Horror Film Review: Anaconda (dir by Luis Llosa)

Posted on October 25, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In many ways, the 1997 monster film Anaconda is an incredibly dumb movie but let’s give credit where credit is for. Whoever was in charge of casting this movie managed to assemble the most unlikely group of co-stars that you would ever expect to see in a movie about a documentary crew who run into a giant snake while sailing down the Amazon River.

I mean, let’s just consider the most familiar names in the cast. Jennifer Lopez. Ice Cube. Jon Voight. Owen freakin Wilson. I mean, it’s not just that you wouldn’t expect to come across these four people all in the same movie. It’s that they all seem to come from a totally different cinematic universe. They’ve all got their own unique style of acting and seeing them all on the same small boat together is just bizarre. You’ve got Jennifer Lopez, delivering her lines with a lot of conviction but not much sincerity. And then you’ve got Ice Cube coolly looking over the Amazon and basically daring the giant snake to even think about trying to swallow him. Owen Wilson is his usual quirky self, delivering his lines in his trademark Texas stoner drawl. And then you’ve got Jon Voight.

Oh my God, Jon Voight.

Voight plays Paul Serone, a Paraguayan who says that he can help the documentary crew find an isolated Amazon tribe but who, once he gets on the boat, basically takes over and announces that he’s actually a snake hunter and he’s planning on capturing the biggest anaconda in existence. It takes a while for the snake to show up. When it finally does, it’s actually a pretty impressive throw-back to the type of cheesy by entertaining monsters that used to show up in drive-in movies back in the 50s and the 60s. But really, the biggest special effect in the movie is Jon Voight. Wisely, Voight doesn’t waste any time trying to be subtle or in anyway believable in the role of Serone. Instead, Voight gives a performance that seems to be channeling the spirit of the infamous Klaus Kinski. Voight growls, snarls, and glares as if the fate of the world depended upon it and he rips into his Paraguayan accent with all the ferocity of a character actor who understands the importance of being memorable in an otherwise forgettable movie. It’s as if Voight showed up on set and looked at what was going and then said to himself, “Well, Jon, it’s all up to you.” Serone is really a pretty vicious character. I mean, he literally strangles a character to death with his legs! But, thanks to Voight’s crazed energy he’s still the most compelling character in the movie. It’s really scary to think about what the film would have been like without Voight shaking things up. Along amongst the cast, Voight seems to understand just how silly Anaconda truly is. Voight takes a rather middling monster movie and, through sheer force of will, manages to make it at least somewhat entertaining.

Personally, I’d like to see a remake of Anaconda, one that would feature the same cast but would be directed by Werner Herzog. Just imagine if Herzog had told the story of that trip down the Amazon. Gone would be the bland dialogue and rudimentary character motivations. Instead, we’d have Jennifer Lopez slowly going insane while hundreds of monkey lay siege to the boat and Ice Cube musing on the never ending conflict between man and nature. Herzog’s Anaconda would probably be just crazy enough to keep up with Jon Voight’s performance.

Review: Predators (dir. by Nimrod Antal)

Posted on September 13, 2018 by Arleigh

Predators

It would be twenty years before those space-faring hunters, the Predators, would return to the big screen. Sure, they appeared in the two Aliens vs. Predator films of the early 2000s, but I don’t count those as part of the Predator franchise—mostly because they weren’t the headliners. Plus, those two mash-up films were all kinds of awful.

2010’s Predators, directed by Nimród Antal and produced by Robert Rodriguez, set out to breathe new life into the sci-fi action franchise that the two AvP entries had drained of excitement. From the early 1990s until this film’s release, the Predator mythology had steadily expanded through novels, comics, and games, creating a world as rich as any in science fiction. Longtime fans came to understand the Predators’ culture, mindset, and technology.

For some, that world-building stripped away the mystery that made the Predator such an iconic monster. Others felt it helped establish consistent rules, allowing future stories to build on a solid foundation instead of endlessly one-upping what came before.

Predators embraced this expanded lore while adding a new wrinkle: the introduction of the so-called “Super Predators,” bigger, faster, and meaner than the classic hunters we’d seen over the decades. Another new element placed the story on an unnamed planet serving as an extraterrestrial game preserve, where Predators could hunt their chosen prey on familiar ground.

This setup lent a new dimension to the narrative. The humans being hunted had nowhere to run, and whatever advantage they might have enjoyed on Earth vanished instantly. They were now being hunted on Predator turf—a cruel inversion of game hunting, like a safari where the prey has no chance against its well-equipped pursuers.

Despite these new additions to the lore, the film mostly works as an action-thriller. We get the requisite band of misfits, murderers, and killers—the worst humanity has to offer, but the best at what they do. They range from black-ops mercenaries and elite snipers to cartel enforcers and even a serial killer.

Leading this reluctant ensemble is the enigmatic Royce, played by Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, who surprisingly pulls off the wiry, cold-hearted black-ops soldier. The film hinges on his performance. He’s not a team player, nor is he likable—he fits the antihero mold perfectly, willing to sacrifice anyone if it means surviving another hour. Yet he understands that his best chance lies in keeping others alive, if only as tools for his own survival. He’s the audience surrogate, the one who rolls his eyes as everyone else makes one bad decision after another.

Antal’s action direction recalls the McTiernan era. He favors long, sweeping takes that clearly define the geography of each battle—a quality too rare in modern action cinema, where quick cuts and shaky edits often stand in for real dynamism. Where the film falters is in its reliance on exposition-heavy dialogue. After nearly every action set piece, the momentum stalls as characters explain what’s happening. Laurence Fishburne even appears in a role that exists purely to deliver exposition.

Now, about those Super Predators: they’re an intriguing trio who expand the series’ creature variety, though at the cost of making the classic Predator seem almost obsolete. There’s the Tracker, who uses alien hunting dogs to flush out prey; the Falconer, who employs a cybernetic drone that feels straight out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; and the Berserker, the biggest and most brutal of the three, relying on raw power rather than skill or strategy.

They look fantastic but slightly diminish the menace of the original Predator design. Against this new breed, the traditional hunters seem almost helpless.

Still, Predators stands several notches above what audiences got from the two AvP movies. Despite an exposition-heavy script and a bold but polarizing decision to downplay the classic Predator’s threat, Antal’s entry injects enough adrenaline and fresh lore to reenergize the series. It’s unfortunate that the AvP films’ lingering stench colored its reception, but over time, more fans have come to appreciate Predators for what it is: a fun, muscular, and engaging slice of sci-fi action.

Film Review: Guns (dir by Andy Sidaris)

Posted on March 9, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As you can probably tell by looking at the poster at the top of this review, the 1990 film Guns was Andy Sidaris’s attempt to make a Bond film. Not only does the poster feature a man in a tuxedo and two gun-wielding women but the tag line even reads, “James Never Had This Kind of Help!”

(Of course, that’s not really true, as anyone who has seen Dr. No, Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, or For Your Eyes Only can tell you.)

Much like a Bond film, Guns features a secret agent fighting to defeat an international conspiracy. The agent’s efforts lead her and her allies to several different cities in several different … well, really only one country. Being a Sidaris film, it’s doubtful the Guns really had the budget to film anyplace other than the United States but still, the action does move from Lake Huvasa, Arizona to Hawaii to Las Vegas. That’s about as close as a Sidaris film ever gets to featuring exotic locations.

(If Lake Havusa sounds familiar, that’s because Jimmy Kimmel gave away at trip to Lake Havusa during the Oscars.)

And like any good Bond film, Guns has a flamboyant and almost comically evil villain. Juan “Jack of Diamonds” Degas (telenovela star and future reality tv mainstay Erik Estrada) is an international gun dealer and an all-around sociopath. He’s the type who shoots someone and then smirks about it. He’s so evil that he’s even got Danny Tejo working as his main henchman! That’s really evil! Estrada gives a surprisingly good performance in the role. Especially when compared to the forgettable villains who appeared in Sidaris’s previous films, Juan Degas feels like a worthy opponent. It’s not just that he’s evil. It’s that he’s so damn smug about it. You can’t wait to see him get taken down.

Degas is planning on smuggling a bunch of Chinese weapons into America through a base on Hawaii. The only problem is that Donna (Dona Speir) and her new partner, Nicole Justin (Roberta Vasquez), are based in Hawaii! Degas knows that he has to get rid of them if he’s going to have any hope of succeeding. (For whatever reason, it never occurs to Degas to smuggle the weapons through Guam or American Samoa. I mean, there are other islands out there.) When Degas sends two cross-dressing assassins to kill Nicole, they end up not only shooting the wrong woman but also killing a friend of Dona’s as well.

Now, it’s personal!

Except, it was already personal. In a typical example of Sidaris’s make-it-up-as-you-go-along style of plotting, it turns out that Degas previously killed Donna’s father. And now, it appears that it might get even more personal because Degas has kidnapped the Attorney General of Nevada, who happens to be Donna’s mother!

Obviously, this means that it’s time to gather together another group of misfit agents and take down the bad guys. That means that Savage Beach‘s Shane Abilene (Michael J. Shane) and Bruce Christian (Bruce Penhall) both show up again. It also means that a lovable magician named Abe (Chuck McCann) gets to help out as well. Unfortunately, one member of the team is eventually blown up by a remote control boat.

That’s right! A remote control boat! For some reason, remote control vehicles were a Sidaris obsession and it’s not a Sidaris film without someone getting blown by either a remote control boat or helicopter.

Anyway, there’s a lot of explosions to be found in Guns but the good thing is that it’s women blowing stuff up and it’s women who are in charge of the entire operation. That’s the thing with a Sidaris film like this one. For all of the nudity and the double entendre-filled dialogue, Guns was an action film where women got to shoot the guns, beat up the bad guys, and ultimately save the world from a smirking misogynist. When Donna picked up that rocket launcher, it was both ludicrous and empowering at the same time.

Guns is one of Sidaris’s better films. For once, despite all of the usual Sidaris red herrings, the plot can actually be followed and Estrada is an appropriately hissable villain. While the film may not be able to compete with the best of the Bond films, it’s still more fun that SPECTRE.

Bronson’s Rich: Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987, directed by J. Lee Thompson)

Posted on February 28, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

To quote The Main With No Name, “When a man’s got money in his pocket, he begins to appreciate peace.”

Two years have passed since Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) last visited and cleaned up New York. He is back in Los Angeles, the president of his own successful architectural firm. Now a rich man, he has retired from killing criminals, though he still has dreams where he shoots muggers in parking garages. Paul has a new girlfriend, journalist Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz). When Karen’s teenage daughter, Erica (Dana Barron), dies of a cocaine overdose, it’s time for Paul to get his gun out of storage and blow away a drug dealer.

Shortly after shooting that drug dealer, Paul finds a note on his front porch. “I know who you are,” it reads. Paul then gets a call from a mysterious man (John P. Ryan) who identifies himself as being a reclusive millionaire named Nathan White. Nathan explains that his daughter also died of a cocaine overdose. He wants to hire Paul to take out not just the drug dealers but also the men behind the dealers, the bosses. Using his vast resources, Nathan has prepared a file on every major drug operation in Los Angeles. He offers to share the information with Paul.

“I’ll need a few days to think about it,” Paul says but we all know he’s going to accept Nathan’s offer just as surely as we know that Nathan White has an ulterior motive that won’t be revealed until the movie’s final twenty minutes.

For the first time, Paul is no longer just targeting muggers and other street criminals. This time, Paul is going after the guys in charge and trying to bring an end to drug trade once and for all. (The idea that the best way to win the war on drugs was just to kill anyone involved in the drug trade was a very popular one in the late 80s.) L.A.’s two major drug cartels are led by Ed Zacharias (Perry Lopez) and the Romero Brothers (Mike Moroff and Dan Ferro). Along with their own activities, Paul and Young work the turn the two cartels against each other.

It’s not just the criminals that have changed in Death Wish 4. Paul has changed, too. Paul used to just shoot criminals and run away. In Death Wish 4, he gets more creative. He sneaks into Zacharias’s mansion and bugs the phone so that he can keep track of what’s going down. When it comes time to kill a table full of drug dealers (one of whom is played by Danny Trejo), Paul doesn’t shoot them up. Instead, he sends them a bottle of champagne that explodes when they open it. By the end of the movie, Paul is blowing away the bad guys with a grenade launcher! How many former conscientious objectors can brag about that?

The biggest difference between Death Wish 4 and the films that came before it is the absence of director Michael Winner. Winner and Bronson had a falling out following Death Wish 3 and, as a result, Winner had little interest in returning to the franchise. Instead, Winner was replaced by J. Lee Thompson, who had already directed Bronson in several other Cannon films. As a result, Death Wish 4 is less “heavy” than the previous Death Wish films. Whereas Winner’s direction often felt mean-spirited and exploitive, Thompson plays up the film’s sense of airy adventure.

Though it barely made a profit at the box office and has been dismissed by critics, Death Wish 4 is an enjoyable chapter in Paul’s story. If you’re looking for mindless 80s mayhem, Death Wish 4 gets the job done with admirable efficiency. It would have made a great ending for the franchise but Bronson would return to the role one last time.

Tomorrow: Death Wish V: The Face of Death!

A Movie A Day #214: Urban Justice (2007, directed by Don E. FauntLeRoy)

Posted on August 10, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Steven Seagal returns and this time, he’s out for justice! Urban justice!

After his son, a beloved Los Angeles cop, is assassinated, Simon Ballister (Seagal, of course) comes out of retirement to get revenge. Retirement from what? Like most of Seagal’s characters, Simon has a deadly and legendary past. Nearly everyone who meets him says something like, “So, you’re Simon.” Everyone wants Simon Ballister to do something for them. El Chivo (Danny Trejo!) wants Simon to help defeat his rival, Armand Tucker (Eddie Griffin). Armand Tucker wants to be Scarface. Simon just wants revenge.

Much like Elvis, Steven Seagal’s career can be divided into a thin and a fat period. Thin Steven Seagal was all over movie screens in the 90s, making up for the fact that he could not act by convincingly beating people up. Fat Steven Seagal appears almost exclusively in direct-to-video productions. He does everything that Thin Seagal did but he sweats a lot more while doing it. Unfortunately, Fat Seagal is an even worse actor than Thin Seagal. Since Fat Seagal produces almost all of his own films, there is no one around to say, “Let’s cut away from Steve during this speech, he looks stupid.”

Urban Justice is peak Fat Seagal. It actually features more fights than the typical Fat Seagal movie but they are all edited in such a way that it is obvious that most of the blows were delivered by a stuntman while Seagal undoubtedly stood in a corner, trying to catch his breath. Since Urban Justice features Seagal in what is supposed to be the ghetto, he calls everyone that he meets, “motherfucker.” Fat Seagal has the same Clint Eastwood-style rasp that he had when he was Thin Seagal but he still sound stupid whenever he says, “I want the motherfucker who killed my son.”

Eddie Griffin is pretty good as Armand Tucker. I don’t know if Eddie improvised all of his dialogue but it certainly seems like he did. All of the movie’s best lines belong to Eddie Griffin. Just one example: “Man, fuck Santa Claus! He never gave me shit! That’s why I sell dope!” As for Danny Trejo, he doesn’t do much but he’s Danny Trejo.

Personally, looking over the career of Steven Seagal, I think he made a mistake by trying to be an action hero. It is hard to think of any other actor with as unlikable a screen presence as Steven Seagal. If Steve had made his career playing villains, he would probably still have a good career going. People would gladly play money to see Steven Seagal get blown up at the end of a Jason Bourne sequel. Instead, he insisted on playing the hero and his career is now made up of appearing in direct-to-video movies and threatening to run for governor of Arizona.

To quote Clint Eastwood, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

Movie A Day #178: Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects (1989, directed by J. Lee Thompson)

Posted on July 5, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

This is the one where Charles Bronson sodomizes a guy with a dildo.

Don’t worry, though. Bronson does it off-screen and the guy was abusing Nicole Eggert so he had it coming.

In Kinjite, Bronson plays Lt. Crowe, a tough LAPD vice cop who hates two groups of people: pedophiles (which is cool, who doesn’t hate them?) and the Japanese (which is not cool). Not only does Crowe sodomize a pervert but he also forces a pimp to eat a gold watch and later, with the help of his partner, he holds another man over the edge of a balcony, just to have that man accidentally slip out of his shoes and plunge to his death. Finally, Crowe tosses a convict into a prison cell, where another prisoner (played by Danny Trejo, in what may have been his film debut) announces that he’s “got something big and long for you.” Crowe chuckles, “That’s justice” and then walks away.

Danny Trejo in Kinjite

Of the many strange films that Bronson made for Cannon Films, Kinjite may be the strangest. The main plot involves Crowe searching for and rescuing the kidnapped daughter of a Japanese businessman (James Pax). Before his daughter was kidnapped, the businessman groped Crowe’s fifteen year-old daughter on a city bus. The entire movie seems to be building up to the moment that Crowe, who is portrayed as being overprotective of his daughter, discovers what the businessman did but that moment never comes. There are numerous scenes of the businessman in Japan but they do not have anything to do with the rest of the plot. Strangely, neither Crowe’s daughter nor his wife (played by Peggy Lipton) are ever menaced by the bad guys. What type of Charles Bronson movie is this?

In Bronson’s defense, he was 71 year-old when he made this movie and, off screen, his wife Jill Ireland was battling the cancer that would eventually take her life. Bronson can be excused for not appearing to be overly invested in Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects. (Since Kinjite means Forbidden Subjects in Japanese, the actual title of this movie is Forbidden Subjects: Forbidden Subjects.) No one appears to have made much of an effort on Kinjite, though Bronson’s stunt double gets a good work out. Kinjite is full of scenes where Bronson throws a punch in close-up but his first in never actually shown connecting with anyone. Most of the action scenes are clumsily filmed so that Crowe keeps his back to the camera. All Kinjite needs is a supporting turn from Troy McClure and a cameo from McGarnagle and it would be perfect viewing for The Simpsons.

Kinjite would be the final film that Bronson made for Cannon Films. It would also be the last Bronson film to be directed by J. Lee Thompson. After Kinjite, Bronson appeared in two more feature films: Sean Penn’s The Indian Runner (which, if not for Penn’s pretentious direction, could have launched Bronson on a second career as a first-rate character actor) and a final Death Wish film. Bronson returned to television, appearing in three made-for-TV movies before retiring in 1999. Bronson died in 2003 but, as long as there are people who enjoy a good action movie, he will never be forgotten.

This scene is not from Kinjite but it’s still pretty fucking cool.

A Movie A Day #67: Animal Factory (2000, directed by Steve Buscemi)

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Edward Furlong is Ron Decker, a spoiled 18 year-old from a rich family who is arrested and sent to prison when he’s caught with a small amount of marijuana. Being younger and smaller than the other prisoners, Ron is soon being targeted by everyone from the prison’s Puerto Rican gang to the sadistic Buck Rowan (Tom Arnold). Fortunately, for Ron, prison veteran Earl Copen (Williem DaFoe) takes him under his wing and provides him with protection. Earl is the philosopher-king of the prison. As he likes to put it, “This is my prison, after all.” If he can stay out of trouble, Ron has a chance to get out early but, with Buck stalking him, that’s not going to be easy.

Based on a novel by ex-con Edward Bunker, Animal Factory was the second film to be directed by Bunker’s Reservoir Dogs co-stars, Steve Buscemi. Though it was overlooked at the time, Animal Factory is a minor masterpiece. Taking a low key approach, Buscemi emphasizes the monotony of prison life just as much as the sudden bursts of violence and shows why someone like Ron Decker can go into prison as an innocent and come out as an animal. DaFoe and Furlong give two of their best performances as Earl and Ron while a cast of familiar faces — Danny Trejo, Mickey Rourke, Chris Bauer, Mark Boone Junior — make up the prison’s population. Most surprising of all is Tom Arnold, giving Animal Factory‘s best performance as the prison’s most dangerous predator.

Playing Catch-Up With 6 Film Reviews: Avengers Grimm, Bad Asses On The Bayou, Hayride 2, Insurgent, Poltergeist, Tomorrowland

Posted on July 19, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here are 6 films that I saw during the first half of 2015. Some of them are on Netflix and some of them were major studio releases. Some of them are worth seeing. Some of them most definitely are not.

Avengers Grimm (dir by Jeremy M. Inman)

Obviously made to capitalize on the popularity of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers Grimm opens with a war in the world of fairy tales. Evil Rumpelstiltskin (Casper Van Dien) uses Snow White’s (Laura Parkinson) magic mirror to cross over into our world and he takes Snow White with him! It’s now up to Cinderella (Milynn Sharley), Sleeping Beauty (Marah Fairclough), and Rapunzel (Rileah Vanderbilt) to cross over into our world, save Snow White, and defeat Rumpelstiltskin. Also sneaking over is rebellious Red Riding Hood (Elizabeth Petersen) who is determined to kill Rumpelstiltskin’s henchman, The Wolf (Kimo Leopoldo).

Got all that?

Avengers Grimm is another enjoyably insane mockbuster from The Asylum. The budget’s low, the performances are intentionally melodramatic, and it’s all lot of fun. Casper Van Dien has a lot of fun playing evil, the women all get to kick ass, and Lou Ferrigno is well-cast as a labor leader named Iron John.

Avengers Grimm is currently available on Netflix.

Bad Asses On The Bayou (dir by Craig Moss)

Apparently, this is the third film in which Danny Trejo and Danny Glover have respectively played Frank Vega and Bernie Pope, two old guys who kick ass in between worrying about their prostates. I haven’t seen the previous two Bad Asses films but I imagine that it really doesn’t matter.

In this film, Trejo and Glover go to Louisiana to attend a friend’s wedding. When she’s kidnapped, they have to rescue her and impart some important life lessons to her younger brother. It’s all pretty predictable but then again, it’s also pretty good for a film called Bad Asses On The Bayou. This is a film that promises two things: Danny Trejo kicking ass and lots of bayou action. And it delivers on both counts.

In fact, I would say that Bad Asses On The Bayou is a better showcase for Danny Trejo’s unique style than the better known Machete films. Danny Trejo is a surprisingly adept comedic actor and he gives a performance here that shows his talent goes beyond mere physical presence.

Bad Asses On The Bayou is currently available on Netflix.

Hayride 2 (dir by Terron R. Parsons)

I should admit up front that I haven’t seen the first Hayride film. Luckily, Hayride 2 picks up directly from the end of the first film and is filled with so many flashbacks and so much conversation about what happened that it probably doesn’t matter.

Essentially, Pitchfork (Wayne Dean) is a murderous urban legend who turns out to be real. He killed a lot of people in the first film and he stalks those that escaped throughout the 2nd film. Like all good slasher villains, Pitchfork is a relentless killer. He’s also an unrepentant racist, which leads to a genuinely unpleasant scene where he attacks a black detective (Corlandos Scott). Say whatever else you will about the film, Hayride 2 deserves some credit for being on the side of the victims. No attempt is made to turn Pitchfork into an anti-hero and the movie is relentlessly grim.

Hayride 2 is an odd film. The film’s low-budget is obvious in every single scene. The pacing is abysmal and the performances are amateurish. And yet, when taken on its own meager terms, it has a dream-like intensity to it that I appreciated. Then again, I always have had a weakness for low-budget, regional horror films.

Hayride 2 is available on Netflix.

Insurgent (dir by Robert Schwentke)

Insurgent is both the sequel to Divergent and was also 2015’s first YA dystopia film. Shailene Woodley is as good as ever and I guess it’s good that she has a commercially successful franchise, which will hopefully inspire audiences to track down better Shailene Woodley films like The Spectacular Now.

All that said, Insurgent often felt even more pointless than Divergent. For a two-hour film featuring performers like Woodley, Kate Winslet, Octavia Spencer, Ansel Elgort, and Miles Teller, Insurgent has no excuse for being as forgettable and boring as it actually was. The next installment in The Hunger Games can not get here soon enough.

Poltergeist (dir by Gil Kenan)

When a family (led by Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt) move into a new house, they discover that everything is not what it seems. For one thing, they come across a bunch of creepy clown dolls. They also hear a lot of scary sounds. They discover that the house was built on an old cemetery. Their youngest daughter vanishes. And finally, someone says, “Isn’t this like that old movie that was on TCM last night?”

Okay, they don’t actually say that. However, as everyone knows, the 2015 Poltergeist is a remake of the 1982 Poltergeist. Since the 1982 Poltergeist still holds up fairly well, the 2015 Poltergeist feels incredibly unnecessary. It has a few good jump scenes and it’s always good to see Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt in lead roles but ultimately, who cares? It’s just all so pointless.

Watch the wall-dancing original. Ignore the remake.

Tomorrowland (dir by Brad Bird)

Welcome to the world of tomorrow! Wow, is it ever boring!

Actually, I feel a little bit bad about just how much I disliked Tomorrowland because this is a film that really did have the best intentions. Watching the film, you get the sinking feeling that the people involved actually did think that they were going to make the world a better place. Unfortunately, their idea of a better world is boring and almost oppressively optimistic. There is no room for cynicism in Tomorrowland. Bleh. What fun is that?

Anyway, the film basically steals its general idea from the Atlas Shrugged trilogy. Tomorrowland is a secret place that is inhabited by inventors, dreamers, and iconoclasts. Years ago, Frank (George Clooney) was banished from Tomorrowland because, after learning that the Earth was destined to end, he lost “hope” in mankind’s future. Fortunately, he meets Casey (Britt Robertson), who is full of hope and through her, he gets to return. They also get a chance to save the world and battle a cartoonish super villain played by Hugh Laurie. (Why is he a villain? Because he’s played by Hugh Laurie, of course!)

After all the hype and build-up, Tomorrowland turned out to be dull and predictable. What a shame. The Atlas Shrugged trilogy was at least fun because it annoyed the hipsters at the AV Club. Tomorrowland is just forgettable.

Lisa 6 Favorite 2015 Super Bowl Commercials!

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

While I did watch the Super Bowl tonight, I have to admit that I only watched it for the commercials. Back in 2013, I did a post on my favorite super bowl commercials and I meant to do the same thing for 2014 but, for whatever reason, I never got around to doing so. So, I was definitely not going to miss out this year!

Unfortunately, the commercials really weren’t that great this year. Perhaps if I was looking for a new car, the constant barrage of car commercials would have been more interesting. I found a lot of the so-called “empowering” commercials to be condescending. (To be honest, I always resent the idea that I need a commercial to make me feel good about myself. I’m stronger than that.) The McDonald’s commercial where people got free food for telling their mom that they loved them upset me because my mom’s not here for me to tell her how much I love her. And then there were all the commercials about fathers bonding with their sons (never their daughters, interestingly enough) and those made me want to throw stuff as well.

In fact, when all is said and done, my favorite part of the Super Bowl was not watching that commercials. Instead, it was watching the dancing sharks.

Dance, Shark, dance!

But there were a few commercials that stood out. For example, there was the Nationwide dead kid commercial, which made me feel like a terrible person because I started giggling as soon as I saw that the TV had fallen over. And then there was that GoDaddy commercial that was so offensive that it didn’t even make it to air. (The commercial featured a lost puppy who, upon finally making his way back home, discovers that he’s being sold online. Dear GoDaddy, I hate you and your asinine commercials. Stop trying to be edgy, ‘kay? Okay.)

Oh! And don’t forget the Nissan commercial about the NASCAR driver who is a crappy father but then makes up for it by showing up at his son’s school in a new car.

My boyfriend actually paid more attention to the game than the commercials, which is like totally the wrong way to do the Super Bowl if you ask me. But, for the record, his favorite ad was the Victoria’s Secret Super Bowl commercial. I’m just happy that he got something out of the game.

Anyway, here are my 6 top Super Bowl commercials.

6) Liam Neeson for Clash of Clans

I really don’t know much about Clash of Clans but this commercial made me laugh because this is how I’ve always imagined Liam Neeson passes the time between Taken movies.

5) Pierce Brosnan for Kia

This is actually one of the few car commercials that I actually enjoyed. Pierce is aging well and appears to have a pretty good sense of humor about how his career will always be defined by James Bond.

4) Nationwide — Invisible Mindy

Everyone was so traumatized by the Nationwide Dead Kid commercial that the Invisible Mindy commercial kinda got lost in the shuffle. That’s a shame because it’s actually pretty clever. What really made the commercial, for me, was the Matt Damon cameo at the end. It was appropriate because Mindy first came to prominence when she and a friend wrote and performed a play called “Ben and Matt,” which told the story of Matt’s bromance with Ben Affleck.

3) The Snickers Machete Bunch Commercial

Danny Trejo and Steve Buscemi! Need I say more?

2) The Budweiser Puppy Commercial!

This one made me cry.

1) NO MORE’s Official Super Bowl Ad

And finally, here’s my top ad. This one was powerful and important and all it was selling was hope for a better future.

Film Review: In the Blood (dir by John Stockwell)

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Do you remember Haywire?

Haywire was an action film that came out in 2011. It briefly got a lot of attention because it starred MMA fighter Gina Carano in her feature film debut and it was directed by Steven Soderbergh. I have to admit that I didn’t care much for Haywire. Some of that is because Gina Carano herself didn’t seem to be a very good actress but my main issue with the film was with Steven Soderbergh. Don’t get me wrong — I know that Soderbergh can be a genius. However, he’s also a remarkably pretentious filmmaker. Sometimes that pretension works, like with The Girlfriend Experience. But, in the case of Haywire, all the pretension served to do was to make a thin story even more annoying.

John Stockwell, on the other hand, is a director who is the very opposite of pretentious. Whereas Soderbergh often makes genre films that try too hard to be art, Stockwell makes genre films that are so unapologetic about being genre that they often become art despite themselves. Stockwell may never be as acclaimed as Soderbergh but, on the whole, he’s a much more consistent filmmaker.

Take In The Blood for instance. In the Blood came out earlier this year, got thoroughly mediocre reviews, and disappeared from theaters pretty quickly. When I watched it last night, I had very low expectations.

But you know what?

In the Blood isn’t bad.

In fact, it’s a perfectly entertaining and, ultimately, rather empowering film.

In In The Blood, Gina Carano plays Ava. Ava, we quickly learn, has led a difficult life. Raised in extreme poverty by a father who taught her early how to fight and how to defend herself, Ava is a former drug addict. When she goes to rehab, she meets and falls in love with fellow addict Derek (Cam Gigandet). Once they’re both clean, Ava and Derek marry despite the concerns of Derek’s wealthy father (Treat Williams).

For their honeymoon, Derek and Ava go to the type of Caribbean island where bad things always happen in movies like In The Blood. They meet Manny (Ismael Cruz Cordova), who agrees to be their guide on the island. One night, Manny takes them out to a club where Ava ends up getting into a huge fight with literally everyone on the dance floor, including a local gangster played by Danny Trejo. The next morning, Manny takes them zip lining but Derek ends up plunging from the zip line and crashing down to the ground below. He’s rushed to the hospital where he promptly vanishes.

Despite being ordered to return to America by police chief Luis Guzman, Ava is determined to figure out what has happened to her husband and she’s willing to beat up the entire island to do it…

Obviously inspired (much like almost every other low-budget action film released over the past few years) by Taken, In The Blood is a familiar but enjoyable burst of pulp fiction. As opposed to Soderbergh’s approach to Haywire, Stockwell doesn’t worry about trying to disguise the genre roots of In The Blood. Instead, he simply tells the story and he tells it well. In The Blood is a film that’s full of beautiful island scenery, villainous character actors, and enjoyable melodramatic dialogue. The pace never falters and the action is exciting. In a few years, the club fight scene will be remembered as a classic of action cinema.

And best of all, Gina Carano kicks ass! In The Blood gives her a chance to show what she can actually do when she has a director who is willing to get out of her way. As opposed to Haywire, where she often seemed to get lost amongst all of Soderbergh’s showy techniques, Gina Carano gives a confident and determined performance in In The Blood. After having to sit through countless action films where every female character is either a victim or a pawn, there is something so wonderful about seeing a movie where a woman gets to do something more than whimper and beg. Regardless of how predictable the film’s plot may be, the fact that it’s a woman — as opposed to a man — who is getting to kick ass (and look good while doing it!) serves to make In The Blood something of a minor masterpiece of the pulp imagination.

If nothing else, In The Blood shows that sometimes it’s best to keep things simple.