07:002018-04-23T20:16:17.527-07:00Condorman (1981) – ReviewBondmania was still a fairly big thing throughout the 70s and 80s, with Roger Moore taking the character in a broader more comedic direction, and even though by the end of the decade entries like Moonraker got a bit too ridiculous, they still managed to bring in some serious box office returns. So it's no surprise that the people at Disney thought to wet their beaks in the genre. Of course, being from The House of Mouse, they had to tone down the violence even more than the Moore films had—less blood more over-the-top action—and drop the overt sexual nature found in the previous films of the genre. The result was Condorman, a mostly forgettable spy romp starring that dude who would later become The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway.

The movie is loosely based on the Robert Sheckley novel The Game of X but where the book dealt with a jobless American in Europe, being recruited by British intelligence to help catch a spy, the movie Condorman was about an American comic book writer and illustrator Woodrow "Woody" Wilkins (Michael Crawford). Wilkins is asked by his best friend and C.I.A. agent Harry Oslo (James Hampton) to participate in a civilian document swap with a Russian agent in Istanbul. The Russian agent, code-named "The Bear," is the beautiful Natalia Rambova (Barbara Carrera) who captivates Woody so much that he lies to her and says that he's not in fact a civilian, but is really a super-agent who goes by the code-name Condorman. She is at first skeptical of this until she watches him take out several Turkish thugs, but of course it's his natural clumsiness and pure dumb luck that allows him to survive the encounter, not any CIA or MI6 training.

Woody is The Man Who Knew Too Little.
Hapless amateurs and clueless idiots were certainly nothing new at the time of Condorman's release; Peter Sellers practically mined the trope to death with his Inspector Clouseau character in the Pink Panther movies, and Get Smart with Don Adams parodying the spy genre for six seasons on television from 1965 to 1970, but what those two characters of the spy spoof genre had that Condorman lacked was a likable protagonist. Michael Crawford's Woody comes across not so much as a lovable doofus, but more as an arrogant jerk whose stupidity is going to get somebody killed. The entire premise to his character is beyond moronic; we first see him in Paris leaping off the Eiffel Tower to test out his Condorman costume, but why in the hell is a comic book writer actually trying to fly, you ask? Turns out he will only put something in his comic book if he can verify if it's possible, "That's the way I create," he tells Harry in his Paris apartment after his Condorman costume had sent him plummeting into the River Seine. "If Condorman can't do something in real life then I won't have him do it in one of my comic books."

If Bob Kane and Bill Finger worked this way, Batman would never have existed.
So right out of the gate we have an eccentric moron being humored by his CIA pal, and my suspension of disbelief is officially broken—and we haven't even gotten to the part where Harry's CIA boss (Dana Elcar) wants Woody to go back into the field and help with a Russian defection. Turns out, Natalia was so impressed with him in Istanbul that she has requested that Condorman be the one to help her. Not only does the CIA go along with this, but they agree to Woody's insane request that they outfit him with all the Condorman gadgets from his comic book. He's basically given the keys to Fort Knox to fund this mission! But—what is even crazier—is that Harry's boss says, "I want you there yesterday!" I don't care what unlimited budget the CIA. has, you can't just whip up a gadget-laden super-car or a functional flying Condorman suit in a couple of hours.

Even Bond's pal Q would take at least a weekend to get that built.
Things get even dumber when we see that Woody has barely a clue as to how to operate said super-car, which makes sense considering they had no time to build this thing, and definitely not enough time to give Woody a proper briefing. We see him randomly hitting buttons labeled with such helpful words as "Mode," "Enter," and "Clear," as well as the letters A B & C, and a number pad, yet his indiscriminate pressing of these button launches missiles, activates lasers and flamethrowers—all right in the nick of time. It was at this point I suspected that Woody's crash into the River Seine actually landed him in a Parisian hospital and all this spy stuff is a coma-induced dream.

It'd certainly explain why someone like Natalia would fall in love with a moron.
The villains of this piece are also about as threatening as Boris and Natasha from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. We have Sergei Krokov (Oliver Reed) as Natalia's KGB handler—the man who wants her back and Woody dead; and the one-eyed Russian killer Morovich (Jean-Pierre Kalfon) sent out by Krokov to stop the defection—apparently a notorious killer whose very name drives people into their homes to bolt their doors and close their shutters. But when he loses repeatedly to Woody, one must assume his reputation is based on his creepy silver eye, and not any actual talent for killing.

Note: His death in a fiery crash because of a lack of depth perception is the one clever thing this movie offers.
Condorman does have a couple of action set pieces that a viewer can find entertaining: the precision driving team that works for Morovich are fairly impressive, and the big finale boat chase/laser battle is kind of fun, but as this film is an action-spy comedy, it does lend itself to being compared to the Bond films—and nothing we see in Condorman compares favorably to its big brother. Then there is the problem with Michael Crawford and Barbara Carrera having absolutely no screen chemistry; in fact, she has better chemistry on screen with Oliver Reed, the jackass who actually threatened to throw her out of a helicopter to get the "proper" reaction from his co-star.

Oliver Reed is not only a notorious drunk but also a colossal dick.
The film's major fault is that director Charles Jarrott fails to generate any kind of kinetic energy to hold the script together; not only is the pacing limpid, but the comedy element often falls flatter than a Dead Sea pancake and so it comes across as deathly dull. Kids of the early 80s may have got a kick out of the two times Woody dons the Condorman costume, but any modern kid can catch ten times that kind of thing on Netflix or even basic cable, so there is nothing in Condorman to really recommend to anybody not seeking a boost of nostalgia.

Stray Thoughts:

• When Woody takes his first flight off the Eiffel Tower he makes the classic Goofy yell of "Ya-hoo-hoo-hoo-hooey!" Was this in case we forgot we were watching a Disney flick?
 • Harry makes a nice Three Days of the Condor joke, thus providing my one and only laugh during my viewing.
 • After each failure, Morovich reports back to Krokov in person, but with all that travelling back and forth shouldn't that have given Woody and Natalia time to reach safety?
 • The movie ends with Woody and Natalia being offered another mission, but the film bombed and so no further missions were allowed.
 • The Condorman wings require the wearer to flap his arms. This technique of flying is ludicrous and was abandoned in the early 1900s. Why the filmmakers didn't go with the more plausible gliding method that Batman employs is a mystery.

This thing would barely pass muster at Comic-Con.
Movie Mikehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-82049721104555168632018-04-19T18:29:00.000-07:002018-04-19T18:31:00.284-07:00Rampage (2018) – ReviewThe amount of good movies based on video games can be counted on one hand, even if that hand has lost a couple fingers due to poor fireworks handling, but director Brad Peyton teams up with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to give us a balls-to-the-wall action movie that is easily one of the best in the genre. Make no mistake Rampage is an incredibly silly and over-the-top action flick but it's also incredibly fun and despite any "Check your brain at the door" comments you may hear from some people I assure you this film knows exactly what its doing.

The basic premise of this movie is that an evil corporation called Energyne has been experimenting with genetic editing, something most countries have made illegal, and to keep their mad science secret they put their laboratory in orbit aboard a research space station. When one of their experiments kills the entire crew, destroying the space station in the process, some of that wonderful mad science plummets to the Earth where it comes in contact with three animals. One of these hapless creatures is an albino gorilla named George who is lucky enough to be friends with Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson), a former US Army Special Forces soldier and member of an anti-poaching unit who now spends his days as a primatologist at the San Diego wildlife preserve.

"Back off, this guy is a friend of mine."
When George starts to get mysteriously large over night Davis is visited by Dr. Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris), a genetic engineer who once worked for Energyne in the hope that their genetic research could help her dying brother, but once she realized they were taking her research and weaponizing it she tried to destroy her work but failed. Unfortunately for America George wasn't the only embiggened animal and soon we are seeing a giant wolf and enormous alligator roaming across the countryside causing all kinds of problems. Enter government Agent Harvey Russell (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who wants to take the giant gorilla into custody and slap the cuffs on evil executive Claire Wyden (Malin Akerman) and her doofy brother Brett (Jake Lacy). And just how evil is Claire Wyden? Well to get her intellectual property back, so that she can sell it to the highest bidder, she activates a beacon that will lure the monsters to their Chicago headquarters.

"I want to introduce those two corporate asshats to Lucille."
When filmmakers in the past have tried to adapt massive cinematic video games into two hour movies the results are usually terrible i.e. Hitman: Agent 47 and Assassin's Creed for example, or marginally passable as the recent Tomb Raider was, and in all those cases much of the plot and character, that would have been developed over those many hours of game playing, had to be sacrificed for time when it came to translating the game to the big screen. But the movie Rampage was based on an old 80s arcade game that was essentially three monsters smashing a city, you don't really have to trim much when the source material is basically "monsters smash stuff" and any changes you make can almost be guaranteed to be an improvement. Then you add to the mix the immensely charismatic Dwayne Johnson, along with a $120 million dollar budget to provide all the city destroying carnage one could ever want, and the road to a successful film is almost assured.

Note: This movie is not all faithful to the original game as it was you the player who were transformed into one of the monsters by the evil corporation. Though a movie where The Rock turns into a giant ape may have been interesting the changes here kind of work in the film's favor.

Rampage the game.

Rampage the movie.
As movies go Rampage is certainly no cinematic wonder, the villains are cartoonishly evil, characters pull solutions to problems out of their asses at a ridiculous rate, and Dwayne Johnson is basically indestructible man, but the movie isn't selling itself as anything other than a fun popcorn flick that is kind of a hybrid disaster film that pays tribute to such films as Mighty Joe Young has dash of Kong: Skull Island, borrows Fenris the Wolf from Thor: Ragnarok and is almost a place holder until we get the remake of King Kong vs Godzilla in 2020. If you go to see this movie with the right frame of mind there is a good chance you will have a helluva time.

Stray Thoughts:

• I'm not sure how a space station is more economical when it comes hiding your mad science, aren't there about a half-dozen countries that would look the other way if given enough money?
• Claire Wyden calling giant monsters to her company's headquarters, while she and her brother are still there, seems about the dumbest thing I've seen in quite some time.
• Colonel Blake (Demetrius Grosse) is told Chicago is evacuated, so the military can now proceed on bombing the shit out of the city, but we constantly see troops and civilians running around. Agent Russell has to tell Blake to check his drones and call off the bombing run, which begs the question, "What the fuck were those drones doing during all this carnage? Were they watching a ballgame?"
• The story is played pretty much for laughs so large scale death and destruction is a little tonally off. We even see George brutally killing quite a few people, some up close and personal, so this makes a happy ending a little farfetched.

"Superman easily killed more people in Man of Steel, we're good."
Movie Mikehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-63020293161528621662018-04-16T17:11:00.000-07:002018-04-16T17:11:30.541-07:00Lost in Space (2018) – Season One ReviewWhen Irwin Allen created the original Lost in Space back in 1965 America was in the middle of the Space Race with the Russians and man had yet to step foot on the moon, now in the year 2018 we've been to the moon and back numerous times and Elon Musk is claiming we will have Mars colonies by 2040, so it's only fitting that we'd get another attempt at bringing the Space Family Robinsons to a new generation.

This is not the first attempt at bringing back the Robinson Family as we had a big budget theatrical attempt in 1998 starring William Hurt and Gary Oldman, which flopped faster than a collapsing star, then in 2004 a relaunch of the series was given a shot but was never picked up by the Networks, and thus it seemed like the Robinson Family were doomed to be lost and forgotten. Enter Netflix, with a ton of money to throw around, and we finally have a Lost in Space that more than lives up to the memory of the original.

There is much from this reboot/relaunch of the series that people familiar with the show will recognize; we have the Robinson Family consisting of John Robinson (Toby Stephens), his wife Maureen (Molly Parker), eldest daughter Judy (Taylor Russell), middle child Penny (Mina Sundwall) and finally we have the ever getting into trouble Will Robinson (Maxwell Jenkins) whose questionable decisions skills have frustrated many a viewer, but though the names may seem familiar the characters for this incarnation have not only been updated for modern audiences they have also been shifted and tweaked to make them a more believable family unit.

Though they still apparently carpool together.
In the original series John was the family patriarch and the mission commander, though his wife was also a scientist she was mostly reduced to gardening and doing the laundry while her son ran off into whatever danger they faced that week, but in this Netflix series it is Maureen who is the mission commander and John is her estranged husband whose basically been an absentee dad because while the kids were growing up he was off fighting to save the Free World as a badass Marine. Judy is no longer simply blonde arm candy for Major Don West, as she was back in the 60s, now she's an eighteen year old surgeon who we see suffer through PTSD and crisis of confidence in her ability to do her job while trapped on an alien planet. Then there is her sister Penny who once was just the annoying little girl who constantly wandered off when not playing with her space monkey but now in this updated version though she still tends to skip off and explore on her own she's actually a pretty smart cookie and gets to help the family out of the occasional jam. Will on the other hand is very similar to his 1965 counterpart, the dynamic he has with Dr. Smith and The Robot is quite in keeping with the original show, but at least he isn't the super know-it-all that tended to veer towards "insufferable brat" territory back in the day.

"I'm not as annoying as young Anakin Skywalker, trust me."
The basic premise of this reboot is that after a celestial object, called the Christmas Star, impacts the Earth causing the planet to be trapped under a perpetual dust cloud, mankind's survival hinges on colony ships to Alpha Centauri where a new world can be started by carefully selected families. The Robinson Family are just one of many such families aboard the Jupiter Mission's colonial spacecraft called "Resolute" but they find their trip interrupted when the Resolute is attacked by an unknown enemy and the families are forced to escape in their landing crafts. The Robinson Family plummet to a strange and hostile world aboard the familiar Jupiter 2, while Don West (Ignacio Serricchio) and Dr. Smith (Parker Posey) are aboard their own Jupiter 4.

"Don't forget where we parked."
Having the Robinson Family in one ship while Don West and Dr. Smith in another is only one of many changes from the original dynamic, add to the fact that several other families make it planet side which widens the cast of characters and allows for more interesting plot threads and conflict, but one of the most telling differences would have to be The Robot. In the original series he was part of the Jupiter 2 crew but in this incarnation he is a sentient alien robot and its friendship with Will Robinson that is more in the vein of what we saw in the movie The Iron Giant than what it was in the original Lost in Space. In fact the Robot is a killing machine with amnesia that befriends a young boy, but when threatened reverts to killing machine mode, so this show could almost have been called The Iron Giant is Lost in Space. But basically this is the classic tale of a boy and his dog.

If his faithful dog was also a walking instrument of death.
There is a lot to love with this take on Lost in Space; the visual effects are stunning, the female characters pretty much dominate the show yet don't diminish their male counterparts, and overall the family friendly action adventures the Robinson Family have to deal with each and every episode are for the most part quite fun, that all said there is still a rather large element that casts an unpleasant shadow over this new Lost in Space, one that stops this reboot from being truly excellent, and that would be the Dr. Smith character. Now when I heard that the character of Dr. Smith was being changed into a woman I thought this was a great idea, as it would allow them to easily divert comparison to the original Dr. Smith created by actor Jonathon Harris, but what we got was a crazed supervillain that comes across as more annoying than actually threatening. I should be clear that none of this is due to actress Parker Posey because I don't think anybody could have made this version work, this Dr. Smith is so unbelievable that every moment she is on screen I'm pulled out of the show.

"I'm not bad, I'm just written that way."
The writers tried to throw in some backstory to flesh out her character and provide her some motivations for her villainy, but none of it can explain her Sherlockian ability to manipulate people and events to such an extent that she'd have to be either psychic or have reality warping superpowers for any of this to make sense. And to make matters worse she often jeopardizes plans our heroes have to get everyone off this dangerous planet when being on this geological time bomb is as big a danger to her as anyone else. Is she supposed to be a cold calculating sociopath with a skewed since of self-preservation or is she just a complete idiot? This show clearly hasn't decided that yet and this could make further seasons harder for the show's writers to make believable for as it stands episode one of season two should open with Maureen Robinson shoving Dr. Smith out an airlock.

Overall I have great hopes for coming seasons, if they can solve the Dr. Smith problem that is, and with the amount of money spent on this show its clear Netflix is fully invested in this being a hit. The campy Father Knows Best aspect of the original series has been cast aside in favor of fully developed characters that have moments of great heroism as well as terrible failures, and that makes for a good drama. There are enough nods to the original show to make fans happy but it's the differences that I think will be key to this show's continuing success, and certainly worth giving it a shot if fun science fiction adventures are your bag.

Stray Thoughts:

• The moment The Robot first says, "Danger Will Robinson" gave me serious goosebumps.
 • I love that they've made Don West more of Han Solo like scoundrel, though the eighteen year age difference between him and Judy will make any planned romance a little creepy.
 • Maureen and John being trapped together leads to some great dramatic moments but going forward could be in danger of becoming a running gag.
 • They set up an electronic perimeter fence that can apparently be turned off by Dr. Smith without any type of alarm or notification alert that it is down.
 • Like the original series the "science" in this science fiction show is a little dodgy. In one particular scene Judy is trapped beneath the ice and as they try and dig her free it starts to rain and floods their progress, and then that water freezes. How is that possible? If it's cold enough to freeze standing water instantly how is it raining? Shouldn't it be snowing?

Will the Robinson Family survive these challenges and make it to season two?
Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-83186667892009418092018-04-12T20:24:00.002-07:002018-04-12T20:24:16.576-07:00Lost in Space: The Reluctant Astronaut (1965) – Pilot ReviewWith the release of the new Lost in Space on Netflix I thought it would be nice to take a journey back in time to the original launching of the Jupiter 2 and the Space Family Robinson. When people think of Irwin Allen it is mostly of his persona as "The Master of Disaster" for his work directing or producing such noteworthy disaster epics as The Poseidon, The Towering Inferno and The Swarm, but in the 1960s when it came to television he was the undisputed king of science fiction with such shows under his belt as The Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants and of course Lost in Space. One could posit the idea that the successes of Lost in Space on CBS directly lead to NBC greenlighting Gene Rodenberry's Star Trek, which often used the same sci-fi tropes that Irwin Allen pioneered, and strangely enough both of those shows only managed three seasons each. Only time will tell if the 2018 launch of the new Netflix series will managed to catch on with fans, the1998 big budget movie and 2004 failed relaunch of the series certainly didn't, but today we will take a look back at the original show's pilot to see where it all began.

While shows like Star Trek took place hundreds into the future not so with Irwin Allen's shows, though a futurist he set his stories in the "not too distant future" and thus the pilot episode of Lost in Space "The Reluctant Astronaut" took place in the year 1997, a mere thirty years into the future. The basic premise of Lost in Space dealt with the United States launching the first of many planned colony missions to a planet orbiting the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, this being due to the Earth's severe over population reaching the point where finding life off world was humanity's last hope. The crew consisted of Professor John Robinson (Guy Williams), his wife Maureen (June Lockhart), their children Judy (Marta Kristen), Penny (Angela Cartwright), and Will (Bill Mumy), and joining the family was their pilot, U.S. Space Corps Major Donald West (Mark Goddard), who was there basically in case anything went wrong with the ship's navigation or guidance system.

What could go wrong with Zorro on board?
Of course something does go drastically wrong, though not because of any technical malfunctions, but instead at the hands of the traitorous Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris), who was the Alpha Control's doctor but also working as a saboteur for a competing foreign nation. Those familiar with the show will most likely remember Dr. Smith as the cowardly buffoon who spouted such alliterative insults as "You bubble headed booby" or "Cantankerous Cold-hearted Clump" but in season one of the show he wasn't there simply to fill out the comic relief quotient, he was damn dangerous. Season One episodes though family friendly were more science fiction based than what was to follow, and it was only later that the tone of the series went from Star Trek level of science fiction to basically Gilligan's Island in Space. In the pilot episode Dr. Smith not only sabotages the Jupiter 2, programing the mission's robot to destroy the spacecraft eight hours after launch, but when he is discovered aboard the ship prior to launch he judo chops the poor security guard and tosses him down a waste disposal chute.

Note: In the original script to this episode Dr. Smith had a hidden needle in his ring that poisoned the guard but the Network thought that was too nasty for a show aimed more or less at children so it was changed.

One of the more interesting things about the character of Dr. Zachary Smith is that he wasn't originally part of the show at all. In the original unaired pilot "No Place to Hide" not only did the character of Dr. Smith not exist but neither did the ever popular robot, instead of sabotage the Gemini 12 (later changed to Jupiter 2 for some reason) goes off course when it was unable to avoid a meteor shower. The Robinsons spend three years in suspended animation while their ship flies off course before crash landing on some strange uncharted planet, leaving them lost in space. This never aired pilot was full of wild adventures with the Robinson family fighting a couple of giant cyclops, discovering ancient alien ruins, and crossing an inland sea that almost destroyed them by sucking their amphibious chariot into a giant whirlpool, but the Network didn't think the show could work with each and every week the family basically running from one random threat or another, they believed it needed an ongoing adversary.

Exit giant cyclops, enter Doctor Smith.
The meteor shower that disables the Jupiter 2 still occurs but no longer is it because of crappy navigational software but because of Dr. Smith being accidentally being trapped onboard the ship, having to do some last minute tinkering to insure the robot has its power pack so that it could "Destroy Jupiter 2" after the launch, his additional two hundred and fifty pounds of body weight causes the ship to veer off course into a swarm of meteoroids. I must say that both versions of the pilot do not paint a good picture of this mission for if the ship's onboard systems can't compensate for additional weight, and adjust the ship's flight path to avoid destruction, it's not a very good computer. So Doctor Smith or no Doctor Smith this mission was pretty much doomed from the outset.

Large balls of tinfoil are one of the more dangerous hazards in space.
With the crew of the Jupiter 2 in suspended animation it's up to Dr. Smith to save the ship from being bashed to pieces by the meteoroid swarm. (Science Note: At the speed the Jupiter 2 is traveling an impact with meteors the size we see here would have pretty much vaporized the ship.) Smith is able to wake up Major West, who is then able to steer the spacecraft out of harm's way, and then the Robinson family are revived to discover that they are far from their intended destination.

What about the robot, you ask? Well Smith's programming of the robot to destroy the Jupiter 2, and his attempts to stop it once he finds himself trapped aboard, is about the worst case of contrived padding I've ever seen. When Smith realizes he is an unfortunate passenger on a doomed craft he turns off the power to the robot but he only manages to move the on/off switch to the halfway position, and this simply causes the robot to lumber over to the control panel and move the switch back into the on position. Then later he tries to remove the robot's power pack but is hampered when John Robinson is forced to turn off the artificial gravity so that they can do repairs on the ship. After some goofy floating around he eventually does get the power pack off of the robot but then Will Robinson, not knowing that this mechanical marvel is their death sentence, places it back and then the robot finally gets to go on its rampage.

"Resistance is futile."
With the jettisoning of the Jupiter 2 crash landing on an alien world, and fighting hostile aliens and environments that were in the original pilot, the writers decided to fill much of that missing time with Dr. Smith running around the ship like a total idiot, that Jonathan Harris is able to make this kind of work is a testament to his skill as an actor, but I think a little of it could have been trimmed and that time given to the rest of the crew. The remainder of the pilot episode deals with Major West being suspicious of Dr. Smith, a distrust that runs throughout most of the first season and has us wondering why the good Major didn't just quietly murder the conniving bastard. The episode then ends on a cliffhanger with John Robinson floating helpless in space after his tether snapped while trying to fix their navigational array during a space walk. A gimmick that would later be popularized by the Adam West Batman series.

"Tune in next week. Same space-time, same space-channel."
That this show is rife with wonky science is no surprise, for example the robots rampage somehow knocks the ship into hyperdrive by simply hitting a lever labeled HYPERDRIVE and it is never explained as to why the ship wasn't already in hyperdrive or that the ship had this capability at all, but as a family adventure show it was immensely fun and as a kid I ate the whole thing up with a spoon. Add in the fact that The Robot (B-9 Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot) is up there with Robby the Robot as one of the most beloved mechanical heroes in science fiction and you have a show that deserves to be remembered. Will the Netflix reboot capture a new generation of fans? Only time will tell, but at least the original series is still available and though the Robinson Family may still be lost in space they can always be found in our hearts.Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-1904311405344323782018-04-10T16:18:00.000-07:002018-04-10T16:20:06.064-07:00A Quiet Place (2018) - Review"Who are we if we can't protect our children?" This is a question put forward by Emily Blunt's character in director John Krasinski's horror film A Quiet Place, which deals with a lone family trying to survive in world now populated with monsters, and it makes us wonder what we would do in a similar situation. Asid
Now a key ingredient to a successful horror film is the building and creating of tension, as suspense is ratcheted up by whatever particular situation of horror our heroes find themselves in, something this film does better than most horror films I've seen lately, as many films forget that suspense is not created by the movie having a cool monster or a nasty killer but on the audience's desire for the protagonist to survive. I'd say in 90% of horror films I could give a rat's ass if most of the cast got stabbed or eaten (Did anyone not relish the moment when Hud was finally killed in Cloverfield?) and most slasher films only seem to care about the "Final Girl" so why should we the audience be worried or invested in any other character being killed. It's in this area that A Quiet Place excels as one is truly on the edge of your seat for the majority of this film's running time because we do care about this family and we want them all to survive.

The movie drops us right into the middle a nightmare that we have at first have no understanding of, we are told it is "Day 89" but not what that signifies, and though this is clearly after some apocalyptic event we don't know if it was caused by nuclear war, plague, monsters from another dimension or aliens. We are simply introduced to the Abbott family as they very quietly scrounge for food in an abandoned grocery story, and the "why" behind them being quiet is of course the crux of the film as we quickly learn the consequences of making a noise when the youngest member of the Abbott clan decides to turn on a loud electronic toy and pays the ultimate price at the hands/claws of this film's monster.

Who needs two brothers, really?
Lee (John Krasinskii) and Evelyn (Emily Blunt), the mother and father of the Abbott family, have managed to make a life for themselves in this post- apocalyptic world be instilling in their two remaining children the necessary skills to stay alive. Young Marcus (Noah Jupe) isn't quite up to the task most of the time, being terrified of going out of their farmhouse/bunker, not that I can completely blame him, while his sister Regan (Millicent Simmonds), who being deaf has given her family an advantage because they were already able to communicate silently via ASL (American Sign Language), is stronger and braver if partly because she blames herself for the death of her little brother in that opening scene. From newspaper clippings we get the idea that these creatures, who may be alien invaders but the film never confirms this, and though apparently blind they have insanely keen hearing, thus the film's tag line "If they hear you, they hunt you." They are also incredibly fast and seemingly invulnerable, so if you make a sound you have basically signed your own death sentence. And guess what? Evelyn is pregnant, which of course posits two important questions, How can the family survive with a newborn baby that is bound to spend half its time crying?" and "How quietly can a person give birth?"

Is there a special Lamaze class you can take?
A Quiet Place is the kind of horror film that just grabs you from the outset and never lets you go, the cast all give amazing performances with John Krasinski doing double duty as actor and director, and we get really cool monsters that look a little like they could be cousins to the Demogorgon from Stranger Things. A special shout out must be made to the film's sound design department as not only do the handle the "silence" of the film so well but they also do an excellent job of switching audio perspectives between deaf Regan, her hearing capable family, and the weird ass monsters that hunt by sound. This is a movie I highly recommend catching as soon as possible as a darkened theater with an Atmos sound system is probably the best way to view A Quiet Place…well, as long as there isn't a jerk behind you loudly eating popcorn.

Final Thoughts:

If you want to keep your family alive maybe don't walk in single file with your youngest bringing up the rear.

Lee created a soundproof bunker for the baby. If I was that family I'd be spending most of my time in that bunker.

They cover pathways with sand so as to mute their footsteps. This is ingenious if you happen to live in area that never has wind.

I loved the warning lights and systems of audio distractions they use.

The "Light the Beacons" scene was a nice way to show that they were not the last people on Earth.

A Quiet Place is mostly subtitled so young kids and illiterates beware.

Special Note: Two seats down from me was a mother holding a baby, this had me quite worried as I'd head this was a very "quiet" movie, but not only did the baby not make a sound but as I got up to leave the theater I noticed the mother using sign language to her companion. Such a nice moment to end a great movie going experience on.
e from curl up in a ball and cry that is. Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-41420109508987259532018-04-05T20:33:00.000-07:002018-04-05T20:33:06.919-07:00ScoobyNatural (2018) – ReviewWhen Sam and Dean are not saving the world from an oncoming apocalypse, or bickering over keeping secrets from one another, they occasionally get to have a mystery that is just pure fun with no dire consequences looming in the wings. The episode titled ScoobyNatural is a great example of the show runners knowing exactly what their fans have been dying to see, even if they didn't know it, with a crossover to end all crossovers as the Winchester Brothers team up with Scooby and the gang.

With a show that has lasted thirteen seasons so far, which is especially impressive when you consider how many end of the world scenarios and monsters of the week the writers have had to come up with, it's good to know that they can still surprise the fans with a delightfully goofy episode. In the season six episode "The French Mistake" the brothers fell into an alternate world where their life of hunting monsters was a television show and Sam and Dean had to pretend to be actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles to solve the mystery to get home, so now when the brothers find themselves in the animated world of Scooby-Doo they kind of take it in stride.

Dean also gets to try his best moves on long time crush Daphne Blake.
The episode starts off like a routine "monster of the week" with Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) fighting and dispatching a monster/ghost, only in this case it's a large plush dinosaur at a pawn shop that allows the boys to cathartically kill Barney, and they seemingly dispatch it with their usual flair. The pawn shop owner (Michael Girardin) is so appreciated of the boys saving his life that he offers them anything in the store, an offer Dean can't resist, and thus the "Dean Cave" soon finds a large flat screen television as its new centerpiece. Of course there is more going on than just a random killer toy attack, that this kind of thing does randomly happen to the Winchesters is part of the show's charm, and so upon turning on the television the two brothers are zapped into a cartoon dimension, one that contains another mystery solving group who just so happen to have a talking dog.

Note: The episode Sam and Dean find themselves trapped in is "A Night of Fright Is No Delight" from season one of Scooby-Doo, Where are You!"

When Sam comments that being sucked into a cartoon is "Beyond weird" Dean wisely replies, "Well, and "beyond weird" is kind of our thing. So whatever happened, we'll figure it out. This is a case, so let's work it." It's lucky for Sam that Dean is a super fan of the Scooby-Doo cartoon and so solving the mystery should be a breeze, but when Sam suggest that if Dean knows the ending of the mystery why don't they just "Skip to the end" Dean fires back "Sometimes it's about the journey not the destination." Of course Sam wisely deduces that his brother just wants time to get with Daphne (Grey DeLisle), his long time animated crush. Dean's plan hits a nasty wrinkle when the murder of Cousin Simple veers from how the episode should have happened; instead of Cousin Simple being mysteriously missing, as he was originally, he is instead found stabbed to death and lying in a pool of his own blood. This needless to say kind of freaks out Dean, "Dude, this is not the way things went down in this episode. I remember everything that happened in Scooby-Doo, and no one ever got stabbed in the back and ended up in a pool of their own blood" and Dean is even more put off by Fred (Frank Welker) and the gang's rather nonchalant attitude to murder and gore.

Aside from the standards "Jeepers!" "Jinkies!" "Zoinks!" and "Ruh-roh!" the gang take this rather well.
The plot of the original "A Night of Fright Is No Delight" dealt with Scooby-Doo finding out that he was a beneficiary in the will of Colonel Beauregard Sanders, whom Scooby had saved from drowning in a fish pond years before, and if the heirs stayed the night in this haunted house they would divide up a million dollars. As this is a Scooby-Doo Mystery it would turn out to be the lawyer Cosgood Creeps and his partner Crawls behind the ghost shenanigans, as they were trying to scare all of the heirs off of the island so they could keep the million dollars to themselves, but this time round Cousin Simple is brutally stabbed to death, and later when Cousin Slicker is found torn into pieces Dean comes to the conclusion that, "This cartoon is haunted."

Fred's comment after seeing this, "Well, that's not good," and then just calmly walking away is priceless.
What follows is a brilliant comic homage to one of my favorite childhood shows with Sam and Dean trying to convince the Scooby gang that they are dealing with actual ghosts and not their usual unscrupulous real estate developers, with Dean futilely hitting on Daphne who is completely oblivious to his intentions and Velma (Kate Micucci) being hypnotically drawn to Sam and his "linebacker shoulders" and it is all comedy gold with some of the classic tropes of the series lovingly rolled out.

Here are a few of the nice nods to the original Scooby-Doo cartoons:
• Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby (Frank Welker) have their standard huge appetites and Dean does his best to match them bite for bite.
 • There is of course no sex in the Scooby Universe so when Dean offers to share a room with Daphne she innocently informs him, "Boys and girls don't sleep in the same room, silly."
 • Fred's plan of "Split up and search the house for clues" is met by Sam's reluctance to separate as the brothers would then have a harder time keeping the gang safe.
 • A startled Scooby and Shaggy will leap into the arms of one of the gang only now it's Castiel (Misha Collins) who also got sucked into the cartoon world after finding the cursed television still on.
 • Fred will come up with an elaborate trap that will fail.
 • One of the episodes highlight brings us the classic "Chase Montage" only instead of the usually 60s pop song providing background music we get the theme to "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!"

Keen eyed fans will also notice a certain Scrappy Doo during this scene.
One of the best moments in this episode is when the Scooby gang finally come to grips with the fact that they are actually dealing with a supernatural force and then they all proceed to have mental breakdowns. Fred bemoans the fact that, "We've been stopping real estate developers when we could have been hunting Dracula" and Daphne has an existential crisis when she realizes, "If there are ghosts that means there is an afterlife, Heaven, Hell."

"Am I going to Hell?"
Will Sam and Dean be able to pull the Scooby gang together in time to defeat the evil spectre? Who is behind our heroes being sucked into a cartoon world? Does Dean have a shot at getting into Daphne's pants? All these questions and more will be answered in one of the best episodes in the show's thirteen seasons. The comedy blend between the two shows works so beautifully that one almost wishes we could have regular team-ups with the Winchester's and Mystery Incorporated, but if that never occurs we at least have this one moment of animated madness to keep us happy. So if you are a fan of either Scooby-Doo or Supernatural, and for some reason didn't manage to catch this episode when it aired, do your best to track it down as I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Will we ever again get a cross-over this fun?
Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-90715641514419057392018-04-02T20:00:00.000-07:002018-04-02T20:00:17.222-07:00Arcade (1993) – Review"I never believed in Heaven, but I learned to believe in Hell, when mom sent me there." That is the first line of the 1993 sci-fi horror movie Arcade as spoken by the lead protagonist, a teenager girl who had her life turned upside when her mother committed suicide and her father sank into a crippling depression. One must admit that this is a pretty dark opening in what seemed to be a film marketed as Tron meets Nightmare on Elm Street, but with schlock director Albert Pyun at the helm, and a script by David S. Goyer based on an idea by Full Moon producer Charles Band, you know you're probably in trouble no matter what direction the film decides to go in.

Alex Manning (Megan Ward) is a troubled suburban teenager doing her best to get through life after her mother committed suicide a year ago, neither her school counselor nor her couch-bound dad are any help as things seem to spiral into the abyss, but when Alex and her friends attend a test marketing demo for a new virtual reality game called "Arcade" her slipping grades become the least of her worries. At local video arcade Dante's Inferno CEO Difford (John de Lancie) unveils a startling new revolution in video gaming, a system that he claims, "It's so real, you'll actually think that you're in the game world!" This impresses video game whiz kid Nick (Peter Billingsley), and he does fairly well when he gets a shot at the game, but when Alex's boyfriend Greg (Bryan Dattilo) tries it out and loses he finds himself sucked into the game world. And the danger is very real...just not all that convincing.

Computer Graphics of the Nineties!
Unfortunately for poor Greg nobody noticed his "losing" the game and vanishing into the ether as everyone had been escorted out of the demo room to receive their own free home versions of the game. Now I'm not sure what kind of game company can just hand out free virtual reality consoles to a group of random consumers but I'm betting it's not one that will be in business very long, then add to the fact that the company used brain cells from an abused child in the manufacturing of the game's A.I. (which were donated by the mother who beat the kid to death) you know things are not going to go well. And why exactly did this company use an abused kids brain for their game's matrix? Well apparently it was done to make the whole thing more challenging, and that makes all kinds of sense. Even if this idea worked does that seem to be sustainable business model?

"This game doesn't take coins but instead the tears of a virgin."
When Alex tries the game at home things go a bit weird, it gloats about eating her boyfriend and calls her a bitch, but of course when she goes to good ole Nick for help he isn't easily convinced that the game is alive and only believes her once he sees for himself Arcade sucking their friend Laurie (A.J. Langer) into the virtual world. The two come to the quick conclusion that the only way to save their friends is to beat Arcade at his own game and the best way to do that would be to visit Vertigo/Tronics to find out from the game's programmer Albert (Norbert Weisser) if there were any secrets built into it that would allow them to win. Finding a possible backdoor or cheat codes doesn't seem to be too bad an idea but unfortunately Albert isn't all quite there, he's the standard eccentric computer geek found in countless movies, but he does give them schematics to the game and where to find the keys that will unlock the doors to each level. Armed with this knowledge our two heroes return to Dante's Inferno to face-off against the killer A.I. and hopefully free their friends. Nick is all set for a solo mission but Alex insists that they go "Two Player" on this rescue mission, and somehow this is possible even though the system clearly has only one set of virtual reality gloves and one headset.

Ready Player Two
Will our two heroes survive in the topsy-turvy world of Arcade? Are there friends doomed to live an eternity inside a video game hell? Is that Seth Green playing their goofy friend Stilts? To say that this film fails to deliver on any aspect of its premise would be a gross understatement, and it's production was certainly not helped by being sued by Disney for ripping off imagery from Tron which forced them to redo much of the film's already crappy CGI, but even if this film had been given a forty million dollar budget it would still have been stuck with a terrible David S. Goyer script. The budget it did get made the overall film's production seems on par with an average episode of Goosebumps with only the occasional "F" bomb separating it from what you'd see on Saturday morning programming. The film also wasn't happy with just trying to rip-off Disney as it lifts the "Riddle Guards" scene from Labyrinth when Alex encounters virtual reality version of her friends Laurie and Stilts who have been turned into a couple of Grim Reaper looking guards. When Alex confronts them they state, "You may ask one of us a question, one tells the truth the other lies. Who you ask remains your discretion, but if the answer is wrong the questioner dies." Now I know Jim Henson and company didn't invent this particular riddle game but it's clear that's where the makers of this movie lifted the idea from, and what is truly hilarious is that David S. Goyer apparently didn't even understand how this particular riddle works as he has Stilts inform Alex, "I am the liar, where shall I take you" so all Alex has to do is ask him which boat to take because she now knows he is the liar and then would obviously take the opposite of what he answers.

Riddle of the Sphinx this is not.
The only actual chilling moment in this movie is when Alex wakes up in her bedroom to find her mother alive and that all that "Arcade" business seeming just a bad dream, this of course also happened in Labyrinth but it takes a real dark turn here when Alex says to her mother, "I dreamt you were dead" and her mom creepily responds, "Sweetheart, I am dead" and then she pulls out a gun and blows her own brains out, then poor Alex gets even more traumatized when dead mom lifts up the gun again and offers to take Alex to the afterlife with her. That is some crazy shit and if the rest of the movie had one tenth of this level of horror we might have had a film worth recommending. The CGI graphics are laughable bad, even for something from the 90s, and the stinger ending that threatened us with a potential sequel was pretty much doomed to never happen, but if you want to see Ralphie from A Christmas Story and Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer team-up in a movie then this is your one stop shopping place, otherwise give this movie a big pass.

Tune in for Stilts and Nick's Excellent Adventure.
Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663463582581814639.post-71195427478746591482018-03-30T18:36:00.000-07:002018-03-30T20:37:01.713-07:00Ready Player One (2018) – ReviewBased on Ernest Cline's best-selling book of the same name Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One could honestly be marketed as Pop Culture References: The Movie, and to be honest if you've seen the trailer that shouldn't be much of a surprise, but with one of the premier directors of this or any generation at the helm we at least know that it is going to be an entertaining ride.

The story takes place in the dystopian future of 2045 where much of the Earth's population live well below the poverty line (but way up in the air in what one must call very unsafe housing), and it's there that we find our hero Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) who lives in one of these unsafe housing projects called The Stacks, and like many people he spends most of his time in the virtual reality world of the OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation) because the real world sucks and in the OASIS one can create a better version of yourself while hanging out in fantastical worlds.

Who wouldn't want to escape this?
The creator of OASIS was a brilliant but incredibly introverted nerd named James Halliday (Mark Rylance) who after his death revealed in his will that he hid three keys inside the OASIS that will lead to an Easter egg and anyone who finds this egg will land themselves a half a trillion dollars and complete control of the OASIS. If this scavenger hunt plot seems a little reminiscent of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory it should because Ernest Cline has made no bones about the fact that he was basically remaking Willie Wonka only with 80s pop culture references instead of candy.

"Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination."
Spielberg takes the basic premise from the book but does mix-up the contest a little; no longer is 80s pop culture trivia the key to solving the quest but instead its hidden nuggets about Halliday's life, this works well and provides some heart to the story, and because movies are a visual medium Spielberg is able to go whole hog presenting us with countless "Hey, I get that reference" moments without having to literally spell them out as Cline had to do in the book. For the most part Spielberg's structural changes to the source material works but the two hour and twenty-two minute running time does spend a little too much time on the visual spectacle of the virtual world and very little on the characters that occupy it. Wade in his virtual avatar persona of Parsifal works with his online best bud Aech (Lena Waithe) and fellow virtual badass and possible love interest Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) and aside from Art3mis we aren't given much backstory to any of them during their quest for the Easter egg. These are fun and engaging characters but we really don't find out what makes them tick, hell we don't even learn how anyone makes real money to buy stuff like food or pay rent.

"Can we use game tokens to pay for pizza?"
The greatest victim of the "character assassination" problem are Daito (Win Morisaki) and Sho (Philip Zhao) who pretty much pop out of thin air halfway through the movie as two of Wade's online friends and aside from them being Asian, and one of them being an eleven year old boy, they are fairly forgettable. Ernest Cline's book was no literary masterpiece but he at least spent some fleshing out all the players, while in the movie the secondary characters mostly have the unfortunate job of showing up to spout clunky expository dialog and then disappearing. Now this review may sound overly negative, and the film has several things to be negative about, but I have to admit that I enjoyed myself quite a lot watching this movie and most of that stems from Spielberg knowing how to shoot the hell out of an action sequence. When Parsifal hops into the Back to the Future De Lorean, while Art3mis blows by him atop Kaneda's bike from Akira to win a game that puts Wacky Racers to shame, all the while trying to avoid a T-Rex and King Kong, I was in seventh Heaven.

It's as if Spielberg looked straight into my soul.
Of course the real villain in Ready Player One isn't a prehistoric beast or a giant ape it is the more sinister threatl of corporate greed, and in this story that would be Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) the evil CEO of a video game conglomerate that wishes to win control over the OASIS so that they can basically remove Halliday's ad blocker and make a shit ton of money filling the virtual world with giant pop-up ads. Mendelsohn is a lot of fun as the villainous Sorrento and he leaves very little scenery, virtual or otherwise, unchewed as he and his virtual reality bounty hunter i-R0k (T.J. Miller) do their best to thwart our band of plucky rebels.

Spielberg pulls out all stops in the creation of the virtual worlds in Ready Player One; the aforementioned race, the trip into a certain Stephen King movie was a treat, and the final massive show down with more pop culture character than one could shake a glaive were simply spectacular, it just would have been nice if the screenplay could have spent a little more time on the dystopian aspect of the world (the opening narration spends most of its time talking about the OASIS and not much on how the real world functions) and if that glorious last act was trimmed just a tad we could have got to know our heroes a little better as well.

Note: How the virtually reality rigs works are played rather fast and loose in this movie; we see Wade on a multi-directional treadmill but then later we see everyone out in the street joining him in virtual battle but they are just on sidewalks outside not any kind of treadmill. Wouldn't they end up running into traffic or accidentally punching the person standing next to them?

Ready Player One is an entertaining "E" ticket ride and though some of the changes from the book I quite liked, and any movie that has The Iron Giant fighting Mechagodzilla is a tough movie not to love, but the short changes made to the characters stopped me from being full invested. That all said I can still heartily recommend the trip out to the theater to see this thing as it is "A world of pure imagination".

Note: This movie seems almost designed for Bluray players in mind as the pause feature will be great aid in further viewings so you can hunt for all those hidden references.Movie Mikehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com