Category Archives: Film Review

Lifetime Film Review: Ruthless Realtor (dir by Devon Downs and Kenny Gage)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, imagine this scenario.

You’re young, you’re attractive, you’ve got a great career, and you’ve got a partner who is also young and attractive and who has a great career.  You’ve just arranged to buy a new home and it’s a big, beautiful, and surprisingly affordable house.  Of course, you suspect that the house has a history but then again, what house doesn’t?  It’s a little bit annoying that the lights keep randomly going out but that’s what you get for living in California.  So, you move into the house and it seems like everything’s perfect.

Except….

Your realtor simply will not go away!  It’s not enough that she showed you the house and arranged for you to purchase it and that she also apparently lied to the bank on your behalf (even though you certainly didn’t ask her to do that).  She also wants to be your best friend.  She wants to be a part of your family.  You simply cannot get rid of her….

That’s the situation in which Annie (Lily Anne Harrison) and her husband Ralph (Brian Ames) find themselves.  Annie’s a successful lawyer.  Ralph’s a photographer.  Annie’s pregnant with their first child.  The house is lovely.  Everything should be great.  But Meg (Christie Burson) simply won’t stop coming by the house!

Annie thinks it’s strange to come home and find her realtor cooking dinner in the kitchen.  Ralph thinks that it’s nothing to worry about but then, during a photography session, Meg tries to kiss him.  Ralph and Annie tell Meg to stop coming around but Meg keeps showing up.  The increasingly distraught Meg insists that someone was trying to break into the house and that the house itself has a dangerous history that Annie and Ralph need to know about.  Soon, Meg ends up in jail.

Problem solved, right?

Well, no.  Not only does Meg escape from jail but it turns out that there’s even more to Meg’s story than Annie and Ralph originally suspected….

I’ve always felt that one of the best things about Lifetime movies is that they always seem to take place in big houses and Ruthless Realtor proves my point.  The house really is gorgeous, regardless of how many have died inside of it.  When Annie tells her friend Lynette (Alexandra Peters) that she plans on staying in the house regardless of all the craziness going on around and inside of it, you can hardly blame her.  A big house like that?  A few murders are worth the risk!

Along with the big house, the other thing that I liked about Ruthless Realtor is that, as played by Christie Burson, Meg is literally the only likable character in the film.  Even though she’s obviously unstable and tries to break up a marriage, it’s impossible not to sympathize with her.  Annie and Lynette are both extremely self-righteous and full of themselves.  Ralph is painfully goofy.  But Meg actually believes in something and you have to feel sorry for her as she vainly tries to convince Annie that something terrible has happened at the house.  It should be noted that the film seems to fully understand that Meg is a hundred times more likable than any of the other characters and it takes good advantage of that fact with a few twists during the final half of the film.

Ruthless Realtor is an entertaining-enough Lifetime film.  If nothing else, it deserves to be seen for Christie Burson’s performance as Meg and for that beautiful house.

 

Film Review: Judgment (dir by Andre Van Heerden)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

After three previous movies that all dealt with the growing power of Franco Macalousso (Nick Mancuso) and the revolution spearheaded by former journalist Helen Hannah (Leigh Lewis), the Apocalypse saga finally came to a close with the 2001 film, Judgment.

One of the more interesting things about the Apocalypse franchise is that each film was done in the style of a different genre.  Apocalypse was pretty much a straight-forward, faith-based film.  Revelation attempted to be an action film.  Tribulation was a horror film.  Meanwhile, Judgment is a courtroom drama, complete with a witnesses, objections, a corrupt judge, two former lovers turned legal adversaries, and a verdict.  Of course, the verdict itself is never in question.

Helen Hannah has finally been captured by O.N.E.  (That stands for One Nation Earth.)  Instead of just executing her like he does everyone else, Macalousso wants to put her on trial.  He wants to humiliate her while the entire world is watching.  He wants a show trial.  Mitch Kendrick (Corbin Bernsen), who father was a preacher who was executed after a previous show trial, is assigned to serve as Helen’s defense attorney,  Prosecuting the case is Victoria Thorne (Jessica Steen), who is Mitch’s former lover and one of the few people to know that Mitch has a fake mark of the beast on his hand.  Victoria believes that taking part in the trial will finally bring Mitch fully over to the side of Macalousso.

The trial has been carefully scripted out but, to everyone’s shock, Mitch refuses to follow the script.  Instead, he says that Helen cannot be punished because she has only been doing what her God told her to do so, therefore, God should be on trial instead of Helen.  Macalousso decides that he actually likes the idea of putting God on trial so he agrees to let Mitch do his thing.

Meanwhile, a revolutionary named  J.T. (Mr. T) is making plans to bust Helen out of prison but he finds himself frustrated by Helen’s aversion to violence.  J.T. just wants to break into the court and shoot everyone.  “There’s another way,” everyone keeps telling him….

Judgment is the best of the Apocalypse films, which may not be saying much when you consider how bad the other films are.  That said, Leigh Lewis had considerably improved as an actress by the time that she appeared in this film and Corbin Bernsen gives a good performance as a man torn between doing the right thing or doing what he has to do to keep himself safe.  Jessica Steen and Michael Copeman (as the Judge) bring a little bit more nuance than expected to their roles and Nick Mancuso is properly charismatic and smug as Franco Macalousso.  For a faith-based film, Judgment is not particularly preachy and I appreciated the fact that the film’s message was ultimately one of peaceful resistance.  Unfortunately, the film is also about 20 minutes too long.  It clocks in at 102 minutes and there are some parts of this film that seriously dragged.

As I’ve said about the previous Apocalypse films, Judgment actually works better as a political film than a religious tract.  The film presents Franco Macalousso as being the Beast but he could just as easily be seen as the ultimate symbol of collectivism.  When it’s announced that Helen is being prosecuted for the crime of “Hatred of the Human Race” and when witnesses in the court swear an oath to the “unity of all people,” it’s not a subtle moment but it’s a lot of fun for those viewers who tend to value personal freedom over the demands of the collective.

Judgment was the final Apocalypse film, though it doesn’t really bring the overall story to a close.  Tomorrow, we’ll bring our look at the apocalypse to a close with a look at the — God help us — Left Behind series.

Film Review: Tribulation (dir by Andre Van Heerden)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Apocalypse saga continues with 2000’s Tribulation!  This is the film that answers the question: How do you get an outspoken atheist and a prominent Jewish entertainer to star in your evangelical Christian propaganda film?  Apparently, you do it by not revealing what type of film that you’re making.

At least, that’s what Margot Kidder said happened.  In an interview with the AV Club, Kidder said that neither she nor Howie Mandel realized that they were appearing in a Christian film until they got on the set, looked at the complete script, and asked why Kidder’s character mysteriously vanished from the film.  According to Kidder, this was a film that she did because she was broke, she couldn’t get a job because she had a reputation for being difficult, and she was offered a lot of money to go up to Toronto for a week and shoot a few scenes.  And so, Kidder, who was not a fan of religion in general, was cast as Eileen Canboro, the outspoken Christian who tries to teach everyone about the rapture.

To quote Kidder: “And I still get stopped by those freaky fundamentalists going “Oh, I’m so glad you did Tribulation.” And I wanna go, “Don’t count me into your group, honeybuns. I’m not one of you.”

As for the film itself, it stars Gary Busey as Tom Canboro, a police detective who is indifferent to religion.  His brother-in-law is Jason Quincy (Howie Mandel), an occultist who, early on in the film, gets possessed by a bunch of Satanists.  The film never really makes it clear why Jason was possessed, beyond I guess to warn against using Ouija boards or reading New Age literature.  After Jason is briefly possessed, the Satanists decide that they have to kill everyone who saw him possessed so that no one learns of their existence.  (But it seems like it would have just been simpler to not possess anyone in the first place.)  All of this leads to Tom eventually slipping into a coma.  Don’t ask how.  It just does.

While Tom’s out of it, the events of the first two movies happen.  Franco Manculousso (Nick Mancuso) magically rids the world of nuclear missiles and declares himself to be the messiah.  Millions of people — including Margot Kidder — mysteriously vanish.  An underground rebellion — labeled “The Haters” by Manculousso — forms against the one world government.  Everyone in the world is given a VR headset that will allow Manculousso to either kill them or steal their soul by giving them the mark of the beast.

(In this film, getting the mark of the beast means that you literally end up with 666 tattooed on your hand.  One thing I always find interesting about films like this is how they take everything in Biblical prophecy so literally.  For instance, 7 is the number of God so therefore it makes sense that the number of the Beast’s number would be 6 because the Beast will always be powerful but ultimately inferior.  He’ll be “one away” from God.  However, films like this always feature people wandering around with 666 prominently displayed on their body and oddly, no one ever says, “Hey, have you ever seen that Omen movie?”)

Anyway, Tom eventually wakes up and finds himself trapped in this brand new world.  It turns out that his sole remaining brother is now prominent follower of Manculousso’s and Jason is now involved in the Hater underground.  A few characters from the previous films pop up, largely so they can be executed by Manculousso.  You know how it goes.

Anyway, if Apocalypse was basically a found footage film and Revelation was an action film, Tribulation is a horror film, complete with demonic possession, exploding heads, and virtual reality snakes.  It’s also a bit slow — it takes forever for Tom to actually enter that coma — but it has a few effective scenes.  Howie Mandel, for instance, really throws himself into being possessed.  As for Gary Busey, Margot Kidder said in that previously cited interview that he was a “pain in the ass” to work with but he actually gives a …. well, I don’t know if it’s really a good performance but it’s definitely interesting.  He’s credible during the first half of the film and then, during the second half of the film, he seems to be genuinely confused.  There’s a few weird moments where he smiles when he definitely shouldn’t be smiling but otherwise, Busey’s okay in this film.

There would be one more film in the Apocalypse saga, Judgment.  I’ll be posting a review of that film in 15 minutes.  Hope to see you there!

Film Review: Revelation (dir by André van Heerden)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The world which started to end in the 1998 film Apocalypse continues to end in its first sequel, 1999’s Revelation!

Revelation beings three months after the end of Apocalypse.  The people of the world worship the president of the European Union, Franco Macalousso (Nick Mancuso, replacing Sam Bornstein from the first film).   The world is ruled over by O.N.E., which stands for One Nation Earth.  Those who oppose Macalousso’s claim to the messiah are known as “The Haters.”  At the start of the film, a school bus has been bombed and all of the children aboard have been killed.  O.N.E. claims that the Haters bombed the bus but counterterrorist agent Thorold Stone (Jeff Fahey) comes across evidence that it was actually an inside job.  When Macalousso’s second-in-command, Len Parker (David Roddis), attempts to murder Thorold, he’s forced to go on the run.

The Day of Wonders is approaching.  On this day, everyone on Earth is to put on a VR headset.  Macalousso hasn’t made clear what the headset will do but everyone’s planning on doing it because Macalousso has told them to do it and everyone on the planet does what Macalousso says.  Thorold tracks down Willy Spino (Tony Nappa), a wheelchair-bound programmer (in the 90s sense of the term, of course) who is somehow involved with setting up The Day of Wonders.  Willy says that O.N.E. is not the benevolent organization that everyone thinks it is.  You would have thought that Thorald would have figured that out after Parker attempted to kill him but Thorald remains convinced that Maclousso is the messiah and that his wife and daughter previously vanished not because they were Christians but because they were abducted by aliens.

Anyway, long story short, it turns out that Willy’s stepsister is Helen Hannah (Leigh Lewis), the news anchor from the first film.  Helen is now a leader in the Hater underground.  While she tries to convince Thorold that Macalousso is actually the Devil, Willy spends his time flirting with a cynical blind woman named Cindy (Carol Alt).  Both Willy and Cindy find themselves tempted to put on the VR headset, just to see what the Day of Wonders will hold for them….

Revelation is a marked improvement on Apocalypse though, considering how shoddy the production of that first film was, that’s really not saying much.  As opposed to the first film’s stiff performances and reliance on stock footage, Revelation features actual actors, actual sets, and an actual script.  There’s even a few action sequences and some attempts at intentional humor.  That said, if you’re a nonbeliever, Revelation isn’t going to convert you and, about halfway through the film, all of the action stops so that Thorold and Hannah can have a very long discussion about faith and whether or not God should prove his existence by turning over a glass of water.

Like the first film, Revelation actually works better as a political allegory than a religious tract.  Today, it’s kind of easy to laugh at the bulky computers that fill O.N.E.’s headquarters and the scenes where Willy carefully explains what virtual reality and computer viruses are serve as a reminder that, apparently, there was a time when all of this stuff was still viewed as being somehow exotic.  I mean, it’s easy to be snarky about this movie.  But let’s be honest — it’s probably easier today than it was when this film was first released to imagine a world where everyone blindly does whatever the government tells them to do.  And the idea of a group running a false flag operation — like blowing up a school bus and blaming it on unseen enemies — no longer seems quite as outlandish as it perhaps did it 1999.

Revelation was apparently enough of a success that it was followed by yet another sequel.  This one was called Tribulation and I’ll be posting a review of it in about 15 minutes.  Hope to see you then!

 

Film Review: Apocalypse (dir by Peter Gerretsen)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1998 Biblical prophecy film, Apocalypse, the world ends not with a bang but with stock footage.  Lots and lots of stock footage.

Admittedly, I’m being a bit snarky about Apocalypse‘s reliance on stock footage but it’s actually kind of understandable.  When you’re trying to convincingly end the world on a budget, it just makes sense to borrow someone else’s footage of a plane exploding than going through the trouble (and expense) of buying a plane and blowing it up yourself.  The two main characters in Apocalypse are both anchorpeople for a 24-hours new channel called WNN.  Because they’re constantly reporting on the end of the world, the stock footage is portrayed as being a part of their report.  That’s kind of clever but it’s also really icky.  For instance, there’s a clip of a woman sobbing in front of an angry crowd.  We’re told that the woman is sobbing because her relatives have mysteriously vanished but, because the footage is in focus and the camera is held steady, we know that we’re actually watching stock footage.  Which means that this woman truly was crying about something but we don’t know what.  It’s hard not to feel that the filmmakers essentially took her pain and used it for their own advantage.  By that same token, when we’re shown people rioting in the streets and getting attacked by police, we’re told that it’s because the world is about to end but we know that there was another real reason why those people were rioting and it’s doubtful that any of those rioting people ever thought to themselves, “Hmmm….I wonder if this footage of me getting chased by the police will ever somehow appear in a propaganda film that has nothing to do with what I’m risking injury to protest about?”

The main characters of Apocalypse are Bronson Pearl (Richard Nester) and Helen Hannah (Leigh Lewis).  Bronson Pearl is the most trusted man in the world.  We know this because there’s a shot of a Time Magazine cover declaring that Bronson is the “Man of the Year.”  (It must have been a slow year.)  When the president of the European Union, Franco Macalusso (Sam Bornstein), announces that 1) he has magically vaporized every nuclear missile on the planet mere moments before Earth went up in a nuclear fireball and 2) he’s the true messiah, Bronson is enthusiastic but Helen has her doubts.  Those doubts are caused by the mysterious disappearance of millions of people across the globe.  One minute, they’re there.  The next minute, they’ve vanished and left behind a pile of neatly folded clothes.  Before Helen’s aunt disappeared, she organized a box of VHS tapes for Helen to watch.  The tapes feature footage of televangelists interpreting prophecy, which of course means that it’s time for more stock footage!

Anyway, you can guess where all of this is leading.  Over the course of six days, the world goes from being on the brink of nuclear war to being ruled over by Franco Macalusso.  Everyone sacrifices their individual freedom so that Maclusso can keep them “safe” and Macalusso even takes over WNN and turns the news channel into his own personal propaganda outlet.  In some ways, this film does feel a bit prophetic.  In the years since this film was first released, news channels have become propaganda outlets and people have started to look to their political leaders as being messianic figures.  In fact, I’d argue that Apocalypse works better as a warning against authoritarianism than it does as a biblical tract.

Which isn’t to say that Apocalypse actually works.  This is a low-budget and stiffly acted film and, as I said before, the use of stock footage of real disasters to stand-in for fictional disasters is undeniably icky.  It’s one of those films that was made for an evangelical audience and which seems to be more concerned with taunting nonbelievers than with actually trying to be dramatically convincing.  Still, if your natural instinct is to distrust authority, you’ll probably find a lot to relate to in Apocalypse‘s not-quite paranoid vision of people being brainwashed into accepting dictatorship.

Or you might just view the film as being a tribute to the power and convenience of stock footage.  I guess it all depends on how you look at it.

Smokey and the Bandit (1977, directed by Hal Needham)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

 

Smokey and the Bandit is a simple film. Burt Reynolds is the Bandit. He’s hired by two bored brothers to smuggle beer from Texas to Georgia. Working with the Snowman (Jerry Reed), Bandit is easily able to pick up the beer but it’s while driving back that the two of them run afoul Smokey, a.k.a. Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason, who reportedly improvised most of his profane lines). Bandit also picks up a hitchhiker and runaway bride (Sally Field) who he calls Frog.

There’s not much to Smokey and the Bandit. The Bandit has an incredibly cool car and he drives really fast. Snowman is funny and has a dog. Smokey has a dumb son and is constantly threatening to hit people.   It’s a dumb movie but it works.   The cars are fast, the crashes are spectacular, and the entire film is the perfect daydream for when you’re sitting in your office at work and wondering whether there’s something more rewarding you could be doing with your life.

Who hasn’t wanted to the Bandit at some point in their life?

Who hasn’t wanted to get behind the wheel of black trans am and just take off, driving down country roads while giving the slip to old Smoky and joking with Snowman on your CB radio and maybe picking up a young Sally Field while smuggling beer and winning a bet?

(There’s been a lot of terrible moments on The Family Guy but, for me, one of the absolute worst was when Brian Griffin went into the past and asked 70s Burt Reynolds, “So, you’re going to go get some of that hot Sally Field action, huh?” Anyone who has seen Smokey and the Bandit knows that Sally Field was smoking hot back in 1977!)

Smokey and the Bandit comes to us from a different time. No one worries about what speeding halfway across the country in a little over 24 hours is doing to the environment. No one apologizes for who they are or where they’re from. The Bandit lives by a simple rule: Treat him with respect and he’ll treat you with respect. Talk down to him or try to tell him what to do and the Bandit’s just going to jump in his car and leave you standing in a cloud of dust.

During the latter part of his career, Burt Reynolds would often lament that appearing in financially successful but critically lambasted films like Smokey and the Bandit made him a huge star but also kept him from getting the type of roles that he felt he deserved. Reynolds was right but there are worse things than being known as The Bandit.   For many, Burt Reynolds will always be the Bandit because he was so perfectly cast for the role. Not many actors could pull off the scene where, after fooling a cop, the Bandit looks straight at the camera and grins. Burt Reynolds could. Playing the Bandit may have never won Burt Reynolds an Academy Award but it did make him an American icon.

If you’re feeling down, watch Smokey and the Bandit. If you need an escape, watch Smokey and the Bandit. It demands so little and gives so much.

Film Review: A Thief In The Night (dir by Donald W. Thompson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1972, A Thief In The Night is one of the most successful independent films ever made.

Shot in Iowa with a largely amateur cast, A Thief In The Night was made for a budget of $68,000.  During the first decade of its release, it made a profit of 4.2 million dollars.  Interestingly enough, the film itself rarely played in theaters and the majority of the money came from donations made by the members of the audience.  Consider that.  Audiences had the opportunity to watch the movie for free and still chose to pay.  People were either extremely generous in the 70s or the film’s target audience really responded to it.

In a 1989 interview, the film’s producer estimated that the film had been seen by 100 million people.  By the time the 2010s rolled around, that number had grown to 300 million.  Though the film never got much attention from the mainstream press, it was a big enough success to spawn three sequels and to also inspire countless other films that dealt with the same themes as this film.

As for what the film’s about, it opens with Patty (played by Patty Dunning) waking up and discovering that her husband has disappeared.  (His razor is sitting in the sink, almost as if he had been holding it before suddenly vanishing into thin air.)  Over the radio, she hears reports that people all over the world have disappeared!  Religious scholars are saying that perhaps the rapture has happened.  Interestingly, those religious scholars have apparently been left behind and …. wait a minute!  Patty’s been left behind too!

The first half of the film is full of flashbacks to Patty’s childhood and how she first met and married Jim Wright (Mike Niday).  Interestingly enough, the flashbacks don’t necessarily play out in chronological order, which gives the entire first half of the film a stream-of-consciousness feel.  We also get a somewhat random scene of Jim getting bitten by what appears to be a cobra.  It feels like one of those things where you simply don’t turn down the chance to put a cobra in your film.  If you’ve got a snake, you use it.  And the first half of the film actually works surprising well.  The low-budget and the random flashbacks and even the rather amateurish acting make the entire film feel like something of a fever dream.

During the second half of the film, the UN takes over the world and everyone is required to get the mark of the beast.  Patty doesn’t want to get the mark but it turns out that those without the mark can’t shop for food or buy the latest fashions.  Eventually, soldiers start to round up the unmarked and, before you know it, Patty is being chased through Des Moines by not only the United Nations but also by all of her friends, who now have the mark.  Eventually, Patty ends up on a bridge with only two possible options.  Either get the mark or jump.  As opposed to the unconventional first half of the film, the second half is basically one long chase scene and it does get a bit repetitive after a while.  That said, it’s kind of interesting to see someone being chased through downtown Des Moines as opposed to downtown New York or Los Angeles.

A Thief In The Night is undeniably crude and it gets a bit heavy on the preaching.  Patty is continually told that it’s not good enough to just be a Christian.  She has to be a super Christian or she’ll get left behind.  I would think that would make anyone either extremely neurotic or extremely cynical.  But if you can overlook the film’s preachiness, it’s a crudely effective in a dream-like way.  You can tell that the filmmakers must have spent some time at the drive-in and that maybe they watched Night of the Living Dead when they weren’t in church because they whole film is full of skewed camera angles and abrupt jump cuts with a good deal of emphasis being put on Patty’s newly isolated status.  In more ways than one, the film was obviously designed to scare the Hell out of its target audience.

A Thief in the Night works best when viewed as being a filmed fever dream.  It’s crude but effective.

Film Review: Years of the Beast (dir by D. Paul Thomas)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This low-budget 1981 film opens with a professor, Stephen Miles (Gary Bayer), giving his last lecture at Seattle’s University of Washington.  He’s been laid off from his job.  He’s depressed.  The students around him don’t seem to be interested in anything that he has to say.  The world seems to be plunging deeper and deeper into chaos.  Society seems to be collapsing.  Stephen just can’t understand why everything just seems to be getting so bad.

Having taught his last class, Stephen walks across campus and drops in on his friend, Dr. Carl Kilneman (Malcolm McCaimen).  Dr. Kilneman says that things may look bad now but they’re only going to get worse.  He then talks about how his research has led to him discovering that every bad thing in the world was previously predicted by the Bible.  Stephen starts to laugh him off but he’s interrupted by what sounds like an overhead explosion.  Suddenly, Dr. Kilneman has vanished.

Dr. Kilneman is not the only person who has vanished.  In fact, every believer in the world has vanished.  Without any Christians around telling people how to behave, it doesn’t take long for Seattle to descend into chaos.  (Seattle in chaos?  Well, it was bound to happen someday….)  Soon, people are raiding the grocery stores and roving bands of frat boys are flooding the streets, openly drinking beer and smoking weed….

Yes, I know that actually kind of sounds like the sort of stuff that happens everyday and not just in Seattle but you have to remember that this film is from 1981 and, from what I can tell, it was apparently mostly shown to church groups.  So, for the time, maybe it was shocking….

Anyway, Stephen and his wife, June (Alana Rader), decide to go out to June’s father’s farm.  They manage to get out of Seattle and probably not a minute to soon as Seattle itself is soon wiped off the face of the planet by a storm of biblical proportions.  When Stephen and June reach the farm, they discover that her father has vanished.  They also meet up with one of the farmhands, Gary (Jerry Houser) and a young woman named Cindy (Sarah Reed), who needs a place to stay.

Meanwhile, with the world in chaos, an enigmatic man known as the Prime Minister (Michael Amber) takes control and promises to bring peace to the planet but only if people agree to follow him and be branded with a special mark.  At one point, the Prime Minister gets shot in the head and then comes back to life a few days later so …. well, we all know what that means.

Stephen, June, Gary, and Cindy do not want to take the mark so they go running into the wilderness.  Pursuing them is the local sheriff (James Blendick), who is determined to make sure that the law is followed even if the law is being written by Satan.

Years of the Beast is a bit of an oddity.  On the one hand, it’s an extremely low-budget film and the pace is often painfully slow.  One of the reasons why the film’s destruction of Seattle is so much fun to watch is because the special effects are so extremely cheap that they’re almost charming but, at the same time, the film’s narrative momentum dies right after the city.  Unlike a lot of faith-based film, the cast was made up of character actors who actually had a career in mainstream cinema so, on the whole, the performances are better than you might expect to find in a film like this but, at the same time, none of the characters have much depth.  They start out as nonbelievers and then they become believers and that’s pretty much it as far as their characterization tends to go.  I liked the fact that the outwardly friendly Sheriff was actually a fascist but that has more to do with my own natural distrust of authority than anything else.

At the same time, if you’re looking for a time capsule of tacky 80s fashion and interior design, Years of the Beast will deliver.  I especially liked the interior of Stephen and June’s home in Seattle, which was basically so bland that it become oddly fascinating.  Actually, oddly fascinating is a good way to describe the entire film.  It’s hard not to enjoy epic film making at discount prices.  It’s almost like a bit of outsider art.  For all of its flaws, it did get made and it apparently did play in theaters and now, nearly 40 years later, it can still be found on YouTube.  Such is the power of cinema.

 

Film Review: The Watchers — Revelation (dir by Tom Dallis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As I watched the 2013 film, The Watchers: Revelation, three words kept going through my head:

Threat Level Midnight

Yes, I was thinking about Michael Scott’s infamous amateur film from The Office, in which the fact that Michael obviously knew how to move a camera and compose a shot could not cover up a ton of awkward dialogue and a plot that appeared to have been made up on the spot.  Like Threat Level Midnight, The Watchers: Revelation is very ambitious and even features not one but two presidential meetings.  (The film opens in the 50s with someone who I guess is meant to be Dwight Eisenhower and it ends in the near future, with a President named Connolly.)  Like Threat Level Midnight, the film features some rudimentary special effects that are actually kind of impressive when you consider the fact that the film was obviously made for very little money.  And, like Threat Level Midnight, the story is next to impossible to follow.

The film makes the familiar case that, since at least the 1950s, otherworldly beings have been meeting with world leaders and supplying them with weaponry and technological advances.  In this case, there’s two sets of beings.  One group is evil and one group is good and the challenge of the film is to keep track of which is which.  The film also suggests that these beings are not, as many assume, aliens but are actually the Watchers, the angels who were assigned to watch over Earth and who betrayed God’s trust by sleeping with human women and creating the Nephilim.  (It’s in the Books of Enoch, people!  Not to mention Darren Aronofsky’s Noah.)

Anyway, in this one, Ambassador Addon (Eugene Pridgett) leaves Earth in 1955 after warning President Eisenhower that his people are not happy about mankind’s warlike nature and or their ambitions to leave the planet and explore the universe.  Much as in The Day The Earth Stood Still, Addon warns about spreading Earth culture to other planets.  We then jump forward several decades, to the discovery of an ancient tablet that appears to prove that aliens did visit Earth and did share technology with early humans.

Dr. Peter Kenner (Titus Young Wolverton) is a scientist who has no faith in God but does believe in ancient alien visitation.  His uncle, Joshua Sanders (David Gaylor), is a scientist who retains his faith in God and, as a result, he and Peter don’t really have much to do with each other.  However, they are brought together by nine year-old Kara Pennington (Carissa Dallis), who can read ancient Hebrew and who, for some reason, the aliens want to abduct.  Seeking to protect Kara is her mother (Katlin Lory) and a mysterious man named Ethan (Tyler Trent).  It all eventually leads to a battle in a warehouse because these things always do….

To be honest, the plot is pretty much impossible to follow.  There’s a lot of scenes of people chasing each other but you’re never quite sure why.  There’s also some political conspiracy intrigue that never really seems to come together.  At the same time, the film is made with such enthusiasm and is so earnest in its attempts to be a sci-fi epic despite not having an epic budget that, much like Threat Level Midnight, it’s hard not to like it.  Sometimes, you really do have to appreciate the effort.

Film Review: Denounced: Rise of the Horsemen (dir by Stephen C. Bortsalas)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2017 film, Denounced, opens with a man named Paul (Sean Hart) in the wilderness.

Just one look at Paul is all you need to know that he’s seen some stuff.  He’s tall and physically imposing with a haunted stare and a scarred face.  He’s wearing a dark uniform, one that identifies him as being a member of some sort of paramilitary force.  Because Paul is now alone, it’s easy to guess that he must be a deserter of some sort.  But what did he desert and why?

Paul eventually meets two other people in the wilderness, a man and a woman.  They’re all trying to escape from something.  The man talks about how, on the night of an event that’s referred to as being “the vanishing,” he was on the verge of committing suicide.  The woman talks about how she was a drug addict. And finally, Paul starts to open up about his past life….

And, at this point, you’ve probably already guesses what this movie is about, haven’t you?  Yes, “the vanishing” was the Rapture and yes, Paul was a part of a paramilitary force that was working for the Antichrist.  Motivated by the anger of losing his entire family (they all vanished while he didn’t), Paul joined the Horsemen and spent months killing believers and other dissidents.  After finally coming to realize that he had surrendered himself to his hate, Paul refused to continue killing.  Now, Paul is hiding in the wilderness and obsessing on whether or not someone who has done the evil things that he’s done can ever truly be redeemed.

I know that at least a few of our readers are probably rolling their eyes already but Denounced is actually a surprisingly well-made film.  While the low-budget is evident in nearly every frame, director Stephen C. Bortsalas is still able to create a properly ominous and paranoid atmosphere throughout the film.  He gets a lot of help from Sean Hart, who comes across as being genuinely haunted in the lead role.  Including this film, Hart only has two credits on the imdb so I don’t know if he’s a trained actor or if he’s just a talented amateur but, in the role of Paul, he has the haunted eyes of someone who has lost everything that he once cared about.  He’s sympathetic in the present-day scenes and intimidating in the past scenes and you do hope for the best for his character.

Denounced is also a surprisingly brutal film, though every act of violence is justified by the film’s storyline.  One lengthy scene features more dismemberment than you would probably ever expect to see in a low-budget, faith-based film.  Heads and hands are graphically chopped off and it’s far more effective than I would have expected it to be.  So many films would have just had Paul say that he had done some terrible things and left it that.  This film shows you in details just what exactly those things were but it’s not gratuitous violence.  Instead, it’s very necessary to our understanding of who Paul is and why he’s now so haunted by his actions.

Though I imagine it will be best appreciated by people who already share its world-view, Denounced is a surprisingly effective apocalyptic film.