Tag Archives: review

Film Review: Battleship (dir. by Peter Berg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For nearly a year now, we’ve been seeing teasers and trailer for the film Battleship and we’ve all smirked and laughed.  “Really?  A film based on an old board game?  Alien battleships that look like they’ve escaped from a Transformers film?  Action scenes that look like Battle L.A.?  AND LIAM NEESON!?”

Yes, we’ve all been prepared to hate this film.  In fact, the most popular thing I ever tweeted (RT’d by 22 people within minutes of being posted, I might add) was a joke about how Battleship looked like it was a film specifically made for people who thought Battle L.A. was too complicated.  So, after all this build up, I finally saw Battleship on Friday and you know what?

While I wasn’t one of the many people who applauded at the end of the movie, I actually kind of enjoyed it.

(Does that make me a bad person?)

Battleship is the story of two brothers, a somber-looking admiral, and an alien invasion.  Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgard) is a Commander in the U.S. Navy.  In a genuinely amusing scene, his irresponsible younger brother Alex (Taylor Kitsch) is arrested while breaking into a closed convenience store so he can get a chicken burrito for Samantha Shane (Brooklyn Decker, a great name) who is the daughter of Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson).  Stone arranges for Alex to avoid jail by joining the U.S. Navy.

Jump forward seven years and Alex is now a lieutenant, engaged to Samantha, and hated by his future father-in-law.  When five alien ships crash into the ocean, both Stone and Alex Hopper are on the battleships sent out to investigate.  They quickly discover that the aliens are not friendly and soon, the future of humanity rests on the untested shoulders of Alex Hopper.  Well, Alex Hopper and a street-wise sailor played by Rihanna…

I really, really expected that I was going to hate Battleship and I was even kind of looking forward to coming back to the TSL Bunker and writing up my snarkiest post since my review of Avatar.  Therefore, imagine just how shocked I was as I watched the actual film and discovered that it’s actually not that bad of a time waster.  Yes, the film is predictable and the script is full of clichés and dumb dialogue but the difference between Battleship and Battle L.A. is that Battleship is aware of its own stupidity and is even willing to encourage the audience to laugh at the pure silliness of actually basing a movie on a board game.  Even the film’s final act of heroism — which features a lot of inspiring speeches and a return to duty by an iconic battleship of the past — feels less like typical third act posturing and more like a very deliberate parody on the conventions of recent U.S. Military Vs. Alien Invaders films.  Whereas films like Battle L.A. and Acts of Valor often feel like recruiting films for the military, Battleship feels like a recruiting film for movies about the military.  The CGI looks good, the battle scenes are nicely done and director Peter Berg seems to be having fun finding ways to visually remind us of the original Battleship game.  Taylor Kitsch makes for a surprisingly likable hero, Liam Neeson grimaces through his 6-minutes of screen time, and Alexander Skarsgard is to die for in his white naval uniform.  Even Rihanna appears to be having fun uttering silly lines like, “Boom” and “Mahalo, motherfucker.”

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Battleship is hardly a masterpiece.  It’s about 20 minutes too long and there’s a few times, especially during the middle of the film, when Battleship seems to run out of momentum.  Fortunately, every time this happens, Taylor Kitsch delivers another hardboiled line or Liam Neeson grimaces as he stares out at the alien fleet and the film picks back up again.  Battleship isn’t a great film and it might not even be a good film but it’s hardly the crime against humanity that I was expecting.

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night: Deadly Hope (dir. by Nicolas Monette)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, as I attempted to drift off to sleep, I turned on the Lifetime Movie Network and I watched the Canadian thriller, Deadly Hope.

Why Was I Watching It?

First off, it was on the Lifetime Movie Network and that’s always a good sign.  Secondly, how can you not watch something called Deadly Hope?

What Was It About?

So, Joanne (Alana De La Garza) is an obstetrician whose life is turned upside down when her partner at the fertility clinic is murdered by a mysterious assailant.  Joanne deals with her grief by having a one-night stand with a random stranger and soon, that random stranger is also murdered by a mysterious assailant.  Could the two crimes be connected and will the audience notice that all the locations in the film look rather Canadian?  That’s up to Detective Denise Landers (Sandrine Holt) to figure out.

What Worked?

Oh my God, this movie was scary!  Now, I know what you’re doing.  You’re laughing at me because you’re all like, “C’mon, Lisa — it’s a Canadian Lifetime movie!”  Well, all I can say is that you weren’t there.  Okay, the killer doesn’t just strangle or shoot people — instead, he stabs them with this little hypodermic needle that he carries around with him and it just looks like a really painful way to die.  Add to that, the killer just keeps popping up out of nowhere, much like the murderer in Dario Argento’s underrated giallo Opera.

Though she might not be a household name, Sandrine Holt is one of my favorite actresses, mostly because she always seems to be so unimpressed with everything happening around her.

What Did Not Work?

Actually, most of the film didn’t work and it was largely because Joanne was such an unsympathetic character and it didn’t help that quite a few otherwise likable  characters ended up getting killed just because they made the mistake of knowing her.  As played by Alana De La Garza, Joanne seems to be more annoyed by the inconvenience of having to deal with multiple murders than anything else.

Add to that, even by the standards of a Canadian movie, the film’s final twist kinda came out of nowhere.

“Oh My God!  Just like me!” Moments

I’m tempted to say that there were absolutely no “Oh my God!  Just like me!” moments in this film but that’s not quite true.  For instance, Joanne gets annoyed when her annoying neighbor just wanders, unannounced, into her living room and I would have the same reaction.

And, of course, every time Joanne has a one-night stand, it ends in a bloody murder.  That’s nothing like me … or is it?  *Cue ominous music*

Lessons Learned

Not everything made in Canada is as good as Degrassi.

Lisa Marie Does The Dictator (directed by Larry Charles)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For the past year or so, I haven’t been able to go to a movie without seeing the trailer for the new film from the creators of Borat, The Dictator.  The first few times I saw the trailer, I chuckled at a few scenes and I rolled my eyes a few times and I thought to myself, “Maybe I’ll see that.”  And then I had to sit through that trailer another 79 times and I stopped laughing and rolling my eyes because I had reached the point where I could practically recite the entire damn trailer by memory.  For a while there, I told myself, “There’s no way I’m going to waste my time seeing this.”  But, just a week ago, I realized that, after seeing the trailer 139 times, I had no choice but to see it.

I needed closure.

I finally saw The Dictator last Wednesday and my reaction to the film can best be summed up by a mild chuckle and a shrug of my shoulders.  It’s not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination.  It’s just a rather forgettable one.

In the Dictator, Sacha Baron Cohen plays General Aladeen, the ruthless leader of the Middle Eastern country of Wadiya.  Aladeen spends his time playing video games, rewriting the dictionary, ordering executions, and trying to develop a nuclear weapons program.  Aladeen is a pretty bad guy but he’s also strangely likable because 1) he’s more stupid than evil and 2) he’s played by Sacha Baron Cohen.  Anyway, Aladeen goes to New York to deliver a speech to the United Nations and while there, he’s kidnapped by an assassin (a hilarious John C. Reilly) who was hired by Aladeen’s uncle Tamir (Ben Kingsley, who has pretty much cornered the market when it comes to playing evil uncles).  Though Aladeen loses his beard in the process, he manages to escape the assassin and he soon finds himself lost and unrecognized on the streets of New York City.  With the unwitting help of a clueless pro-democracy activist (a very funny Anna Faris), Aladeen attempts to figure out a way to thwart Tamir’s plan to introduce democracy to Wadiya.

Watching The Dictator is something of an odd experience because, while the film itself is full of funny moments and Sacha Baron Cohen shows an admirable willingness to follow his character to the most of logical (and illogical) of extremes, it’s also a strangely forgettable film.  It’s certainly funnier than the typical episode of Family Guy (I hate that freaking show, by the way) but it’s nowhere near as profound as a below-average episode of Community (which was the best show on TV last season, in my always correct opinion).  Director Larry Charles doesn’t seem to be sure whether he’s trying to make a thought-provoking satire or if he’s just trying to make a broad, gross-out comedy that just happens to have an international backdrop.  The end result is a film that is extremely uneven, a film that climaxes with a speech that feels like it was taken straight out of the Occupy handbook despite the fact that the movie has just spent the last 70 minutes poking fun at the Leftist stridency of the Occupy movement through the character played by Anna Faris. 

(Personally, I preferred the film when it was simply content to be funny as opposed to when it tried to be important.)

Watching this film, it became apparent to me that, for all of his comedic talent, Baron Cohen works best when his cartoonish (if well-played) characters are placed in a recognizable reality.  Baron Cohen needs a “straight man” to play off of and unfortunately, The Dictator doesn’t provide him with that.  Everyone’s equally cartoonish in this film and, as a result, the movie makes us laugh but it never really makes us think.

There’s a part of me that always wants to declare that I’m officially “burned out” on Sacha Baron Cohen because, seriously, it’s become rather trendy to claim to be a huge fan of his work.  Seriously, I’m at a point now where if I one more person brags to me about how much they loved Borat (always speaking in a tone as if to suggest that only they have seen and appreciated this “obscure” film), I am going to scream.  However, every time I get close to getting on twitter for the sole purpose of making snarky remarks about the guy, I see him give a surprisingly good performance in a film like Hugo.  The Dictator may not be Sacha Baron Cohen’s best film but I still look forward to seeing what he does in the future.

An Underrated Quickie With Lisa Marie: The Five-Year Engagement (dir. by Nicholas Stoller)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When Jeff and I recently went to see The Five-Year Engagement, we literally had the entire theater to ourselves.  Seriously, that evening, we were apparently the only two people who took a look at the showtimes for the AMC Valley View and say, “Let’s see the Five-Year Engagement.” 

Now, I’m not complaining because, quite frankly, we enjoyed having that theater to ourselves. However, later that night, I found myself thinking about the empty theater and the fact that very few of the film lovers in my circle of friends had expressed much interest in The Five-Year Engagement.  The critics, in general, have been kind to the film but audiences seem to view it as a Netflix film at best. 

That’s a shame because, oh my God, The Five-Year Engagement is such a sweet film!  Seriously, I loved this movie!

Produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Nicholas Stoller, The Five-Year Engagement is a romantic comedy about a chef (played, quite well, by Jason Segal) and a psychologist (played by Emily Blunt, who is apparently destined to star in 65% of the romantic comedies released this year) who get engaged and end up remaining engaged for the next five years as the marriage ceremony is continually delayed by everything from Segal’s best friend marrying Blunt’s sister to the couple moving to Ann Arbor when Blunt gets a job working at the University of Michigan.  Along the way, various relatives die while still waiting for the blessed event and Segal and Blunt’s relationship struggles to survive against the distractions of everyday life.

The Five-Year Engagement isn’t a perfect film.  As often seems to happen with films produced by Judd Apatow, the film is about 20 minutes too long and sometimes the mix of sentimentality and crudeness is a bit awkward.  I could have done without an extended sequence in which Jason Segal (after having settled into life in Michigan) is revealed to have briefly turned into a crossbow-weilding survivalist. 

However, in the end, those flaws don’t matter because the Five-Year Engagement is, at heart, a sincerely sweet movie.  Jason Segal and Emily Blunt have a very real and very likable chemistry.  They make for a cute couple and you really find yourself hoping that they stay together.  Playing, respectively, Segal’s best friend and Blunt’s sister, Chris Pratt and Alison Brie both provide strong comedic support.  One of my favorite moments features Brie attempting to give a toast at Segal and Blunt’s engagement party and quickly dissolving into teary gibberish.  (Admitedly, one reason I loved this scene is because I did the same thing when I attempted to give a toast at my sister Megan’s wedding.)  Brie and Blunt also have another hilarious scene where they find themselves discussing realtionship matters while pretending to be Elmo and Cookie Monster.  It’s an odd but ultimately truthful moment.

Ignore the naysayers.  The Five-Year Engagement is sweet movie that deserves to be seen.

10 Reasons Why I Hated Season 8 Of The Office

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Note: This post originally appeared on my new TV-related blog, What Is Lisa Marie Watching Tonight?)

This has been a truly depressing television season for me and it all comes down to one show.  For seven season, I loved the Office.  Even when it wasn’t at it best, it was still the show that I based my Thursday nights around.  And yet, as I watched the finale of eighth season of The Office last night, I breathed a sigh of relief once it was finally over.  Why?  Because season 8 was not only the worst season of the Office so far but it was also one of the worst seasons of television that I’ve ever sat through. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I knew that this season of The Office (the first without Steve Carell’s iconic Michael Scott) would be a rough one.  However, nothing could have prepared me for just how bad season 8 would become.  Looking back over season 8, it’s a struggle to remember one memorable line or moment that made me laugh out loud.  Instead, most of my memories center around being annoyed that the show that I loved could have possibly become so …. bad.

In the future, I’m going to write a post detailing how I would have handled the first post-Carell season of The Office.  But before I write that post up, I want to take a few moments to highlight 10 reasons why I hated season 8 of the Office.

(And, believe me, it wasn’t easy to narrow it down to just ten…)

1) Andy Bernard

I have to admit that my heart sank a little bit when, during the Season 8 premiere, it was revealed that the show would now center around the character of Andy Bernard.  Even before Steve Carell left the show, I always dreaded any episode that revolved around Andy.  Andy, who started out as such a perfectly annoying villain in season 3, had developed into a rather pathetic and needy character and Andy-centric episodes were usually the weakest of their respective seasons.  It didn’t help that Ed Helms — who is a great character actor — has a tendency to go overboard whenever cast in a lead role.

So, I knew from the start of the season that I wouldn’t be totally happy with Andy Bernard as manager but I had no way of guessing just how much I would eventually come to despise the character.  Whether he was weakly pursuing Erin or cruelly dumping his previous girlfriend twice in one day or failing to sue Robert California for giving his job away to Nellie, Andy proved himself to be just as stupid as Michael Scott but also a hundred times more pathetic.  It was impossible to root for Andy because so many of his problems were of his own creation.  As needy as Andy was as a character, Ed Helms was just as needy as a performer and every time he showed up on-screen, I felt like he was begging me to love him as opposed to giving me a reason to do so.  It didn’t help that the show’s writers devoted three or four episodes to having everyone in the Office basically spend half an hour tellings us that Andy was a great manager and we really should love him.

At the end of last night’s finale, Andy — after being unemployed for the last few episodes — got his job back in the least plausible way imaginable.  Instead of firing Nellie, he gave her a new job and then he flashed that big, toothy grin of his.

Fortunately, for the first time during season 8, he resisted the temptation to break out into song.

2) Nellie

Nellie showed up during the second half of the season and essentially appointed herself as the new manager of the office.  It was a plot development that made no sense and it was hard not to feel like the show’s producers were trying to force the audience to love Tate as much as they did.   

Yes, the writers of The Office love Catherine Tate and maybe the audience would love her to if  Nellie, the character she was playing, had any real reason for existing beyond the fact that the writers wanted to work with Catherine Tate. 

Since Tate had no real reason to be on the show, it was hard not to resent the amount of screentime that was devoted to her.  It’s also hard to look forward to the fact that it appears that she’ll be an even more prominent character during season 9.

3) Robert California

At the start of Season 8, we were informed that Robert California (played by James Spader) had somehow managed to talk his way into being named CEO of Sabre.  We were told that he was a mysterious, charismatic figure who might be a genius.

Instead, he turned out to be just another inconsistent character whose personality changed from episode to episode until finally, he was revealed to be so pathetic that he couldn’t even handle Nellie declaring herself to be the new regional manager.  In his first few appearances, James Spader brought his trademark quirkiness to the role but then, once it became apparent that show’s writers couldn’t be bothered to figure out who Robert California actually was, Spader pretty much gave up on giving a performance.  Instead, he just became a name actor getting paid a lot of money to do not much of anything.

And yet the writers still insisted on trying to convince us that Robert California was an interesting character.  The first half of the season was largely devoted to the character.  We went to his mansion, we met his soon-to-be ex-wife, and we continually found ourselves wondering why the CEO of a Florida-based corporation was spending all of his time in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Robert California (and James Spader) will not be back for Season 9.  In the final episode, Robert California announced that his latest business venture would involve young women from Eastern Europe.  It was an unfunny end to an unfunny character.

4) Kevin and Erin: Just How Dumb Are They?

This has been an issue for a while but it really became obvious (and annoying) as things got more and more cartoonish during Season 8.  Erin and Kevin both seem to be stupid when the plot calls for it and just dumb when the plot doesn’t.  It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if not for the fact that there’s no logic to their occasional stupidity.  It’s never been firmly established just how stupid either one of them is and, as a result, their inability to understand the simplest of things feels more like lazy writing than anything else.

With Erin, this is an issue because this season was largely built around Andy pursuing her.  For a plot like that to be effective, you have to care about the characters and to care about the characters, you have to see some sort of vague reality in them even when they’re threatening to go over the top.

As for Kevin — well, where to begin?  Remember how, in the earlier seasons, Kevin seemed like he actually had the most active life out of the office of any of the people working there?  He would show up with a jaunty little hat on his head and he would drop hints about being addicted to gambling.  He was even the drummer in not one but two cover bands!

Now, he’s just another moron in the corner.

5) Angela and the Senator

Yes, we get it.  The senator’s gay.  It was funny the first four times that various characters went, “The senator’s gay!” but now, it just feels like a lazy punchline. 

Wouldn’t it have been fun to see Angela and the Senator’s wedding?  Seriously, this is a show that had a tradition of funny wedding episodes but, when given the perfect opputunity,  the show’s writers ignored a chance to showcase one of the strongest members of the original supporting cast.  Instead, Angela (and so many others) were just pushed off to the side so that we could spend more time with Robert California.    

6) What Does Jim Have To Smirk About?

Seriously, the man’s stuck in a rut.

7) When Did Pam Give Up On Being An Artist?

Whenever I watch reruns of The Office, I’m surprised by how much I relate to Pam.  That’s mostly because the Pam of the first few seasons seems to have very little in common with the  Pam of the 7th and 8th seasons.  Do you remember when Pam was an artist and, even more importantly, do you remember how great it was to watch as she finally started standing up for herself and following her dream during the first four seasons?

As I watched this last season, I thought about that wonderfully sweet scene from seasons past when Jim showed Pam the “artist’s studio” that he had set up in the garage.  And I wondered if that art studio was still sitting in the garage, untouched since Pam has apparently decided to give up on her dreams and just spend all of her time obsessing on the people that she works with.

8) What do Ryan and Gabe do all day?

Like seriously. 

9) Val (and others)

Seriously, what was the point of Val’s character this season?  If you’ve watched the entire season, do you know anything about Val beyond the fact that Darryl developed a crush on her?  I didn’t even catch that her name was Val until around her fifth appearance.  Obviously, the show’s writers expected us to take some sort of emotional stake in Darryl’s attempts to woo her but they never bothered to figure out just who exactly Val was meant to be.   

The same can be said, of course, of just about every new character on The Office this season.  Can you remember the name of the woman who Andy dumped so he could (finally) be with Erin?  How about Cathy, the girl who, out of nowhere, tried to seduce Jim and then mysteriously vanished from the show? 

Admittedly, this problem didn’t start with season 8.  Starting back in season 5, the Office developed a bad habit of carefully introducing and then randomly abandoning characters and plotlines.  (Remember Danny, the superhot traveling salesman played by Timothy Olyphant?)   However, it’s never bothered me in the past quite as much as it did during season 8.  Past seasons at least had someone there to anchor the show even when the writers seemed to get distracted.

And that leads me to the tenth reason why I hated season 8 of The Office…

 10) No Michael Scott

That, I think, pretty much says it all.

A Canadian Quickie With Lisa Marie: The Bloody Brood (dir. by Julian Roffman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As part of my ongoing mission to see all of the film’s featured in Mill Creek’s 50 Chilling Classics box set, I watched a 65-minute Canadian film called The Bloody Brood last night.

First released in 1959 and filmed in moody, noir-ish black-and-white, The Bloody Brood tells the story of a low-level drug dealer and aspiring beatnik named Nico (Peter Falk).  One night, while hanging out at the local coffeehouse and listening to decadent jazz, Nico witnesses a man drop dead of a heart attack.  Intrigued by the man’s sudden death, Nico and his nervous friend, a tv director named Francis (Ron Hartmann), decide that they want to experience what it would be like to deliberately kill someone.  Before you can say “Leopold and Loeb,” Nico and Francis are feeding a random stranger a hamburger laced with ground glass.  That stranger, a hard-working telegram delivery man named Ricky (George Sperdakous), later dies of an intestinal hemorrhage.

Unknown to Nico and Francis, Ricky has an older brother named Cliff (Jack Betts) and Cliff doesn’t believe that his brother’s death was an accident.  With the covert help of Detective McLeod (Robert Christie), Cliff starts to investigate his brother’s death.  Cliff eventually meets Ellie (Barbara Lord), a disillusioned woman who has fallen in with Nico and his murderous crowd.

The Bloody Brood is an unexpected surprise, a genuinely entertaining B-movie that more than overcomes the confines of its low-budget and limited running time.  While Peter Falk is the obvious center of the picture and steals every scene that he’s in with his coldly charismatic style of evil, the entire film is well cast and well acted with Hartmann and Betts both bringing unexpected nuance to their roles.  However, the real star of the film is director Julian Roffman who gives the film a shadowy and threatening noir-look. 

In many ways, The Bloody Brood represents everything I love about the low-budget, often sordid B-movies of the 50s and 60s.  Working with limited resources and a small cast, director Julian Roffman managed to create a genuinely memorable movie.  Films like The Bloody Brood continue to serve as proof that you don’t need millions of dollars to make a good film.  You just need a strong creative vision and the imagination to make that vision a reality.

A Grindhouse Quickie with Lisa Marie: The Demon (dir. by Percival Rubens)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last summer, I decided to watch and review all 50 of the films to be found in Mill Creek’s Chilling Classics box set.  Mill Creek, of course, is a company that’s best known for releasing box sets that seem to primarily feature low-budget films that, for whatever reason, have now found themselves in the public domain.  If you’re a fan of old school B-movies in general, then you probably know just how fun it can be to read the back of a Mill Creek boxset and discover what obscure films are waiting inside.  The thing that I especially love about Mill Creek is the fact that — in the best grindhouse tradition — they describe every film that they distribute (whether it’s George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead or something like Las Vegas Bloodbath) as being a “classic.”

So, anyway, I started to watch and review the films in the Chilling Classics box set but, as 2011 drew to a close, things got rather hectic and busy here at the TSL Bunker.  In between covering the Oscar season and keeping the world supplied with weekly trailer posts, I had to set aside my plans to review the entire boxset for another day. 

Well, I’m happy to say that day is here!  Last night, I dug out the old Chilling Classics box set and I watched a South African slasher film from 1981, The Demon.

The Demon actually tells two separate but connected stories.  In the first story, a teenage girl is kidnapped from her bedroom by a masked killer.  Her distraught family calls in a tormented psychic who quickly proves himself to so superfluous and useless that you’d forget all about him except he’s played by the late Cameron Mitchell. 

If you’re a fan of old school grindhouse and exploitation films then you’ve undoubtedly seen a handful of films featuring Mr. Mitchell.  A former “legitimate” actor who, early on in his career, appeared in things like Death of a Salesman, Mitchell eventually became better known for appearing in low-budget exploitation films.  Mitchell could always be counted on to shamelessly overemote and, regardless of the film he was appearing in, he was always a lot of fun to watch.  If nothing else, Mitchell always seemed to be rather amused by the films he found himself in.  It’s a shame that Cameron Mitchell died before Quentin Tarantino could engineer a comeback for him. 

In The Demon, Cameron Mitchell spends most of his limited screen time standing on a rocky cliff while staring down at the ocean below and having psychic visions that don’t really seem to have much to do with anything else happening in the film.  Actually, visions is the wrong word.  As Mitchell says, “Sometimes…I get these feelings.  Vibes, as the kids would say.”

And the kids are in a lot of trouble because our nameless killer has moved on to the city where he spends his time hanging around outside of a place called Boobs Disco and stalking two teachers named Mary (Jennifer Holmes) and Jo (Zoli Markey).  This is the film’s second storyline and it mostly consists of Mary spotting the killer out of the corner of her eye and Jo pursuing a relationship with the most boring man on the planet.

Like quite a few films that seem to pop up in various Mill Creek box sets, The Demon is technically a pretty bad film but, once you accept that fact, it’s also an occasionally entertaining mess that delivers a handful of effectively creepy moment.

The scenes featuring Cameron Mitchell are entertaining for exactly the reason that you think they are.  These scenes are such obvious filler and were so obviously added as an excuse to get a “name” actor to join the cast that it’s impossible not to admire the nerve of the filmmakers.  They weren’t going to let a silly thing like narrative cohesion get in the way of producing a 90 minute film.  Playing the world’s worst psychic, Cameron Mitchell delivers his lines with such a truly unfocused intensity that I actually spent the first half of the movie convinced that he was the murderer.  The final fate of Mitchell’s character is truly shocking (if just because it kind of comes out of nowhere) and Mitchell plays his final scene as if he’s starring in a dinner theater production of some lost Shakespearean play.

If the scenes featuring Mitchell are mostly entertaining for being so bad, the scenes in which the nameless killer stalks Mary and Jo are actually pretty well done and the final confrontation between the final girl and the killer is handled surprisingly well (though I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the fact that the film contrives to have the final girl fight for her life while topless).  The killer’s lack of personality makes him all the more intimidating and both Jennifer Holmes and Zoli Markey are likable and believable in the roles of Mary and Jo.  If nothing else, The Demon proves that even a really poorly produced horror film can be partially redeemed (if not saved) by a likable cast of potential victims.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, The Demon — like many forgotten exploitation flicks — serves as a valuable time capsule of the society that produced it.  To offer up just one example:

Book Review: RanDumb-er: The Continued Adventures of an Irish Guy In L.A! by Mark Hayes

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

 

I recently finished reading a wonderful new book from Mark Hayes.  The name of that book is RanDumb-er: The Continued Adventures of an Irish Guy In L.A.  You can order it here and I seriously recommend that you should.

Mark Hayes is a comedian, a DJ, a writer, and, as you can probably guess from the book’s title,  he’s also an Irish guy who has found himself living in one of the most uniquely American cities around, Los Angeles.  In RanDumb-er, we follow Mark as he looks at American culture with occasionally hungover eyes and an often biting (but never cruel) wit.  Whether he’s dealing with a B-list celebrity who is busy predicting the end of the world, bravely trying to survive a date with a girl who insists on howling like a wildebeest, or experiencing a fake snowfall at the Grove, Hayes is never less than entertaining and sometimes even rather poignant.

He also realizes, early on, that all American girls love an Irish accent.  And it’s true!  Whenever I hear an Irish accent, I get all girly and giggly and one of the things that I loved about RanDumb-er  is that, even though it takes place in Los Angeles, it is ultimately an Irish story.  I think that the Irish have a special ability to appreciate the small absurdities of existence (and I’m not just saying that because I’m a fourth Irish myself!) and that’s what truly makes RanDumb-er stand out as a work of non-fiction comedic literature.  Any writer can capture the obvious weirdness of living day-to-day.  What makes Hayes so special as writer is that he picks up on the small oddities of life that we don’t always notice and he makes us consider them in a new light.

Consider the moment, early on in the book, in which Hayes has a panic attack when he realizes that he managed to accidentally leave his scissors behind in Ireland when he left for L.A.  In just a few pages, Hayes manages to perfectly capture the anxiety that comes with travelling.  Once  you get over the initial excitement, you suddenly realize that you’re somewhere new and that you can no longer claim to be able to completely control your surroundings.  It’s at moments like these that you truly realize how vulnerable you are and just how false your assumption of control is in environments both new and old.  Hayes captures all of this without ever failing to make us laugh as we recognize our own individual neurosis in his story.

(I have to admit that one reason why I related to Hayes’ panic over his scissors was because, when I was in 17, I went with my family to Hawaii and it wasn’t until we were all walking along the beautiful beaches of Honolulu that I realized that I had left my St. Vitus medal back in Texas and I proceeded, under the most brilliant blue sky and surrounded by beautiful people frolicking half-undressed on the beach, to have one of the biggest panic attacks ever.  Eventually, I recovered but trust me — not a day went by that I didn’t think about that medal.)

As a writer, Hayes has a very interesting and compulsively readable style, one that goes beyond the fact that he happens to be a very funny guy.  Hayes writes in a stream-of-consciousness type of style and the end result is that, after a few pages, you feel that you truly are inside of his head and you are experiencing Los Angeles — and all the weirdness that goes with it — with him.  If you cross James Joyce with Jack Kerouac and then add in a little Terry Southern and Tom Wolfe with a slightly less drug addled Hunter Thompson, you’ll have Mark Hayes.

Perhaps the best thing about RanDumb-er is that Hayes ends it with the promise of a sequel.  I, for one, can’t wait to read it and you should feel the same.  However, for now, you really should go over to Amazon, order your own copy of RanDumb-er and get acquainted with the continued adventures of an Irish guy in L.A.

RanDumb-er.  Read it.

Happy 71st Birthday, Citizen Kane!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s May 1st and do you know what that means? 

Okay, yes, it is May Day and apparently, that’s a big deal to a certain class of political activist.  But, let’s be honest — political causes are forgotten from decade to decade.  However, a great film lives forever.

And, for me, today is all about one of the greatest films ever made.

71 years ago today, on May 1st, 1941, Orson Welles’s masterpiece Citizen Kane was first released to a movie-going public that wasn’t quite ready for it.  And that was their loss because Citizen Kane has proven itself to be one of those rare films that remains just as entertaining and fascinating the 100th time you watch it as it was the first time.

One of my fondest memories is of the first time I saw Citizen Kane in film class.  As I sat there listening to our professor drone on about the historical importance of what we were about to see, I was fully prepared to watch Citizen Kane and dismiss it — as I had so many other critically beloved films — as just being another overrated, academically-embraced movie. 

“After all,” I thought as the movie started, “I already know Rosebud is a sled* and I haven’t even seen the freaking film.  What’s the point?”

And as the film played out in the darkened auditorium, I soon discovered exactly what the point was.  The point was that Citizen Kane is one of the greatest and most watchable films ever made.  It’s that rare “important” film that’s actually fun to watch.  It didn’t matter that I already knew what Rosebud was.  In fact, I didn’t even think about it.  I was too busy enjoying Joseph Cotten’s sly turn as Jedadiah Leland and the sleazy, pragmatic villainy of Ray Collins as “Boss” Jim Gettys.  I was too busy cringing in a combination of sympathy and embarrassment as poor Susan Kane (Dorothy Comingore) made her disastrous operatic debut.  I sat there and I was transfixed by a flawless cast that brought a vibrant life to even the smallest of roles.  (My personal favorite was Paul Stewart’s wonderfully cynical performance as Raymond the Butler.)  But most of all, I sat there in awe of the talent of Orson Welles.  At that time, I knew little about Welles’ subsequent career troubles.  I just knew that I was watching a masterpiece.

I wish I could write more (because there’s so much more to say about this film) but now’s my time to curl up on the couch in front of the TV and watch one of the greatest films ever made…

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* And don’t you even think of going, “How about a spoiler warning!?” about that whole Rosebud comment.  Seriously, if you didn’t already know that Rosebud was a sled then I have nothing to say to you.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: The Raven (dir. by James McTeigue)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Raven, a largely disappointing thriller that just opened this weekend, takes place in 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland.  A mysterious killer is terrorizing the city and, as Inspector Fields (Luke Evans) quickly deduces, he’s patterning his murders after the works of an alcoholic and disreputable writer named Edgar Allan Poe (played here, in the style of Robert Downey, Jr., by John Cusack).  Fields recruits Poe to help catch the killer but the killer has other plans.  He kidnaps Edgar’s fiancée  Emily(Alice Eve*) and then challenges Edgar to a game.  The killer will continue to commit random murders and, with each murder, he’ll include a clue to finding Emily.  However, Edgar also has to write a story inspired by the killer’s crimes.  Desperate to save Emily, Edgar agrees…

I wouldn’t necessarily say that I had high hopes for The Raven but, on the basis of the trailer, I was hoping that it would at least be an entertaining and self-aware genre piece.  Unfortunately, The Raven isn’t even that.  Instead, it’s a slowly paced, predictable film that’s not even awful enough to be fun.  John Cusack has a few enjoyably over-the-top moments as Edgar Allan Poe and Brendan Gleeson is always fun when he’s being all blustery but the rest of the cast barely seems to be awake.  (In particular, poor Luke Evans struggles to look like he’s interested in anything that’s happening on-screen.)  Director James McTeigue comes up with a lot of striking images but the film is so oddly edited that the scenes never seem to flow together and the end result is a film that feels oddly static and listless.

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*Alice Eve has heterochromia, just like me!  Yay for both of us!