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What Lisa Watched Last Night #87: Invasion Roswell

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I forever lost 2 hours of my life because I watched the latest SyFy “original” film, Invasion Roswell, with my friends, the Snarkalecs.

Why Was I Watching It?

When I first heard the title of the latest SyFy film, I thought to myself, “Roswell!?  I kinda remember that show!”  However, I quickly realized that — other than taking place in New Mexico and featuring aliens — Invasion Roswell had nothing to do with Katherine Heigl’s old TV show.

Invasion Roswell was actually broadcast on Thursday night.  As we’ve been doing ever since SyFy stopped showing original films on Saturday, the Snarkalecs dvred Invasion Roswell when it first premiered and then we actually watched (and live-tweeted) it on Saturday.

Why did we do this?

Because that’s what we do.

It’s an existential thing.

What Was It About?

This film was a combination Red and about every single alien invasion film that’s even been made.  Aliens invade the Earth and naturally, they chose to destroy large parts of London and Paris (take that, Europe!), as well as Washington D.C.  (take that, IRS!).  It turns out that the only people who can defeat this threat are a bunch of old alien hunters who have been previously forced to retire by a random corporate guy in a suit.

So, while Patrick (Greg Evigan) and Linda (Denise Crosby) attempt to get the old gang of gun-wielding geezers back together again, the aliens continue to progressively conquer every inch of the planet.

(Except for Canada, of course.  Canada’s tough!)

What Worked?

The aliens themselves were effective, especially when compared to some of the invaders who have populated previous SyFy films.  Clad in black armor and firing blue laser beams, the aliens managed to be intimidating and campy at the same time.

The Snarkalecs managed to get Invasion Roswell trending on twitter during the entire two hours we spent watching it.  It was fun to watch non-snarkalecs try to figure out why Invasion Roswell was trending.  “Have we been invaded?!” one random dumbfug toadsucker tweeted.  Seriously, some people are stupid.

What Did Not Work?

Invasion Roswell was literally one of the slowest movies that I have ever seen on SyFy.  A typical SyFy film accomplishes more in 10 minutes than Invasion Roswell did in 85 minutes.  Between the slow pace, the predictable storyline, and the uninteresting characters, there really weren’t many opportunities for Invasion Roswell to actually be entertaining.

As a result, my tweets suffered.  Usually, I think I’m a pretty lively force when it comes to live-tweeting SyFy films but, when it came to Invasion Roswell, I found myself struggling to stay awake.

To put it another way, I thought Heebie Jeebies was bad until I saw Invasion Roswell.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

When I was little, my family very briefly lived in New Mexico.  However, we were in Carlsbad and, as a result, I don’t think we ever met any aliens.  Then again, we were citizens of New Mexico for only a few months so maybe we could have met some aliens if we had just stuck around long enough.  I guess that’s just going to have to be one of life’s mysteries.

Otherwise, there were no “Oh my God!  Just like me!” moments in Invasion Roswell. Maybe someday, when I’m as old as Denise Crosby, I’ll be able to relate to this film.

Lessons Learned

I can forgive a lot of things but I cannot forgive dullness.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Big Jim McLain (dir by Edward Ludwig)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

During my sophomore year of college, I was acquainted with a bearded sociology major who would tell anyone that he met that he was a communist.  He also insisted that he was a revolutionary in the tradition of Che Guevara though, for the most part, he never seemed to do much more than hang out in the lobby of Bruce Hall and yell at the top of his lungs.   When he wasn’t attacking George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, he was busy quoting Karl Marx and telling people about how communism would fix all of America’s problems.  He would also get very upset if you called him a socialist.  “No,” he would say, “I’m a communist and I’m proud of it!”

I have to admit that I usually went out of my way to avoid him and I would cringe whenever I would hear him shouting my name and inviting me to come sit down next to him so he could attempt to give me my daily indoctrination while he stared at my breasts.  I could never summon up much enthusiasm for his ideology or his idolization of Hugo Chavez.  It all sounded rather dreary and boring to me.

I recently found myself thinking about those days in Bruce Hall lobby after I watched the 1952 anti-communist melodrama, Big Jim McLain.

Produced by and starring John Wayne, Big Jim McLain was made at the height of the red scare.  Produced in full cooperation with the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee, Big Jim McLain was meant to be an answer to all those weak-willed liberal types who claimed that the committee was going too far in its hunt for communist subversives.

Big Jim McLain starts out with a thunderstorm.  While stock footage of lightning illuminates the screen, a medley of patriotic songs play on the soundtrack and a somber-voiced narrator quotes The Devil Vs. Daniel Webster.  

Suddenly, the scene changes.  We’re in Washington D.C. and we’re watching a meeting of the House Un-American Activities Committee.  A shifty little man with a beard is being interrogated by the members of the committee.  They ask him if he’s ever been a communist.  He takes the fifth amendment.  He’s asked if he would ever take up arms against the United States.  Again, he pleads the fifth.

The camera pans back to reveal two remarkably tall men listening to the man’s testimony.  They both share the same look of disgust, a look that leaves no doubt how they feel about this sleazy little subversive and his constitutional rights.  They are Big Jim McLain (John Wayne) and his partner, Mal Baxter (James Arness) and they fight communists.

Suddenly, we hear the familiar sound of John Wayne’s determined drawl on the soundtrack and we realize that Big Jim McLain was using multiple voice-overs long before Terrence Malick even made his first film.

Wayne, speaking in character as Big Jim, explains that he and Mal have spent the last few months proving that the witness is a communist.  And now, they have no choice but to watch as he hides behind the constitution.  We’re told that this communist will be able to return to his position of teaching economics at an unnamed “north eastern college.”

That opening scene pretty much tells you everything that you need to know about the ideological outlook of Big Jim McLain.  The government is looking out for our best interests, outsiders are dangerous, and good men know the importance of following orders.

HUAC sends Big Jim and Mal to “the territory of Hawaii,” where they hand out a lot of subpoenas, conduct a smattering of illegal wiretaps, and try to figure out who is actually in charge of the local communist party.  Along the way, Big Jim meets and romances a naive secretary named Nancy (played by Nancy Olson).  Nancy just happens to work for a communist doctor but we know that she’s okay because she’s the widow of a serviceman.

Big Jim McLain is a real curiosity piece, a true product of its time.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the film really does feel like a time capsule.  Full of simplistic characters and nonstop speech-making from John Wayne, it’s easy to laugh at and dismiss a film like this.

Then again, the main idea behind Big Jim McLain seems to be that the government is justified in doing anything to fight its enemies and that anyone who openly questions or disagrees our leaders most be either evil or mentally incompetent.  Just how much has our culture changed since then?  How different is anti-communist crusader Big Jim McLain from those who today continually assure us that we have nothing to fear from the NSA?  One gets the feeling that if this film were made today, Big Jim would be hunting down Edward Snowden and directing drone strikes against America’s enemies.

Perhaps for obvious reasons, Big Jim McLain is a fairly obscure film.   I first found out about it from reading J. Hoberman’s Army of Phantoms.  Oddly enough, within a day or two of my reading about it, Big Jim McLain turned up on TCM.  It’s not a very good film but, in the best exploitation tradition, it is a document of its time and therefore, worth seeing as a piece of history.

As for the communist of Bruce Hall, he ended up dropping out at the end of the semester and, apparently, he later turned up in New York doing the whole Occupy Wall Street thing.  I’ve been told that he was recently spotted in Austin, still wearing his Che Guevara t-shirt.

One thing’s for sure.

Big Jim McLain would have taken him out with one solidly placed right hook.

Finally! Some Oscar news…

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you’ve been reading this site for the past few years then you know that my favorite time of the year is Oscar season.  I love the Oscars.

Unlike a lot of online film commentators, I don’t them all that seriously.  Again, if you’ve been reading this site for a while, then you know exactly how I feel about a certain self-important (and self-described) awards diva who is fond of saying things like, “I know the game because I am the game.”  You’ll never find me descending to that type of smugness.  I’m a fan, not a wannabe insider.

The Oscars are a big, tacky spectacle and that’s why I like them.  I let others worry about the political significance of why certain films win or lose.  I let others deal in the dreary outrage over the fact that The King’s Speech beat The Social Network.

I just sit back and enjoy the silliness of it all.

So, as you can imagine, I’m excited because today saw that start of Oscar season!  The Academy has announced who will host the ceremony in 2014 and the winner is…

Not Seth McFarlane!

Seriously, I get the feeling that’s it’s going to be a very long time before Seth is invited back to the Oscars.

I’m not a huge Seth McFarlane fan but I have to admit that I wasn’t as outraged by his Oscar hosting performance as some people were.  Yes, the majority of his jokes were lame and borderline offensive.  Yes, there was an undercurrent of misogyny to a lot of what he said and did.

But misogyny is pretty much the fuel that keeps Seth McFarlane’s career alive and that should have been obvious to anyone who has seen anything that McFarlane has ever been involved with.  You have to wonder just what exactly the show’s producers were expecting when they picked McFarlane in the first place.

Regardless, after all the criticism that McFarlane generated, the show’s producers have decided to go in the exact opposite direction with next year’s host….

….Ellen Degeneres!

She’s an almost painfully predictable choice but, with the exception of that season she spent on American Idol, I like Ellen so I can’t complain about her getting to host the Oscars for the second time.

That said, I still think they should have given James Franco another shot…

Guilty Pleasure No. 9: The Principal (dir by Christopher Cain)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

A confession:

I have a weakness for films about idealistic educators who try to teach and change lives in the inner city.  You know which films I’m talking about.  These are the films that always take place in a decaying high school and there’s usually at least one scene where the teacher is warned not to care too much about their hopeless students and then the teacher goes, “Someone has to care!”

Why do these films fascinate me so?

To a large extent, it’s because they take place in a world that is so extremely outside of my high school experience.  I was recently doing a search on my school and I came across a video on YouTube that was made by some students from my alma mater:

As I watched this video, I realized that neither the students, the campus, nor the neighborhood had really changed in the 9 years since I graduated.

I also realized that, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, I went to one of the most suburban, white bread high schools in the DFW metroplex.  At the time, of course, a lot of my classmates thought they were tough.  They would make a big deal about blasting Jay-Z and 50 Cent while they were driving down to Starbucks during lunch.  For the most part, though, we put the suburb in suburban.

That, I think, is why I’m fascinated by inner city high school films.  It’s even better when those films are totally over-the-top and feature a hero who not only teaches but who kicks some ass as well.

Perhaps that’s why I recently enjoyed watching The Principal.

Originally released way back in 1987, The Principal is one of those films that seems to regularly show up on the lesser known television networks.  A few weeks ago, I saw that it was going to be broadcast on Ion Television so I set the DVR to record it and I finally ended up watching it this weekend.

In The Principal, James Belushi plays Rick Lattimore.  (You can tell that this movie was released quite some time ago because Belushi has a lot more hair and lot less chins than he does now.)  Rick’s a teacher with an anger problem.  When he sees his ex-wife out on a date with his divorce lawyer, Rick loses it and physically assaults the lawyer.  The next morning, Rick is called into a meeting with the school board.  He’s expecting to get fired.  Instead, he’s promoted.  Rick is now principal of Brandel High.

Brandel High, it turns out, is the most troubled high school ever!  Drugs are sold and used openly in the hallways.  Few students bother to attend class (but yet they still come to the school).  The teachers spend most of their time hiding in either their classroom or the teacher’s lounge.  The school’s head of security, Jake (Lou Gossett, Jr.), spends most of his time making sarcastic comments.  When Rick pulls up on his motorcycle, the first thing he sees is a fight between rival drug dealers.

Rick responds to all of this by holding a school assembly.  As every student at Brandel jeers him, Rick announces that he has only one policy: “NO MORE!”  It’s at this point that the school drug lord Victor Duncan (played by Michael Wright) stands up and announces, “You talk too much!”

Things continue to build up from there as Rick divides his time between educating and getting beaten up by resentful students, Jake starts to actually care about his job again, and Victor wanders through the school hallways, dressed like he’s in one of the Underworld films and saying stuff like, “Try to reach me and I’ll just cut off your hand…”

The Principal is such an over-the-top, silly, yet heart-felt film that it’s impossible not to enjoy it in much the same way that you might enjoy eating junk food.  As I watched this film, I found myself wondering what had happened to James Belushi in the years since it was originally released because, in The Principal, he’s actually likable.  However, the film really belongs to Michael Wright.  Seriously, as played by Wright, Victor Duncan is the most evil student in the history of high school cinema.  When he tells Rick that he’s willing to cut off his outstretched hand, you believe him.

The Principal is a thoroughly predictable film that promotes a dubious educational policy of zero tolerance.  However, it’s also a lot of fun.

In other words, it’s the epitome of a guilty pleasure.

Belushi

Previous Guilty Pleasures:

  1. Half-Baked
  2. Save The Last Dance
  3. Every Rose Has Its Thorns
  4. The Jeremy Kyle Show
  5. Invasion USA
  6. The Golden Child
  7. Final Destination 2
  8. Paparazzi

Trailer: Ghost Shark

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

PCAS

So, I was recently talking to someone on twitter and he essentially said, “Nice blog but enough with Sharknado.”  I have to say that I agreed with him.  We do have a pretty nice blog here and Sharknado has been the overhyped, overrated film of 2013.

What’s distressing is that a lot of people think that Sharknado is the epitome of a good, silly SyFy film.  By SyFy standards, Sharknado was nothing special.  Certainly, it could in no way compare to previous SyFy films like 2-headed Shark Attack, End of the World and Flying Monkeys.  The only thing that set Sharknado apart was the fact that it was watched by a bunch of celebs who proceeded to tweet some the lamest film commentary ever seen on twitter.

Myself, I’m much more looking forward to August 22nd of this year.  That’s the day that Ghost Shark will premiere on SyFy.  Not only was Ghost Shark directed by the great Griff Furst (director of such classic SyFy films as Arachnoquake and Swamp Shark) but, judging from the trailer below, Ghost Shark appears to deliver exactly what it promises: a shark that’s also ghost which eats a lot of fat people.

What more could you possibly need?

6 Trailers That Are Better Than Sharknado

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi, everyone!  The Trailer Kitties decided to take this week off but luckily, they found a replacement to go out and put together another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film trailers.  

This week, we present you with 6 trailers for 6 films that are better than Sharknado.

1) 2-Headed Shark Attack (2012)

2) Swamp Shark (2011)

3) Sharktopus (2010)

4) Dinocroc Vs. Supergator (2010)

5) Dinocroc (2004)

6) Crocodile 2 (2002)

What do you think, Trailer Amphibian?

Film Review: The Conjuring (dir by James Wan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The-Conjuring

Before I say anything else about James Wan’s latest haunted house film, allow me to say this:

The Conjuring is crazy scary.

If just for that reason, The Conjuring has to be considered a success.  In this time when the savvy filmgoer has every right to be cynical about ghost films, The Conjuring delivers exactly what it promises.  It’s a scary film that takes the time to build up a properly menacing atmosphere and the final hour is one of the most intense that I’ve ever seen.

From the very first scene, I fell in love with The Conjuring.  Set in a classroom in 1969, the opening scene features paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) delivering a lecture about a possessed doll named Annabelle.  As Ed and Lorraine speak, we see flashbacks to how the doll first came to be possessed and I really do have to say that, with her cracked face and her morbid smile, Annabelle is one of the scariest dolls that I have ever seen.  This doll is pure nightmare material but, even more importantly, this short prologue serves to remind us that director James Wan knows how to make predictable material frightening.

As Ed and Lorraine finish their lecture, we are suddenly informed (via a crawling title) that Ed and Lorraine Warren are real paranormal investigators.  Ed is the only non-clergy to be certified as an exorcist by the Vatican.  We’re told that the movie we are about to see is a true story.  Again, this isn’t surprising.  (Don’t all ghost stories claim to be based on a true story?)  However, it was such a shameless and over-the-top moment that I couldn’t help but love it.  Again, it serves as a reminder that James Wan knows how to tell a ghost story and that’s what he proceeds to do for the next two hours.

The Conjuring tells the story of Carolyn (Lili Taylor), Roger (Ron Livington), and their five daughters.  The year is 1971 and Roger and Carolyn have purchased a large but isolated farmhouse in Rhode Island.  The house needs a lot of work, Carolyn and Roger are shocked to discover a cellar hidden behind some boards in a closet, and the family dog mysteriously dies the first night after they move in.  Their youngest daughter starts talking to an invisible friend while another daughter starts to sleepwalk.  Soon, Carolyn is waking up with mysterious bruises on her body.  After a mysterious woman attacks their eldest daughter and then mysteriously vanishes, Ed and Lorraine are finally called in to figure out what’s happening in Rhode Island…

Well, we can all guess what’s happening in Rhode Island.  To anyone who has seen Insidious, Sinister, or hundreds of other haunted house movies; the plot of The Conjuring will seem very familiar.  However, that actually works in the film’s favor.  One reason that ghost stories remain so effective is because of their familiarity.  When done correctly, films like The Conjuring are scary exactly because we know what’s going to happen.  The tension comes from knowing that nothing can stop it from happening.

Much as he did with Insidious, James Wan starts things out slowly.  He devotes the first hour of the film to building up tension and atmosphere of palpable unease.  The first part of the film demands patience on the part of viewers who have been conditioned by one too many installments of Paranormal Activity.

However, this patience pays off.  About an hour into the film, a supporting character wanders around the dark house and hears a ghostly voice whispering, “Look what you made me do…” It was when he spotted a figure standing in the shadows that I realized that, in its deliberate way, the film had totally captured the darkest corners of my imagination.  From the minute that shadowy figure appears, The Conjuring becomes one of the most intense horror films that I’ve ever seen.

However, The Conjuring is a lot more than just an effective horror film.  Since making a name for himself with the first installment in the tedious Saw franchise, James Wan has grown considerably as a filmmaker.  The Conjuring is not Wan’s first horror film but it is the first where you truly care about the characters and their safety.

Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor are convincing and likable and their five daughters are all perfectly cast and believable as sisters.  Speaking as the youngest of four sisters, I couldn’t help but both relate to this haunted family and appreciate the fact that the filmmakers made the effort to make them believable as both individuals and as family.  Much of the beginning of the film is devoted to observing the daily rituals of their lives and there were so many authentic moments that it made the fright scenes all the more scary.

Playing the Warrens, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are also well-cast.  As fictional versions of real-life paranormal investigators, the characters have the potential to be problematic but Wilson and Farmiga are both so committed to their roles and both have so much chemistry that I found myself not caring that I’m generally skeptical of ghost hunters.  On the basis of his work in this film, as well as his work in Insidious, Young Adult, and that episode of Girls where he has sex with Lena Dunham despite the fact that she spent nearly the entire episode wearing the ugliest shorts ever, I think Patrick Wilson has to be one of the most underrated actors working today.

All things considered, it’s not surprising that The Conjuring is an effective horror film.  What’s surprising is that James Wan’s latest haunted house film is also one of the best films of the year so far.

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Have you seen The Iceman?

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Iceman, a gangster biopic that stars the amazing Michael Shannon, came and went earlier this year.  It got respectful, if not rave, reviews but it certainly didn’t get the attention that it deserved.  That’s a shame because The Iceman is one of the best films of 2013.

Directed by Ariel Vromen, The Iceman tells the true story of Richard Kuklinski (Shannon), a Mafia contract killer who claimed to have killed anywhere from 100 to 250 people over the course of his three decade long career.  At the same time that Kuklinski was murdering the equivalent of the population of a small rural community, he was also living a double life as a suburban family man.  When he was finally arrested in 1986, neither his wife nor his daughters had any idea that he was a killer.  After being sentence to spend the rest of his life in prison, Kuklinski gave countless interviews (and was the subject of a creepy documentary that still shows up on HBO occasionally) until he finally died, under mysterious circumstances, in 2006.

When Kuklinski is first seen in the Iceman, it’s the 50s and he’s flirting with Deborah (Winona Ryder).  When another man speaks to Deborah, Kuklinski reacts by casually following the man outside and killing him.  Kuklisnki goes on to marry Deborah before he eventually meets crime boss Roy DeMeo (Ray Liotta) and is recruited to kill for a living.  It’s a good arrangement for Kuklinski because it turns out that killing is the only thing he’s good at and his marriage to Deborah allows him to tell himself that he’s just a blue collar family man doing his job.

As opposed to other cinematic sociopaths, Kuklinski is no glib charmer.  Instead, as the film repeatedly demonstrates, he is a remorseless killer who feels neither shame nor joy as a result of his actions.  Much like the character played by Michael Rooker in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Kuklinski is not defined by what hides behind his blank expression but by the fact that there’s nothing to hide because nothing’s there.

Even Kuklinski’s love for his family is, in one particularly harrowing sequence, revealed to be hollow and false.  As becomes apparent, the only thing that keeps Kuklinski from taking out his homicidal impulses on his family is the fact that there’s a never-ending supply of Mafia lowlifes who need to be executed.  Kuklinski and his associates exist in a moral vacuum and friendship and family life are ultimately a disguise as opposed to a reality.

If this makes The Iceman sound like a rather dark film, that’s because it is.  And yet, the film is never less than watchable.  It helps that Ariel Vromen gets excellent performances from his entire cast.  Both Winona Ryder and Ray Liotta are perfectly cast.  Robert Davi shows up as a mobster and James Franco has a very effective cameo as one of Kuklinski’s victims.  Stephen Dorff plays Kuklinski’s brother, who is serving a life sentence because, unlike his brother, he never figured out a way to turn his dark impulses into a business.  Best of all,  Chris Evans plays an especially sleazy hitman who drives an ice cream truck in his spare time.  When Evans first shows up, he seems almost like a comical character but, as the film progresses, Evans’ performance becomes more and more sinister until eventually, he’s calmly talking about killing his own children.  For those of us who have been conditioned to associate Chris Evans with the clean-cut Capt. America, it’s a revelation of a performance.

However, the film is truly dominated by Michael Shannon.  It’s not easy to make an empty character compelling but Shannon does so.  Shannon is such a charismatic performer that you want to like him when he first appears on screen.  As The Iceman plays out, you keep finding yourself hoping that Kuklinski will reveal some shred of human decency.  You find yourself studying Shannon’s rigid stance and cold eyes and hoping to find some evidence of compassion.  The genius of Shannon’s performance is that he makes Richard Kuklinski a fascinating character even as he slowly reveals just how hollow he actually is.

Is Michael Shannon the best American actor working today?  That was a question that filmgoers were forced to ask after seeing Shannon’s performance in 2011’s Take Shelter.  It’s a question that they should ask again after seeing his performance in The Iceman.  Without Shannon’s performance, The Iceman would be just another gangster film.  However, thanks to Shannon, it’s one of the best films of the year so far.