Quick Review: Iron Man 3 (dir. by Shane Black)

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Leonard Wilson

It’s kind of hard to write about Iron Man 3 without giving much away, so this will be kind of condensed. If there’s one thing to learn about Iron Man in Iron Man 3, it’s that the events of the Avengers are really weighing down on Tony Stark. While the movie is more of a stand alone feature than being one part of a larger tale (like the first two leading up to Marvel’s The Avengers), it still manages to be a piece of a puzzle in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It just happens to be one of those corner pieces. It’s not meant to be viewed the way the others are seen, but still manages to pack a punch.

Taking over the reigns of directing from Jon Favreau’s work on the first two films is Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s Shane Black. Black brings the witty dialogue and buddy partnership from those film into Iron Man 3 with ease, though the story does take some liberties with the comic.

The movie finds Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) unable to sleep or relax much since the New York Incident, having spent a bit of time in a wormhole and a separate dimension for a few minutes. This has left him with panic attacks as well as doing a lot of research in his workshop. This includes a new improvement to the Iron Man suit that allows him to call it piece by piece when needed, which was a nice touch. As a result of the world finding out that we’re not the center of the universe, they upgraded the War Machine and Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) to the Iron Patriot. The Iron Patriot acts as the first line of defense, which is just in time, considering that a new threat looms on the horizon in the form of The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley). Through televised declarations and using the same circular pattern from the terrorist group that captured Tony Stark in the first film, The Mandarin pledges to destroy all the President (William Sadler) holds dear.

So, the basis of Iron Man 3 is whether Tony Stark can get past what scared and changed him in The Avengers, stop the terrorism of the Mandarin while still finding a way to protect Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Let’s first start with any problems before we get to the good stuff – because there’s a lot of great things about Iron Man 3. First off, the movie hasn’t any kind of interaction either from any of the other Avengers or from S.H.I.E.L.D. In any form. This isn’t a bad thing, as the story isn’t about them, but at the same time, it could come off as being expected given everything we saw in The Avengers. For me, personally, I was hoping for more of a connection, but it’s not terrible that it doesn’t exist.

Secondly, the women in the movie aren’t flushed out very well. You won’t find anyone on the level of Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) in Captain America here. While Rebecca Hall’s Maya Hansen has an important role in the movie, her screen time is really minimal. Given she’s a scientist, I’m not sure there was a whole lot for her to do, but Elizabeth Shue was a scientist in The Saint and she was all over that movie. Paltrow also takes something of a back seat to Downey and even to Favreau, who returns as Happy Hogan. Instead of concentrating on the girls, they introduced a new individual in the form of a kid. It works to some degree, but kind of felt like filler in some ways until they could get to a point where some action was taken.

For me, outside of these two elements, those are the only real problems with Iron Man 3 for someone unfamiliar with the comic book canon (like myself). If you read Iron Man on a regular basis and know all the characters, you may be really upset at where it goes, because the adaptation in some way really veers off from the comics. Veers off on the levels of Organic Web Shooters in Spider-Man, that kind of deep.

Now for the fun stuff.

What Iron Man 3 does really well is the way it handles the connections and interactions between the characters. Between Black’s and Pacific Rim writer Drew Pearce. The film basically has the same snap as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and the final confrontation takes place in a location similar to Lethal Weapon II. Between Downey’s narration, James Badge Dale’s (who should get a run at being a comic hero or villain sometime) attitude and the action sequences, the film moves pretty well. Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian was cool. While I liked his character a lot, there were a few elements that were over the top. Kingsley’s Mandarin definitely works for the film, but the direction the story goes is a little weird.

Overall, Iron Man 3 is a fun ride for anyone following the Iron Man movies, and is an overall stronger film than the first. The lack of a direct teaser taste for the next Avengers film and a story shift that could upset die-hard comic fans threaten to hurt the story, but it makes up for it (I feel) by at least giving the story a sense of escalation. If Iron Man 2 was about Tony’s efforts in keeping his technology out of the government’s hands, Iron Man 3 would show why it was important. I wouldn’t mind seeing where this all goes.

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night #80: A Mother’s Rage (dir by Oren Kaplan)

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I turned the TV over to the Lifetime Movie Network and I watched A Mother’s Rage.

Why Was I Watching It?

First off, it was on the Lifetime Movie Network and, as anyone who knows me can tell you, I am an LMN fanatic. Seriously, there’s nothing I love more than watching a good, silly Lifetime movie.

Secondly, just the title, A Mother’s Rage, is so melodramatic and over-the-top. Just hearing that title, I knew this movie would be the epitome of everything I usually love about a good Lifetime movie.

What Was It About?

After her daughter is murdered, Rebecca Mayer (Lori Loughlin) sets out to find the man responsible. Driving across a desolate desert highway and hallucinating that her daughter (Jordan Hinson) is still alive, Rebecca murders every man that she comes across.

Fortunately, all of these men happen to be rather scummy but still, the local police are determined to catch Rebecca and stop her trail of a murder. Sheriff Emily Tobin (Kristen Dalton) pursues Rebecca with the help of her own teenaged daughter (played by Alix Elizabeth Gitter).

What Worked?

Lori Loughlin and Jordan Hinson were well cast as mother and ghost daughter and, for the first 20 minutes or so, the movie did a pretty good job of keeping you guessing as to whether or not Hinson was real or if she was just a hallucination.

Over the course of the film, Loughlin did murder a few people but, fortunately, everyone she killed was so sleazy that she still managed to remain a sympathetic character.

What Did Not Work?

Even by the melodramatic standards of Lifetime, A Mother’s Rage was not a very believable story. Plot holes abound and the film’s final scenes were so sloppily edited that the film’s imdb message board is full of people still trying to figure out what exactly happened at the end of the movie.

One huge issue that I had with this film was that Lori Loughlin essentially murders several people in broad daylight and yet, somehow, there are never any witnesses. Seriously, Loughlin apparently managed to find the least traveled highway in America.

Then again, it was a Lifetime movie and therefore, it all worked. Criticizing a Lifetime movie for being melodramatic is like criticizing a kitten for being cute.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

Lori Loughlin’s daughter is described as being an aspiring dancer who had a massively overprotective mother and, seriously, how could I not relate to that? Meanwhile, Kristen Dalton’s daughter spends her time stealing crime scene photographs and trying to solve crimes and again, how could I not relate? Seriously, there were times when this entire film seemed like one big “Oh my God! Just like me!” moment.

Lessons Learned

I will apparently watch anything that shows up on Lifetime.

Grindhouse Classics : “Pick-Up”

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

One word that doesn’t usually (if ever) come to mind when you’re talking about the drive-in fare churned out by Crown International Pictures in the 1970s is weird.

Yeah, okay, fair enough — I suppose just about any CIP flick looks a little bit “weird” to a contemporary audience, given that they’re all very much products of their time, but honestly, pretty much everything released under their banner boils down, story-wise, to a simple morality play with a generous helping of sex (always) and violence (sometimes) thrown in — and more often than not, as with most exploitation fare, the most common themes in the Crown back catalog are “don’t set your sights above your station in life” and “don’t talk to strangers.”

At first glance, 1975’s Pick-Up, directed (and produced, and shot, and edited) by Bernard Hirschenson, would appear to fit comfortably into the “don;t talk to strangers” category, since it’s the story of two footloose-and-fancy-free hippie chicks named Carol (Jill Senter) and Maureen (Gini Eastwood — no relation, at least that I know of, to you-know-who), who hitch a ride across Florida with a far-out guy named Chuck (Alan Long) who is, like them, at loose ends and just “taking in what the world has to offer, one day at a time, man” in his fuck-pad RV.

Come on — he’s gotta be trouble, right? I mean, he’s an Aries, and according to the supposedly-metaphysically-tuned-in Maureen, Aries guys are bad news these days because of some state of flux going on in the universe or something. Still, the girls hop in for a ride anyway —

Trouble eventually does come their way, but Chuck isn’t the cause. After a deluge, the RV gets stuck in the Everglades mud, and that’s when things, as I promised at the outset, get weird. Chuck and Carol get busy screwing their brains out, but Maureen in between reading star charts and tarot cards and having waking (and sleeping) visions of her childhood, is visited by Pythia, a priestess of Apollo, who gives her a sacred dagger for some reason or other. And if you think that sounds strange, wait until the slimy politician and latex-faced clown show up.

Okay, yeah, none of this makes a tremendous amount of narrative sense — or even common sense — but it sure is interesting. It turns out that Maureen was molested by a priest as a child (guess they were into girls in the ’70s) and this is at the root of her psychological disturbances, which culminate in quite possibly the most bizarre scene (of many contenders) in the film, where she and Chuck finally “make it” on a stone altar with the clown, the politician, and the priestess watching on. And all this right after Chuck kills a wild boar (be warned, this film does feature genuine animal slaughter, although hardly of Cannibal Holocaust proportions) What does it all mean? Who knows. And honestly, who really cares? Pick-Up was clearly made with the stoner crowd in mind and, frankly, was probably made by members of the stoner crowd, as well. It’s all good, man. Just go with the flow.

There are some notable things to point out in relation to this film while we have a moment — the Florida Everglades locations are authentic, and were probably an absolute bitch to film in (good thing everybody was probably high), and both Senter and Eastwood are not only reasonably talented actresses, but absolutely gorgeous, as well — yet neight ever made another film. Go figure.

Like most of the Crown stuff we’ve covered both here and at my “main” site — http://trashfilmguru.wordpress.com , for those of you who don’t know — Pick-Up is available on Mill Creek’s 12-disc, 32-movie “Drive-In Cult Classics” DVD boxed set collection. There are no extras, but the remastered widescreen transfer looks surprisingly crisp and clean and the mono sound is, at the very least, perfectly adequate. This may not be the best film in the collection by any stretch, nor is it the most fun, but it’s definitely one of the most interesting, and it’s well worth the 80 minutes of your life it takes to watch it.

Is Upstream Color The Best Film of 2013?

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Minor Spoilers Ahead)

Is Upstream Color, the new film from Shane Carruth, the best film of 2013?

Realistically, it’s probably too early to say. After all, it’s only April and there’s a lot of films waiting to be released. However, it’s hard for me to imagine how a more thought-provoking, haunting, and occasionally frustrating film could be released this year.

Don’t get me wrong. A lot of viewers aren’t going to embrace this low budget, independently made film. Some will dismiss Upstream Color as being pretentious or they’ll incorrectly assume that the film is all about style over substance. Even in this age of Tree of Life and Beasts of the Southern Wild, Upstream Color is not the type of film that’ll be embraced come Oscar time.

But no matter. As of right now, Upstream Color is the best film of 2013.

Director Shane Carruth made his directorial debut in 2004 with Primer. Made on a budget of $7,000 and filmed in my hometown of Dallas, Primer was a low-key but intriguing film about time travel. It was a science fiction film that succeeded not through CGI but through an intelligent presentation of ideas. I have to admit that I’ve watched Primer a handful of times and I still don’t quite understand everything that happens in the film. However, that’s a huge part of the film’s appeal.

The same can be said of Upstream Color.

Playing out like a mash-up of David Cronenberg and Terrence Malick and told through a series of jump cuts, Upstream Color begins with Kris (Amy Seimitz), a successful young woman who is kidnapped by an enigmatic figure known as the Thief (Thiago Martins). The Thief uses a drug made out of orchid larvae to hijack her mind. Once she has given him all of her money, the Thief vanishes while the larva continues to grow in Kris’s body.

A mysterious man identified in the credits as The Sampler (played quite brilliantly by Andrew Sensenig) comes to Kris’s aid. As Kris lies unconscious in a tent, The Sampler cuts the larva out of her body and then puts it into the body of a pig. The pig is set loose in a pen with hundreds of other pigs who apparently carry larvae in their bodies. Kris, meanwhile, wakes up the next morning in her car with no memory of why she’s covered in blood, why she’s lost her job, or why her bank account is now empty.

One jump cut later and suddenly, we see Kris riding a train through downtown Dallas.* We’re not sure how much time has passed but we can see that Kris has changed. With her hair cut short, Kris sits huddled in the back of the train. Also on the train is Jeff (Shane Carruth). Despite Kris’s efforts to be anonymous, Jeff notices her and eventually manages to strike up a conversation with her.

Kris finds herself oddly drawn towards Jeff, especially after he confesses to her that he once stole a lot of money from his employers and he’s not quite sure why he did it. Not realizing that they’re both victims of the Thief, Jeff and Kris fall in love. Fortunately, Carruth and Seimetz have a palpable chemistry. You believe both of them as wounded souls and as lovers. As a result, even as the film gets more and more surreal, you still care about these two characters and their relationship.

While Kris and Jeff fall in love and struggle to understand what happened to them in the past, the Sampler continues to appear throughout the film as a detached observer. Sometimes, he’s recording the sounds of nature. At other times, he’s looking over his pigs. And then, sometimes, he’s just there. For his first few appearances, the Sampler seems to be almost a benevolent figure but, halfway through the film, he performs one action that forces you to reconsider everything that you’ve previously seen him do.

Who is the Sampler and how is he connected to the Thief and Kris and Jeff? This is one of the many questions that the film poses and, quite frankly, the answer is not easy to find. Don’t get me wrong, the answer is there. You just have to be willing to look for it. Carruth, a former engineer, directs with an eye for the reoccurring patterns of nature. (For instance, the curve of the larva in Kris’s bloodstream is later replicated by the sight of Kris and Jeff curled up in each other’s arms.) As opposed to the very verbal Primer, Upstream Color is a film almost totally told through image and, as a result, one has to be willing to be an observant viewer in order to learn the answers to the film’s questions. The film’s final 15 minutes features no dialogue, just images scored to Carruth’s propulsive electronic score. It’s a brave move on Carruth’s part and, even more importantly, it works brilliantly.

As you might guess from reading this review, Upstream Color is not an easy film to understand. As a filmmaker, Carruth emphasizes the surreal and the obscure but, much like David Lynch, he comes up with images that are so haunting that you can’t look away even if you don’t fully understand what you’re seeing. Upstream Color may, at times, be an obscure film but it’s compelling in its obscurity. This is a film that is meant to be seen with four of your smartest friends. This is a film that is meant to be debated and argued about.

In other words, it may very well be the best film of 2013.

——

*On a personal note, I do have to admit that I loved seeing how much of this movie was filmed at places that I either go to or drive by every single day.

Disconnected From Disconnect

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Disconnect, the feature film directing debut of award-winning documentarian Henry-Alex Rubin, has been getting some fairly positive reviews. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a critical score of 71 while audiences have been even more impressed. The last time I checked, it had an audience score of 83%. If you’ve seen any of the commercials for this film then you’ve undoubtedly heard it referred to as being “the best film of the year.”

That’s high praise for a film that’s essentially Crash with better acting.

Much like Crash (which, incidentally, I consider to be the worst film to have ever won the Oscar for Best Picture), Disconnect is an ensemble film that tells several different stories. For whatever reason, first-time directors seem to have a weakness for movies with ensemble casts and multiple-story lines. When done well, an ensemble film can say something profound about the way that people in a society relate to one another. When done poorly (like in Crash or Disconnect), they just feel trendy. Watching Disconnect, I felt as if the filmmakers couldn’t come up with a way to tell one compelling story from beginning to end so, instead, they just tossed together fragments of three separate stories and then desperately tried to come up with a theme to connect them all.

That theme, by the way, is that our reliance of modern technology has created a society where people are Disconnected from one another.

Gee, you think?

Disconnect tells three separate, inter-connected stories. In one story, Paula Patton and Alexander Skarsgard are a married couple who are struggling to deal with the recent death of their child. Skarsgard deals with his grief by going on long business trips and getting addicted to online gambling. Meanwhile, Patton joins an online support group and finds herself tempted to have affair another member (Michael Nyqvist). Patton’s activities leads to identity theft and bankruptcy. With the help of a sleazy private investigator (Frank Grillo), Patton and Skarsgard try to track down the man who stole their identity. This story falls apart once Patton and Skarsgard find the man and both characters suddenly start acting in the most inconsistent ways conceivable. It really should be impossible t0 make charismatic performers like Alexander Skarsgard and Paula Patton seem bland and boring but somehow, Disconnect manages to do it.

In the film’s best storyline, Grillo’s teenage son (Colin Ford) catfishes and cyber-bullies an alienated classmate (Jonah Bobo). When Bobo hangs himself as a result, Ford is wracked with both guilt and fear. Ford’s attempts to cover-up his involvement leads to him meeting and briefly befriending Bobo’s father (Jason Bateman), who has no idea what led to his son attempting suicide. In this story, Bateman proves that he’s as good with drama as he is with comedy and Ford’s complex and multi-layered performance is more than award-worthy. This was probably the most powerful part of the film and, if the filmmakers had simply concentrated on this story (as opposed to diluting it by making only one part of a multi-part film), Disconnect would fully deserve the high-praise that it’s currently receiving.

In the film’s third (and most flamboyant) storyline, Andrea Riseborough is a cynical and opportunistic reporter who does a story about a cocky teenager (Max Thieriot) who performs on an adults-only site and who recruits other teenagers for a manipulative pimp (played by none other than Marc Jacobs). Riseborough finds herself charmed by the teenager (and who can blame her because, after all, he’s played by Max Thieriot) and soon she’s having an affair with him. However, her news story captures the attention of the F.B.I. and soon both Thieriot and Riseborough find themselves in danger.

At first, I thought I was going to enjoy this storyline because I love Max Thieriot. He’s ideally cast here and he gives a good, sympathetic performance. For that matter, so does Andrea Riseborough and even Marc Jacobs brings a certain reptilian charm to his role. However, this story falls apart as it quickly becomes obvious that the filmmakers, having set up a potentially interesting situation, have no idea what to do with it. Instead, much as with the characters played by Skarsgard and Patton, Riseborough ceases to behave with anything resembling logic or consistency. Both she and Thieriot go from being interesting, well-rounded characters to being mere plot devices.

That, ultimately, is the main reason why Disconnect fails. With the exception of the characters played by Bateman and Ford, nobody in this film feels real and, again with the notable exception of Bateman and Ford’s storyline, very little that happens feels genuine. The film is watchable because of the talented cast but, otherwise, it’s a melodramatic and predictable mess that seems to think that it’s a lot smarter than it actually is.

Perhaps that’s why so many people over on the imdb have been praising this film as “the best of the year.”

Some people will always enjoy feeling like they’re thinking without actually having to do it.

The Daily Grindhouse: Homebodies (dir by Larry Yust)

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Can we just be honest about something?

Most of us are a little bit scared of the elderly.

Oh, we try to deny it. We talk about how they’re “real characters” or we attempts to convince ourselves that their eccentricities are actually signs of an incurable zest of life. We tell ourselves that old people remind us of the value of carpe diem but, ultimately, they creep most of us out because, when we look at them, we see our own future. Regardless of what we do today or tomorrow, we’re all going to eventually become old. Perhaps that’s why there’s a whole industry devoted to keeping old people out of sight and out of mind.

Today’s entry in the Daily Grindhouse, the obscure 1974 film Homebodies, is effective precisely because it understands that unpleasant truth.

Directed by Larry Yust, Homebodies tells the story of Mattie (Paula Trueman). Mattie is one of seven elderly retirees who are the sole residents of a condemned apartment building. All around them, buildings are being torn down and replaced with new apartments. When an uncaring social worker (Linda Marsh) shows up and informs them that they’re going to be forcefully relocated to an assisted living facility, Mattie take matters into her own hands. She realizes that every time there’s an accident on a construction site, work stops for a few days. Hence, if there are enough accidents, work will be stopped indefinitely. Mattie and her fellow residents (some reluctantly and some not) are soon murdering anyone they view as a threat. While this is effective initially, things get complicated once Mattie starts to view some of her fellow residents with the same contempt that she previously reserved for construction workers.

Homebodies is one of those odd and dark films that could have only been made in the 70s. When the film begins, one would be excused for expecting to see a heart-warming comedy about a bunch of plucky seniors outsmarting the forces of progress and real estate. After all, the elderly residents of the condemned building are all appropriately quirky and, as played by Paula Trueman, Mattie doesn’t seem like she’d be out-of-place as one of the prankers on Betty White’s Off Their Rockers. Linda Marsh’s social worker and Kenneth Tobey’s construction foreman both seem like the type of authority figures who one would expect to see humiliated in a mawkish 1970s comedy film.

Instead, Homebodies turns out to be an effectively creepy and dark little film. When the elderly residents of the apartment building fight back, they do so with a surprising brutality that’s all the more effective because of the harmless exteriors of Mattie and her fellow residents. Paula Trueman makes Mattie into a truly fascinating and frightening monster. When a few of her fellow residents start to question Mattie’s methods, you truly do fear for them because Mattie has truly proven herself to be capable of just about anything. While Trueman dominates the film, the entire cast is excellent. As a classic film lover, I was happy to see that one of the residents was played by Ian Wolfe, a character actor who will be recognizable to anyone who has ever watched TCM.

(Remember the old man who gave the lecture at the observatory in Rebel Without A Cause? Him.)

I first saw Homebodies on YouTube and I was going to share it below but, apparently, the video has been pulled from the site. That’s a shame because it’s a film that definitely deserves to be seen, if for no other reason than to appreciate the performances from a cast of underrated character actors who, sadly, are no longer with us. Unfortunately, the best I can offer is this Spanish-language trailer for the film.

Lisa Marie Is Tempted By Tyler Perry’s Temptation

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Warning: This Review Contains Spoilers)

A few nights ago, I somehow managed to convince my BFF Evelyn to accompany me to see the latest film from Tyler Perry, Temptation.

Now, I know what you’re asking. Why did I want to see it? There’s a few reasons.

Tyler Perry is the most successful film director that I know next to nothing about. Prior to seeing Temptation, the extent of my exposure to Perry’s aesthetic was catching about 5 minutes of Madea Goes To Jail on Lifetime. (5 minutes was about all I could take.) Still, as a critic who occasionally mentions the auteur theory, I felt the need to experience at least one of Perry’s films for myself.

Secondly, I thought the commercials for Temptation were intriguing. Between all the smoldering glances and the portentous dialogue, Temptation looked like it would be a lot of fun.

Finally, Temptation has been getting such negative reviews that I simply knew I would have to see it eventually. Seriously, when a film is compared to The Room by more than one critic, I have to see it.

Before I get around to comparing him to Tommy Wiseau (who, for the uninformed, directed the so-bad-it’s-good classic The Room), I want to say a few good things about Tyler Perry.

1) Largely as a result of his own hard work, Tyler Perry has found a lot success in an industry that, historically, hasn’t been very accommodating to black filmmakers.

2) Although critically reviled, Tyler Perry’s films have provided a showcase for talented African-American performers who are usually ignored by mainstream, Hollywood filmmakers.

3) Tyler Perry’s films are also popular with an audience that is largely ignored by mainstream Hollywood filmmakers.

4) Despite his reputation for being an egotist, Tyler Perry was actually rather charming and humble when he introduced the clip for Precious at the 2010 Academy Awards.

That said, Tyler Perry’s Temptation is a bad, bad movie. At the same time, it’s also a lot of fun in much the same way that Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is fun. Much like Tommy Wiseau, Tyler Perry seems to have a better understanding of melodrama than reality. Much like The Room, you watch Temptation in utter amazement that someone not only wrote this crap but then directed it and released it. When Evelyn and I saw the film, the theater was deserted except for the two of us and that worked out perfectly because the only way to really enjoy Temptation is to yell back at the screen.

Judith (played by Jurnee Smollett-Bell, who gives a good performance and deserves a better film) is married to Brice (Lance Gross), a hard-working, practical-minded pharmacist who loves his wife and has perhaps the sexiest abs ever seen on a movie screen. However, Brice often forgets Judith’s birthday and refuses to have sex anywhere other than a bedroom so we can all guess what’s going to happen, right?

Judith works as a therapist at a matchmaking agency that’s run by Janice (Vanessa L. Williams, whose amazingly bad French accent is explained in one of the few intentionally funny scenes to be found in this film). Among her co-workers is Ava. Ava is played by Kim Khardashian, who delivers her lines just as robotically as you would expect Kim Khardashian to deliver her lines in a Tyler Perry film. Evelyn and I especially had a fun time imitating the way that Kim described the character of Harley (played by Robbie Jones) as being “The. Largest. Social. Media. Inventor. Since. Zuck. Er. Berg.”

Harley claims that he wants to invest in Janice’s business but it soon becomes obvious that, despite having the second most sexist abs ever seen on a movie screen, Harley is actually the devil and he’s intent on seducing Judith. Harley taunts Judith for never having sex outside of a bedroom. (At this point, Evelyn yelled, “Girl, that man’s no good for you!”) Janice responds by attempting to have sex with Brice in the kitchen just to be rejected because, as Brice points out, that’s not what the kitchen is for. Soon, Janice is having steamy bathtub sex with Harley and snorting cocaine.

“Girl,” I said as I watched her descent into decadence, “you need to get Jesus in your life.” As anyone who knows me can tell you, I was being sarcastic so you can imagine my reaction when, one scene later, Judith is confronted by her mother (Ella Joyce) and a group of church ladies who have formed a prayer circle to pray for Judith’s soul. Say what you will about The Room, a prayer circle is one plot element that Tommy Wiseau left out of his epic.

While all this is going on, Brice has befriended Melinda (Brandy Norwood). Melinda is on the run from her ex-boyfriend. Not only did this boyfriend physically abuse her but he also infected her with HIV. Is there anybody out there who can’t guess who Melinda’s ex-boyfriend is?

Temptation is a film with a message and that message seems to be that straying from either marriage or the church will result in God punishing you with HIV. It reminded me of the type of horror stories that I used to hear when I was younger. These stories were always about some girl disobeying her parents, sneaking out at night, or lying in confession and either dying in a car accident or being forced into prostitution as a result. Interestingly enough, the story’s outrage was never directed towards the other driver or the pimp. The main message of these stories was that these terrible things would never have happened if only the girl hadn’t insisted on doubting authority or thinking for herself.

That seems to be the message of Temptation as well. If only Judith had been content to only have sex in the bedroom. If only Judith had been content to obey her husband and keep going to church. Instead, she had to wonder what it would be like to have sex in the kitchen and she just had to stop giving praise to the Lord. As a result of trusting the wrong man, both she and Melinda get HIV. Meanwhile, Brice is allowed to find love with a new, church-going woman. The film ends with sadder but finally wiser Judith going to church with her mother and the obvious message is that HIV was God’s way of reminding Judith not to stray in the future.

In some ways, Tyler Perry is lucky that Temptation is such an inept film because, otherwise, it would seriously be one of the most offensive films ever made.

However, it is such an inept, predictable, melodramatic, and overwritten film that, much like with The Room, Temptation almost becomes a work of outsider art. You watch fascinated that anyone could possibly share this film’s worldview. I recently caught a midnight showing of the Room and it was a lot of fun. I threw spoons across the theater and yelled at the screen. I have a feeling that, within the next few years, Tyler Perry’s Temptation will start to show up on the midnight circuit.

Hopefully, when it does, Evelyn and I will be able to catch a showing and join in with the entire audience as we shout, at the screen, “Girl, that man’s no good for you!”

A Blast From The Past: Perversion For Profit

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s blast from the past comes to us from the Citizens For Decent Literature, Inc. Originally made and released back in 1965, this 30-minute film features a deep-voiced authority figure explaining the dangers of adult magazines and sordid paperbacks.

How can I put into words how much I love this little piece of politically incorrect Americana?

It’s just so 1965.

Lisa Marie Picks The 50 Best Films of The Past 3 Years

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As of this month, I have been reviewing films here at the Shattered Lens for 3 years. In honor of that anniversary, I thought I’d post my picks for the 50 best films that have been released in the U.S. since 2010.

Without further ado, here’s the list!

Black Swan (directed by Darren Aronofsky)
Exit Through The Gift Shop (directed by Banksy)
Hanna (directed by Joe Wright)
Fish Tank (directed by Andrea Arnold)
Higher Ground (directed by Vera Farmiga)
Shame (directed by Steve McQueen)
Anna Karenina (directed by Joe Wright)
The Cabin In The Woods (directed by Drew Goddard)
127 Hours (directed by Danny Boyle)
Somewhere (directed by Sofia Coppola)
Life of Pi (directed by Ang Lee)
Hugo (directed by Martin Scorsese)
Inception (directed by Christopher Nolan)
Animal Kingdom (directed by David Michod)
Winter’s Bone (directed by Debra Granik)
The Artist (directed by Michel Hazanavicius)
The Guard (directed by John Michael McDonagh)
Bernie (directed by Richard Linklater)
The King’s Speech (directed by Tom Hooper)
Bridesmaids (directed by Paul Feig)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (directed by Thomas Alfredson)
Django Unchained (directed by Quentin Tarantino)
Never Let Me Go (directed by Mark Romanek)
Toy Story 3 (directed by Lee Unkrich)
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (directed by Niels Arden Oplev)
Young Adult (directed by Jason Reitman)
Sucker Punch (directed by Zack Snyder)
The Master (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)
Incendies (directed by Denis Villeneuve)
Melancholia (directed by Lars Von Trier)
Super (directed by James Gunn)
Silver Linings Playbook (directed by David O. Russell)
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (directed by Edgar Wright)
The Last Exorcism (directed by Daniel Stamm)
Skyfall (directed by Sam Mendes)
Easy A (directed by Will Gluck)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2 (directed by David Yates)
The Avengers (directed by Joss Whedon)
How To Train Your Dragon (directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBois)
Win Win (directed by Thomas McCarthy)
Les Miserables (directed by Tom Hooper)
Take This Waltz (directed by Sarah Polley)
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (directed by Werner Herzog)
Rust and Bone (directed by Jacques Audiard)
Cosmopolis (directed by David Cronenberg)
Ruby Sparks (directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valarie Faris)
Brave (directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman)
Martha Marcy May Marlene (directed by Sean Durkin)
Jane Eyre (directed by Cary Fukunaga)
Damsels in Distress (directed by Whit Stillman)

What Lisa Marie and the Snarkalecs Watched Last Night #78: Battledogs (dir by Alexander Yellen)

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On Saturday night, the Snarkalecs and I watched the SyFy original movie, Battledogs. (Also watching was a mentally unstable moron from Buffalo, NY named Michael Conklin. But more about him later…)

Why Were We Watching It?

Because we’re snarkalecs and that’s what snarkalecs do.

What Was It About?

Donna Voorhees (Ariana Richards) is a nature photographers who visits our friend to the north and gets bitten by a Canadian lycanthrope. When she returns to New York, she ends up transforming into a werewolf herself and manages to kill nearly everyone at JFK Airport. Everyone that she doesn’t kill is infected with the werewolf virus.

Donna and the rest of the infected are captured by the military. Under the watch of the sinister Lt. Gen. Monning (Dennis Haysbert), the infected are doped up with tranquilizers and left to aimlessly wander around a prison. With the help of a sympathetic major (Craig Sheffer) and a scientist (Kate Vernon), Donna and the rest of the infected escape the prison and soon New York is overrun by werewolves.

Meanwhile, the U.S. President (Bill Duke) spends a lot of time sitting out in the middle of Central Park and looking depressed…

What Worked?

Battledogs was produced by the Asylum. As soon as I saw the words “The Asylum Presents…” at the beginning of the opening credits, I knew that Battledogs was going to be a lot of fun.

Battledogs was surprisingly well-cast. While Craig Sheffer made for a dull hero, Dennis Haysbert was a great villain. Admittedly, he was one of those villains who spent the whole movie talking about his plans as opposed to actually carrying them out but, fortunately. Haysbert has a great voice. Haysbert turned Lt. Gen. Monning into a genuinely menacing character.

The scenes in which the tranquilized infected wander about in a daze had a nicely surreal feel to them. While watching them, I actually compared them to a similar scene from Jean Rollin’s Night of the Hunted. That’s probably going a bit too far but still, they were handled very well.

On a final note, Bill Duke plays perhaps the most ineffectual president in the history of ineffectual presidents. Speaking as someone who has little faith in governmental authority, I found Duke’s performance to be the most realistic part of the film.

What Did Not Work?

Oh, I suppose there are things I could complain about. I could point out that the film may have been set in New York but it was obviously (and I do mean obviously) filmed in Canada. (Actually, no, it was not! As Mike Conklin so politely points out in the comments below, Battledogs was filmed in Buffalo and yes, a look at the imdb does confirm that this film — despite seeming very Canadian, was indeed filmed in New York. I apologize for the careless error. — LMB) There were also a few plot holes that I could talk about if I felt like being nit-picky.

But you know what?

There is nobody worse than someone who would actually get nit-picky about an Asylum film. Asylum Films are made for audiences who have a sense of humor and their “flaws” are ultimately a very intentional part of the fun. The Asylum makes fast-paced, unpretentious films for people who want to be entertained for 90 minutes. You know what you’re going to get when you see “The Asylum” name and, unlike most major studio films, Asylum films can be counted on to deliver exactly what they promise. This film promised battle dogs and it delivered.

Therefore, the entire film worked.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

To be honest, despite featuring not one but two female leads, Battledogs was a pretty masculine film. The emphasis was definitely on people either shooting guns or beating each other up. That’s not necessarily a criticism because, if New York was overrun by werewolves, I imagine there was be a certain amount of societal breakdown. However, the fact of the matter is that I’m scared of guns and the only fights I’ve ever been in have involved a lot of hair-pulling and little else. As a result, there really weren’t any “Oh my God! Just like me!” moments in Battledogs.

That said, Ariana Richards’ character reminded me of my sister, the Dazzling Erin, because they’re both talented photographers.

Lessons Learned

Apparently, the best way to avoid being killed in a nuclear blast is to jump into the Hudson River right when the bomb goes off. In today’s unpredictable world, that’s a good thing to know.