Category Archives: Film Review

Lisa Marie Is Surprised by Final Destination 5 (dir by Steven Quale)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, earlier today, I saw Final Destination 5 and guess what isn’t half as bad as you might think?

Now, I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this review, then you probably already know what this film is about.  Seriously, once a film has reached its fifth installment, you have absolutely no excuse for not knowing what’s going on.  Still, just in case you need to be reminded, here’s how this series works. All of the Final Destination films follow the same basic storyline: a group of attractive but generally anonymous people are gathered together for some everyday event like Nascar or a flight to France.  Suddenly, there’s some huge disaster that generally involves a lot of things exploding and people dying.  However, it turns out that the disaster we just saw was instead the main character’s vision of what’s going to happen.  That character freaks out which leads to him and a handful of other people avoiding the disaster.  However, by not dying, they’ve managed to tick off Death and soon, our survivors are dying in a variety of ludicrously convoluted ways, the key being that they’re dying in the order that they died in the original vision.  (Fortunately, Tony Todd shows up in each film and explains how it all works.)  Anyway, in each film, we learn of a different way to cheat death and each film ends with both the final survivors and the audience learning that actually you can’t cheat death.  In many ways, the Final Destination series is the perfect reflection of the 21st Century.  The same crap keeps happening and, in the end, we’re all doomed regardless.

Final Destination 5 sticks to established formula.  This time, the big disaster is a bridge collapse and the twist is that a survivor can fill death’s quota by killing someone else.  That’s kind of a neat idea and the film actually has a little bit of clever fun with that at the end.  Still, I wish the film had taken the whole idea to its logical, grindhouse extreme and just had all the survivors running around desperately looking for innocent people to murder.

There’s a lot of very legitimate criticisms that one can make about Final Destination 5.  Though the supporting cast is well-chosen (especially Miles Fisher — who could be Tom Cruise’s twin brother, seriously, David Koechner and Courtney B. Vance), the main character is played by Nicholas D’Agosto, who gives a performance that is so free of charisma that you have a hard time believing that he was ever alive to begin with.  Emma Bell plays D’Agosto’s girlfriend and it is seriously amazing to see how little chemistry the two of them have together.  (Then again, this also helps to make the film’s final twist entertaining as opposed to traumatic…)  As much as I love to see Tony Todd doing his Tony Todd thing, it’s hard not get impatient with the fact that these characters need to be told that they’re in a Final Destination film.

But let’s be honest — those criticisms may be valid but who cares?  This is a Final Destination film and if you’re not willing to consider it on the basis of what it is, then don’t waste your time watching it and bitching about how it’s not The Help.  Judged solely on that basis, Final Destination 5 is actually a return to form for the series.  The deaths are all nicely done and memorably grotesque and there’s a real nasty twist at the end of the film that basically serves as a reward for all the horror fans who have stuck with the series since the beginning.  I wish I could tell you what that twist was but seriously, it’s way too neat for me to spoil it.  I’ll just say that I squealed in delight when I saw it. 

Finally, this is a 3-D film that was actually made in real 3-D.  The 3-D was not tacked on as an afterthought and, as a result, this is rare film that actually uses the 3-D to make the movie better as opposed to just trendier.  This is a film where guts spill freely, eyeballs literally pop out of the screen, and it’s all just the perfect definition of good, stupid fun.

(That said, I do have to admit that this film was apparently made specifically to freak me out because, oh my God, it’s like they exploited every single fear that I have.  As Arleigh can tell you, I am terrified of two things — heights and drowning.  Which means that if you really want to see me scared, just get me thinking about the prospect of plunging several hundred feet into a large body of water.  Seriously, just typing that freaks me out.  So, of course, what does this film open with?  A freaking bridge collapsing.  And don’t even get me started on the laser eye surgery…agck!  I’ll just stay blind as a bat, thank you very much.)

A Quickie Review: 30 Minutes or Less (dir. by Ruben Fleischer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier tonight, I went and saw the new comedy 30 Minutes or Less.  The film has, so far, gotten mixed reviews and the theater we saw it in was half-deserted.  The audience laughed quite a bit during the 1st half of the movie and a little less so during the second.  As soon as the credits started, everyone stood up and left.  This is not the type of film that inspires you to sit around and wait to see if there’s any extras at the end.  Still, despite that, it’s an enjoyable comedy that has enough laughs in it to justify the 83 minutes it takes to watch the entire film.

Danny McBride plays an aimless loser who, despite being in his mid-3os, still lives at home with his wealthy but hateful father (well-played by Fred Ward).  McBride spends his time blowing stuff up with his well-meaning but stupid best friend (Nick Swardson) and fantasizing about the day that his father will die and leave him his inheritance.  However, then McBride finds out about a hitman (Michael Pena) who is willing to kill Ward as long as McBride can pay him several thousand dollars.  So, McBride and Swardson kidnap a pizza deliveryman (Jesse Eisenberg) and strap a bomb to his chest.  They tell him that is he doesn’t rob a bank in the next 10 hours, the bomb will go off.  With the help of his best friend (Aziz Ansari), Eisenberg attempts to do just that.

The film’s humor comes not from the plot (which is based very loosely on a true story — more about that in a minute) but instead from the way these very ordinary characters attempt to deal with the situation they find themselves in.  All four of the major characters have little grasp on reality beyond what they’ve seen in other movies.  When Eisenberg and Aziz plot their bank robbery, it has less to do with logistics and everything to do with Point Break.  The film is perfectly cast and all of the actors have a real chemistry with each other.  You believe that McBride and Swardson are lifelong friends just as you buy that Aziz would go out of his way to help out Eisenberg. 

Much as he did with Zombieland, director Fleischer manages to maintain a nice balance between the comedic and the grotesque.  Unfortunately, also much like Zombieland, the film starts to run out of steam during the second half as the storyline becomes more centered on action than on comedy.  These characters who were previously only talking about being in an action film are suddenly thrust into an action film and everything starts to seem a little bit too familiar.  Still, 30 Minutes or Less is an enjoyable enough movie.  I just wish the end result had been a little less uneven.

Now, 30 Minutes or Less is based on a true story and this story wasn’t a comedy.  In 2003, a pizza deliveryman named Brian Douglas Wells robbed a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania.  He had a bomb around his neck.  Unlike the characters in this film, Wells was killed when the bomb went off and blew a softball-sized hole in his chest.  The police — who, in the moments before the fatal blast, basically just stood around with their tasers drawn while Wells begged for help — later accused Wells of being a part of the whole plot.  Which makes absolutely no sense but who am I to question Big Brother? 

Regardless of whether Wells was a victim or participant, that doesn’t change the fact that pizza delivery men are easy targets.  Just last year in Dallas, two kids with guns ordered a pizza and gave the address of a deserted warehouse.  They had to call many different pizza places before they found someone willing to deliver to that area of town.  When the pizza arrived, the kids gunned down the deliveryman.  When they were arrested, they said they had simply wanted to kill someone and they knew a pizza deliveryman was the only potential victim they’d be able to lure out to the middle of nowhere.  That’s hardly an isolated incident. 

Also, as is mentioned in this movie, whenever the pizza person takes 34 minutes to get to your house and then you go, “Duuuuuuude, the pizza’s free!” that means that the cost of your pizza is going to be taken out of the paycheck of a man who puts his life in danger every time he goes to work. 

So, what am I saying?  I’m saying don’t be an asshole and pay for your damn pizza!

And leave a good tip.

Lisa Marie Experiences a Drive-In Massacre (dir. by Stu Segall)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, as part of my quest/mission/curse to watch all of the movies included in Mill Creek’s 50 Classic Chillers Box Set, I watched a film from 1974 called Drive-In Massacre.

So, what’s Drive-In Massacre about?  Well, there’s this drive-in and there’s someone wandering around with a sword which he uses to kill various filmgoers.  Now, you might think that the fact that people keep getting hacked to pieces at the drive-in would lead to the establishment either getting closed down or perhaps, at the very least, it would lead to an increased police presence.  Well, you would be wrong.  Even more people start hanging out at the drive-in and the police presence amounts to two overweight detectives who go undercover to catch the killer.  (By undercover, I mean that one of the detectives shows up in drag.) 

Since this is a pre-1980, giallo-influenced slasher film, the film is structured as a whodunit.  Instead of giving us the wisecracking killer that we usually associate with slasher films, this one presents us with a handful of weirdos and dares us to try to guess whose guilty.  Is it the bald guy who manages the drive-in and who is referred to as being “a perfect asshole?”  Or is it Orville The Pervert who spends all of his time trying to peep on young lovers and who happens to have some bloody clothes in the back of his car?  Then again, it could be Germy, the creepy janitor who is a natural suspect because 1) he’s a former sword swallower and 2) his name is Germy.  Then again, it could also be the sweaty guy who pops up out of nowhere during the film’s final 20 minutes and spends all of his time saying things like, “I’m going to cut the bad out of you.”

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the film will end with an out-of-nowhere “surprise” twist that will either piss you off or make you squeal with delight depending on how seriously you take these things.  Me, I squealed with delight.

I loved this movie and I make no apologies for it.  The plot makes absolutely no sense, the acting is really odd, and the whole film has this wonderful feel to it that leads you to suspect that someone just turned on a camera and yelled, “DO SOMETHING!”  The first kill scene is actually rather effective and there’s a few scenes of intentional humor that actually work almost well.  As well, the film did manage to capture the feel of a sleazy drive-in (perhaps because it was filmed at a sleazy drive-in).  I mean, I’ve never been to a drive-in and I probably never will since I don’t think they exist anymore but, after seeing this film, I feel like I’ve had the drive-in experience. 

However, my love of this film truly came down to two things:

1) I loved Germy!  Seriously, I’ve seen a lot of movies featuring mentally disturbed janitors and Germy belongs in the Mentally Disturbed Janitor Hall Of Fame.  Plus, his name was Germy.  That just makes me laugh so much.

2) The movie itself only lasts an hour and 13 minutes.  Now, on the one hand, that means that there’s not a lot of time for anything along the lines of coherence.  However, on the other hand, it also means that the movie never gets a chance to drag and right when you’re starting to get annoyed with it, it’s over!

As a sidenote, Arleigh might be interested to know that this film was apparently co-written by George “Buck” Flower.

 

 

Lisa Marie Recommends Cathy’s Curse (dir. by Eddy Matalon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Like the Alpha Projectand The Demons of Ludlow, Cathy’s Curse is included in Mill Creek’s 50 Chilling Classics Box Set.  As opposed to those two previous films (both of which had occasional flashes of quality submerged in all the badness), 1978’s Cathy’s Curse is a film that is just so relentlessly bad and inept that it succeeds in transforming cinematic incompetence into an art form.  This is a film that’s so bad, you simply must see it.

Here’s the opening of the film, which will give you a pretty good clue to director Eddy Matalon’s unique cinematic vision.  Now, please note, that this is not a case of a bad upload.  This is what the film actually looks like as it plays on your television:

Anyway, once the opening credits are over with, here’s just a little of what’s waiting for you:

Years after that fateful car crash, the man’s son moves back into the old house.  Accompanying him is his mentally unstable wife (who speaks in an oddly chirpy monotone throughout the entire film, it simply has to be heard to be believed) and his precocious daughter, Cathy.  A few minutes after entering the house, Cathy finds her dead aunt’s old rag doll.  A few second later, the rag doll’s eyes suddenly start glowing and Cathy’s possessed.  Suddenly, she’s speaking in a much lower voice and cursing all the time.  Nobody seems to notice.

Nobody, that is, except for the maid.  However, the maid is easily taken care of when she happens to casually roll out of the attic window.  I had to laugh out loud at this moment because director Matalon didn’t make much of an effort to disguise the fact that the maid had been replaced by a very stiff mannequin for the shot.  I mean, its arms don’t even move as it plunges in freefall. 

Anyway, the unstable mom happens to see the mannequin fall out of the window and then catches Cathy staring down from the same window.  She confronts Cathy and Cathy, via a jump cut so abrupt that it actually makes a “gwapp” noise on the soundtrack, vanishes and then reappears directly behind her.  Naturally this leads to mom having a nervous breakdown and going back to the mental hospital.

Cathy’s father has a business meeting out of town and informs Cathy that she might have to go stay with relatives.  Cathy cries and her father decides that it would, instead, be a better idea to just leave Cathy alone in the house for a few weeks with the old, alcoholic groundskeeper.  Cathy and the groundskeeper get along pretty well until an older woman shows up and claims to be a medium.  A mysterious voice replies, “You’re a medium piece of shit!” and the medium runs off.  Meanwhile, the groundskeeper starts to have hallucinations where he’s covered with rats, snakes, and spiders and then his noisy dog dies mysteriously.

Eventually, both dad and mom return home.  Mom thinks something is wrong with Cathy.  Dad says there’s nothing wrong with Cathy.  Dad then leaves for work.  Mom takes a bath.  Suddenly, the bathwater is replaced with blood and mom is covered in leeches.  Mom screams in terror.

At this point, (an hour and 7 minutes into the action for those that want to check) there’s an abrupt jump cut to a distinguished looking man getting into a car and driving off.  This is the first time we’ve seen this man in the movie and it’s also the last time.  Seriously. 

Anyway, there’s another jump cut and Dad is relieved that mom is okay despite the fact that just a few seconds ago, she was literally covered in a thousand leeches.

Anyway, at this point, the film goes into its climax and I can’t really go into too much detail but (SPOILER ALERT) let’s just say that those of you who have spent 70 minutes going, “Why don’t they just take the doll away from her?” will end up feeling somewhat vindicated.

If you’re a lover of bad film (as opposed to just someone who watches these things and goes, “That was so dumb…”), Cathy’s Curse is a film that you must see.

Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (dir. by Rupert Wyatt)

Posted on by Arleigh

In 2001, Tim Burton released his highly-anticipated remake of the classic 1968 film adaptation of Pierre Boulle’s sci-fi novel which would ultimately be called, Planet of the Apes. Fans of the series were excited to see what idiosyncrasies Burton would add to the series which had petered out decades before. What people were hoping for and what they ended up getting were polar opposites. The film in of itself wasn’t an awful film, but it wasn’t a good one and many saw it as average at best and bad at it’s worst. Any plans to sequelize this remake fell by the wayside. It took almost a decade until a decision was made to continue the series in a different direction.

British filmmaker and writer Rupert Wyatt would be given the task to rejuvenate for a second time the Planet of the Apes franchise. He would be working with a screenplay written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver which would take the 4th film in the series, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and rework it for a much more current setting. The film was to be called Rise of the Apes and would star James Franco, John Lithgow and Frieda Pinto. As time went by the film would be renamed Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Despite having such an awkward sounding titles the film would end up to be one of the best films of the summer of 2011, if not one of the best of the year.

The film begins with a harrowing sequence in the jungles of Central Africa as poachers capture several chimpanzees to be sold as medical test subjects. Some of these chimps end up at a genetics research lab outside of San Francisco where one Will Rodman (James Franco) is working to find a cure to Alzheimer. He sees the encouraging result in one chimp he has named “Bright Eyes” (due to the side-effect to the test subject’s eyes taking on green flecks to their irises) and pushes for the next step and that’s human testing. The ensuing pitch to the company’s board of directors doesn’t go as planned as Bright Eyes goes on a violent rampage leading to her being put down and the project shelved. Her reaction they soon find out has less to do with the breakthrough treatment and more of a maternal instinct to protect her baby she secretly gave birth to. Will takes the baby chimp home in secret temporarily, but soon becomes attached to it as does his Alzheimer stricken father (John Lithgow) who names it Caesar.

The first third of the film sees Caesar showing an inherited hyper-intelligence from his genetically-treated mother. Caesar becomes an integral part of the Rodman household even to the point that Will has taught Caesar to call him father. It’s a family dynamic which would help mold Caesar into something more than just a wild animal. He begins to show signs of humanity which would become bedrock of his decision later in the film to turn become the revolutionary that the film has been leading up to the moment Caesar gets sent to a primate sanctuary after a violent encounter with a boorish neighbor to end the first reel of the film.

It’s during the second reel which sees Caesar realize that while he may as smart (maybe even smarter) than the humans he would never be a part of that world. In the sanctuary he learns that his very uniqueness has set him apart from the other primates. He sees the abuse inflicted on his fellow primates and longing to be back to his “home” with Will turns to a focus need to free himself and his people. He does this in the only fashion he knows would succeed. With the help from a couple canisters containing the aerosol-based treatment which increased his mother’s intelligence, Caesar frees everyone from the sanctuary and takes the fight to the humans as they make for the wilds of the Muir Redwood Forest north of San Francisco.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes might look to be an action-packed film from how the trailers and tv spots has been pushing the film, but it actually only has three major action sequences and they’re integral to each third of the film in helping advance the story. These were not action for the sake of having action on the screen. Writers Jaffa and Silver do a great job in figuring out that the real strength of the film would be Caesar’s journey from precocious ape child, rebellious teen and then his final unveiling as the leader of a people who have shaken off the shackles of medical research and their forced sacrifice for the greater good.

The film was never about the humans played by Franco, Pinto and Lithgow. It was always about Caesar and the film hinged on the audience believing Caesar as a character. In that regard, the work by WETA Digital should be commended as should Andy Serkis’ performance as Caesar. Serkis’ motion capture performance goes beyond just mimicking the movement of an ape. His own acting as Caesar comes through in even in the digital form of Caesar. In fact, the film never had a real ape used during filming. From Caesar right up to the scarred ape Koba every ape in the film was the work of WETA Digital’s furthering the motion capture work they had done in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and James Cameron’s Avatar. Never once during the two hour running time of the film did I ever not believe I was watching apes on the screen. Every emotion Caesar goes through during the film was able to show through facial expressions and body language.

It’s the strength of Serkis’ mo-cap work and the overall execution of Caesar’s character by WETA which also highlighted the one major weakness of the film through it’s underdeveloped human characters. Whether it was Franco’s benevolent Dr. Frankenstein-like Will Rodman right up to his greedy, amoral boss in the company (played by David Oyelowo), all the human’s in the film were very one-note and mostly served to propel Caesar’s story forward. At times, Franco actually seemed to be just as he was during his hosting gig during the Academy Awards earlier in the year. These were not bad performances by the actors involved. They were just there and part of it was due to how underwritten their characters were.

To help balance out this flaw in the film’s non-ape character would be the beautiful work by the film’s cinematographer in Andrew Lesnie. He has always been well-known for beautiful, majestic panoramic shot of the world as he had demonstrated in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. He does the same for this film as we see some beautiful shots of the Muir Redwood forest, of San Francisco’s skyline and in the climactic battle on the Golden Gate Bridge. The city of San Francisco and it’s iconic red-hued bridge and the surrounding area has never been shot as gorgeous as Lesnie has done with his DP work on this film.

Even with some of the characters in the film being underwritten the film succeeds through Rupert Wyatt’s direction which keeps the film moving efficiently, but also bringing out the emotional content of the film’s script in an organic way. Film has always been about manipulating the audience’s  emotions. It’s when a director does so and make it seem normal is when such manipulation doesn’t come through for those watching to feel. Then add to this Serkis’ exceptional work as Caesar with some major digital artistry from the folks over at WETA Digital and Rise of the Planet of the Apes does rise above it’s B-movie foundation into something that should live beyond the summer and for years to come.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes does a great job and a long way towards wiping off the bad taste left behind by Tim Burton’s failed attempt to remake the franchise. We didn’t need something exotic and idiosyncratic to give the franchise a fresh breath of life. It seems all it needed was a very good story, some exceptional work from Andy Serkis and WETA Digital and a filmmaker knowing how to tell the story in a natural fashion and not fall into the temptation to go into shock and awe to tell it. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a film that could stand-alone, but it does something that many trying to create film franchises never seem to do right: it makes people want to see what happens next in the lives of Caesar and his apes.

Lisa Marie Is Confused By The Demons of Ludlow (dir. by Bill Rebane)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, after I finished with The Alpha Incident, I decided to watch yet another Bill Rebane film from the Mill Creek 50 Chilling Classics box set, 1983’s The Demons of Ludlow.

The Demons of Ludlow

Ludlow is a tiny New England town that is celebrating its 200th birthday.  Now, when I say tiny, I mean that there appears to be about 17 people living in the town.  Anyway, a mysterious piano is sent to the town as a birthday present and, uh-oh — guess what’s possessed with the angry spirit of a warlock who happened to be murdered by the citizens of Ludlow 200 years ago?  Anyway, this warlock has a whole lot of other angry ghosts with him and soon, they’re exacting revenge on the citizens of Ludlow. 

Okay, I think I can hear Arleigh going, “Uhmmm…Lisa Marie, remember a little film called The Fog!?” and yes, I guess the plot is a bit similar to John Carpenter’s film.  It’s also reminiscent of another 1983 horror film called The Devonsville Terror.  While The Devonsville Terror was directed by the infamous Ulli Lommel, Bill Rebane is listed as being one of the “associate producers.”  I’m sure there’s probably a story there.

But anyway, back to The Demons of Ludlow.  This is very much a horror film of the 80s, which means that it has a real nasty streak.  As opposed to The Alpha Incident, where Rebane actually did appear to have a higher purpose in mind, the Demons of Ludlow is pretty much all about killing people.  Yet, this lack of higher purpose actually makes Demons of Ludlow a far more entertaining film to watch.  It helps that none of the 17 citizens of Ludlow are actually likable enough for you to get too upset once they die. 

A shocking scene of demonic vengeance...or something.

The demons of Ludlow themselves are far more interesting, if just because they challenge logic by their very existence.  As the reviewer known as Scarina pointed out in her own excellent review, the film’s own internal logic states that the ghosts that are helping out the warlock in the piano are the exact same ghosts who ran him out of Ludlow in the first place.  So, therefore, why are they helping him? Now, if pressed, I can accept that perhaps he used his warlock powers to take control of their ghosts.  I mean, he’s had to kill 200 years doing something, right?

But what’s odd is that we’re told that Ludlow is 200 years old.  Seeing as the film came out in 1983, let’s give the movie the benefit of the doubt and say that Ludlow was founded in 1782.  Okay, that would mean that Ludlow was established during the final year of the American Revolution.  Therefore, why are half the ghosts of Ludlow dressed like pilgrims from a community theater Thanksgiving pageant?   I say half because the other half are dressed like decadent nobles from pre-Revolutionary France.  Seriously, they’ve got the powdered wigs and the fake moles and everything!  And then, to top it off, five pirate ghosts show up at the end of the movie.  I mean, my God, I would have loved to have been back in Ludlow in 1782.  Apparently, it was like the New Orleans of colonial New England.

Pilgrims of LudlowPirates of Ludlow

Marquis De Sade of Ludlow

 Still, I have to admit I enjoyed the Demons of Ludlow.  It doesn’t drag as much as The Alpha Incident and this is a film that definitely has more than enough “What the Fuck” appeal to be watchable.  There’s even one sequence — in which one unfortunate citizen ends up getting shot by a musket-holding Pilgrim who suddenly shows up in a mirror — that is actually rather effective.  This is one of those films that people like me tend to defend by citing its “dream-like” qualities.  That may be going a bit too far in this film’s case but it’s still a definite success d’estime.

Lisa Marie Considers The Alpha Incident (dir by Bill Rebane)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It seems that every film lover owns at least one of those box sets of public domain films that Oak Creek Entertainment puts out.  You know which ones I mean — the box sets usually have about 50 to 100 movies crammed onto 12 discs and always have titles like “Astounding Adventure Classics.”  Most of the time, you’ll recognize one or two of the movies included (usually Night of the Living Dead) and you’ll end up buying it because they only cost like 6 bucks and that’s pretty good for 50 movies, even if you already know most of those movies are going to suck.  I own several of these box sets, including 50 Chilling Classics. 

I’ve recently decided to write a review for every single film that I have in my collection and I figured, what better place to start than with the often-forgotten and ignored public domain films that can be found in 50 Chilling Classics?  So, let’s get things started by reviewing a little public domain film from Wisconsin called The Alpha Incident.

Made in 1977, The Alpha Incident tells us what happens when a train, carrying a deadly virus brought back from Mars, makes a stop over at a small country train station.  It seems that Hank (played by George “Buck” Flower, who giggles a lot) had taken it upon himself to inspect that deadly cargo and has accidentally released it into the atmosphere.  The train station, and the five people trapped inside, are quarantined by the U.S. government.  Trapped in the station are the increasingly crazed Hank, the cold Dr. Sorenson (Stafford Morgan), gruff bully Jack (John F. Goff), neurotic secretary Jenny (Carol Irene Newell), and the shy station agent, Charlie (Ralph Meeker, who was the best-known actor in the cast).  The five are told to wait while American scientists try to find a cure for the virus.  Under no circumstances can they 1) leave the station and 2) fall asleep because, the minute they do, the virus will cause their brain to literally explode out of the back of their head.  For the rest of the film (which, honestly, would probably have worked better as a play), the five fight among themselves, wonder if they’re infected, and above all else, struggle to stay awake.

The Alpha Incident was directed by Bill Rebane, an independent filmmaker who is based up in Wisconsin.  Apparently, Rebane’s unique cinematic vision has won him a cult following among fans of low-budget horror and sci-fi films.  One term that I’ve often seen used to describe him is “the Ed Wood of Wisconsin.”  On the basis of the Alpha Incident, I don’t know if that’s a fair comparison.  Yes, the film does drag at time and the editing pretty much defines the term “ragged” but the movie still held my interest and not in a solely “what the fuck am I watching?” sort of way.  Yes, the performances are uneven, ranging from histrionic (George “Buck” Flower and John F. Goff) to boring (Stafford Morgan) to adequate (Ralph Meeker) to surprisingly good (Carol Irene Newell) but the characters themselves aren’t the usual stereotypes and, while the dialogue is often a bit clunky, the film’s story is an interesting one and the ending is just so wonderfully cynical and downbeat.  With it’s portrayal of common people trying to survive the mistakes of a faceless government, The Alpha Incident is so wonderfully 70s that I it made me want to go to a club, tell my companions, “I’m going to powder my nose,” and then snort someone else’s cocaine. 

Like many of the best B-movies, The Alpha Incident was made with more ambition than skill but it’s still a film that, if you truly appreciate the low-budget exploitation movies of the 70s, is more than worth seeing.

A Quickie Review: Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (dir. by Kevin Munroe)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, I called into work because my asthma was acting up and, in order to pass the time, I watched Dylan Dog: Dead of Night.  To be honest, I probably should have just risked having another asthma attack and spent 108 minutes at work, answering the phone.  It would have been a more productive use of my day.

Dylan Dog is based (quite loosely) on the same Italian comic book that inspired one of the best Italian horror films of all time, Dellamorte Dellamore.  Brandon Routh gives a charisma-free performance as Dylan Dog, a New Orleans-based private investigator who is hired by a mysterious woman (Anita Briem) to investigate the circumstances of her father’s death.  It turns out her father was killed by a werewolf and fortunately, Dylan is apparently an expert on New Orleans’ supernatural underground, including the decadent vampires that are led by Taye Diggs (who, seriously, deserves better than this movie.)

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night plays less like a movie and more like a greatest hits collection of other, better movies (and tv shows).  We get werewolves and vampires going to war, we get an athletic blonde woman doing karate moves on a bunch of vampires, and we get a lot of casual decadence being committed by vampires who speak with Southern accents that just drip molasses.  Now, I love True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the shows that gave me the strength to survive a lot of hard times, and I’ve even got a girlcrush on Kate Beckinsale as a result of Underworld.  But I’ve also got all of those wonderful shows on DVD.  I can see them whenever I want.  I didn’t spend $5.00 to rent Dylan Dog OnDemand just so I could see Dylan become the millionth film hero to walk in slow motion while firing two guns at the same time.

By all accounts, the film’s version of Dylan Dog has very little in common with the comic book version of Dylan Dog.  It’s hard for me to say for sure because, while I’ve read and heard a lot about the Dylan Dog comic, I’ve never actually read it.  Even if I could get my hands on a copy, it wouldn’t be much help since I’m not exactly fluent in Italian.  This is what I assume to be true, strictly based on my own research:

1) The comic book Dylan Dog is a melancholy character who, despite dealing with the supernatural on a regular basis, also suffers from several irrational phobias of his own.  The movie’s Dylan Dog is a blank-faced mannequin who utters useless quips and appears, in the tradition of American movie heroes, to have no fear. 

2) The comic book Dylan Dog has an assistant who is a Groucho Marx imitator.  The American Dylan Dog has an assistant who is a zombie.  That assistant is well-played by Sam Huntington and he actually does have a few good moments but it’s still impossible to watch him and not wish he was a Groucho Marx imitator.  (In the film’s defence, it appears that the Marx estate took legal action to prevent Groucho’s likeness from being used in the film.) 

3) The comic book Dylan Dog lives in London.  The movie Dylan Dog lives in New Orleans for absolutely no reason other than these movies always seem to be based in New Orleans.  Seriously, New Orleans is one of the most overrated cities in America.

4) Finally, the comic book Dylan Dog is one of the most popular cult heroes in Europe.  The movie Dylan Dog is the subject of one of the biggest cinematic flops of 2011.

It’s really hard to know what to say about a film like Dylan Dog other than the fact that it’s really, really bad.  In fact, I’m tempted to call it the worst of 2011 so far but, after giving it a lot of thought, I decided that title still belongs to The Conspirator.  Unlike The Conspirator, Dylan Dog isn’t a pompous film, it’s just a very, very lazy one. 

I think the best thin to say in regards to Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is that it might inspire viewers to seek out and watch Dellamorte Dellamore.  Now, that’s a film.

Quickie Review: Un Chien Andalou (dir. by Luis Buñuel)

Posted on by Arleigh

 The first 20-30 years of the 20th century was an ever-changing time for the burgeoning film industry not just in North America but in Europe. Many filmmakers in Europe began to take the motion picture camera and began to use them in ways which went beyond just capturing motion and sound then selling them to the masses as a new form of entertainment.

In Germany, we had the rise of German Expressionist movement with such luminaries as F.W. Murnau, Robert Weine, Fritz Lang and Paul Wegener. Over in France the 20’s saw the rise of a new movement in cinema that would quickly become the Surrealist movement which would include such filmmakers as Jean Cocteau, Germaine Dulac and René Clair. There is one filmmaker who made a major impact on French Surrealist cinema during the 20’s and he was actually a Spaniard whose first film became a major sensation then and continues to be one to this day: Luis Buñuel.

Buñuel’s first film was actually a short film he had made with the help of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) is a 16-minute film well-known for Buñuel’s use of disjointed chronology to give the film that very surreal quality we tend to attribute to our dreams. The film has Dalí’s influence in almost every scene and one of which would go down in film history as one of the more shocking visual sequences ever put on film. I would describe it but it’s better to just see it for yourself below.

Un Chien Andalou doesn’t really make much sense when one tries to watch it in a purely structured narrative. The film’s inherent genius comes from the fact that it’s chaotic in how it unfolds with scenes chronologically moving back and forth with no impact on the characters within them. Some have called this film a perfect example of dream logic in that while the scenes in themselves do not make any sense when looked at individually they do seem to share particular traits when seen as a whole.

It’s difficult to say whether this film was entertaining. For someone looking to learn more about the craft of filmmaking, especially the part on storytelling, then Un Chien Andalou is quite an eye-opener. But In the end, Luis Buñuel’s first film has less to do with trying to entertaining and more of one filmmaker’s attempt to put into film the very intangible quality and nature of one’s dreams.

Un Chien Andalou is what I’d call the anti-Inception. Where Nolan’s film about dreams still retained a surreal quality to them they were still very much structured with order in mind. Buñuel’s short film is all about the chaos nature of dreams and no one has done it better since the day he released this classic in 1929.

Lisa Marie’s Guilty Pleasure: Beastly (dir. by Daniel Barnz)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Much like Take Me Home Tonight, Beastly is a film that I missed when it originally played in theaters but then later caught via On Demand.  While Jeff and I were visiting Baltimore last month, Jeff’s younger sister, Jessica, recruited me to watch Beastly with her and I was more than happy to do it.  Getting to meet and spend time with Jessica was one of my favorite things about visiting Baltimore.  Even though we’re not actually related (which is actually a pretty fortunate, all things considered), we were like sisters from the moment we met.  Perhaps that explains why we spent Beastly giggling and trying not to choke on microwave popcorn.

I really don’t want to have to talk about the plot of Beastly because it’s one of those films where the plot is somehow both painfully simple and annoyingly complicated (as opposed to complex) at the same time.  Basically, Kyle (Alex Pettyfer) is a conceited high school student who picks on a sullen witch.  This witch is played by Mary Kate Olson and, since she’s supposed to be a goth here, she dresses exclusively in black and scowls a lot but that can’t change the fact that she’s still Mary Kate Olson.  Anyway, Pettyfer is running for high school political office and gives a speech where he declares that good-looking people are better than normal-looking people.  Olson is so disgusted with this sentiment (because, apparently, Mary Kate Olson is supposed to be one of the “normal” looking people) that she casts a curse on Kyle.  Suddenly, Kyle is transformed into the “Beast,” which in this film means that he loses all of his hair, his skin gets bleached, and he gets some aesthetically pleasing tattoos on his face.  I mean, seriously, he looks better once he’s cursed.  But Kyle doesn’t see it that way and neither does Kyle’s father who quickly sends Kyle away to an isolated New York apartment.  Anyway, Kyle learns that he had can go back to being a pretty boy if he can make someone fall in love with him and kiss him.  But who could love someone with kinda pale skin?  Fortunately for Kyle, Mary Kate Olson isn’t the only girl in the movie.  Vanessa Hudgens is there too.

I can’t really argue that Beastly is a good film because it’s not.  Actually, it’s kinda, sorta, really, really … well, not good.  The film drags (which is why you have to watch this with someone talkative because otherwise, the slow spots will seem even slower), the actors either refuse to or are incapable of bringing any sort of real pathos to their roles, and the film’s lesson — don’t judge a book by its cover — is sabotaged by the fact that even the “ugly” members of the cast still look better than most people do at their absolute best.

And, in the end, if I had to explain why I enjoyed Beastly, it’s precisely because it was so bad and so silly that the film actually became enjoyable despite itself.  As we watched this film, I lost track of the number of times that either Jessica or myself said, “God, this is so stupid,” in between giggles.  (Though Jessica eventually decided to keep count but, of course, we then just started to say, “God, this is so stupid,” every chance we got just so she’d end up with the highest number possible.)  This is one of those films where everyone looks like a model, the dialogue drips with pretension and melodrama, Mary Kate Olsen plays a glowering goth, and all plot holes are immediately followed by a musical montage.  Oh, and to top it all off, Neil Patrick Harris just showed up out of nowhere, playing a blind man who likes to hit golf balls off of the top of a New York City apartment building.

In short, Beastly is a perfect film for those of us who enjoy a little guilt with our cinematic pleasure.