Starring: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Christopher Walken, Giancarlo Giannini, Radha Mitchell, Marc Anthony, Rachel Ticotin, Mickey Rourke
Plot Synopsis: (via IMDb) In Mexico City, a former CIA operative swears vengeance on those who committed an unspeakable act against the family he was hired to protect.
My Opinion:
Okay, this certainly wasn’t the best movie I’ve seen in August but I probably enjoyed it the most. In many ways, it’s quite bad. Very cliché & predictable & all that. But Denzel Washington was as awesome as always (love him) and, yeah, I fell for the cheesy friendship that was so obviously going to form between him and Dakota Fanning, the young girl he’s hired to protect as she’s in danger of being kidnapped. The movie did that very well, though, and spent a long time showing their growing relationship and making us care about them instead of diving straight into the action. They had great chemistry, which helped make up for the characters of her parents (played by Radha Mitchell & Marc Anthony) being a bit rubbish. But it’s hard to live up to Denzel’s massive star power so it’s impressive that the very young Fanning held her own against him where most the adult actors couldn’t.
Christopher Walken was also good, as always, as Denzel’s old friend in this but I’d have liked to see much more of him as well as finding out more about their shared tragic past & what has made Washington’s character so broken. So, yeah – great development of the Denzel/Dakota friendship but really would’ve loved to have found out much more about Washington’s character. This movie is very much two movies: the first half sets up the characters & friendship while the second half is Denzel going on a bloody, violent, revenge-fuelled murderous rampage. Oh boy! He was PISSED OFF. So that was fun and exactly what people like in a revenge thriller.
I actually finally decided to watch this after seeing a Twitter thread showing movies with very different audience & critic scores (audiences loved Man On Fire & critics hated it). I always find that fascinating. I now see why there’s the difference on this one. No, it’s not a good movie. As I said, it’s very cliché & predictable & a little cheesy. It’s also fun and has some great characters plus who doesn’t love a good revenge thriller?? I’m a wuss with violence but find I can stomach it a bit more when it’s for a good reason. I wanted Denzel to kill all those evil bastards! And Denzel gives his all in this – he’s not one of these good actors who just phones it in when he’s not in one of his more “Oscar-worthy” films. It’s why I’ve never paid much attention to reviews from professional critics. Are movies not allowed to just be enjoyable sometimes? I enjoyed this. It had exactly what I expect from an action thriller plus it actually gave us far better characters than what we get in a lot of other films in this genre. Admittedly, though, Denzel (as well as Dakota) are what really make this one work. I don’t think the movie would be as popular with a different lead actor. Denzel was perfect for this film.
These movies not worthy of full-length reviews are: Repo! The Genetic Opera, Let’s Scare Jessica To Death, The Quiet Ones, The Crazies, & The Victim.
I always do this – I plan to do horror movie reviews all of October then get bored halfway through. Unfortunately, I’ve watched a lot of bad movies in preparation this year and don’t have enough to say about them to do full reviews. So, I’m doing the worst five all together (leaving me with nothing to review the final week of October, unless I get time to watch some more. Oops!). This is because I only do movies I can watch on TV or Netflix so maybe next year I’ll actually spend out on some decent older films instead of reviewing whatever crap happens to be available to me at no extra cost.
Here we go! I’ll do these from “best” to worst (to be fair, the first one isn’t actually bad – it’s better than both Mama & The Sacrament, which I did review in full)…
The Crazies (2010)
Directed by Breck Eisner
Based on The Crazies by George A. Romero
Starring: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson, Danielle Panabaker
Plot Synopsis: (via Wikipedia) The Crazies takes place in the fictional town of Ogden Marsh, Pierce County, Iowa, “friendliest place on Earth,” whose town water supply is accidentally infected with the “Trixie” virus. After an incubation period of 48 hours, this virus gradually transforms the mental state of the infected into that of cold, calculating, depraved, bloodthirsty killers, who then prey on family and neighbors alike.
My Opinion:
Sorry lovers of The Crazies – I just don’t have much to say about this one although I did think it was pretty decent for a modern horror movie & can see why it has its fans. I love Romero’s zombie films so did try to watch the original of this one years ago. I don’t remember much now but it started out very slow and, for whatever reason, I never finished it. It was no Dead film! I’ll give it another try if it pops up on the Horror Channel or something as I do like the concept of a virus making people go crazy. So… it’s not a lot different from the zombie thing anyway. This remake is really just 28 Days Later but not as good.
As you can see by that picture, this one is pretty bloody. It was a bit too violent for my taste (I hated one bit with a pitchfork but found that scene pretty tense so I guess it did its job in that regard). I thought the movie almost got the balance right, though, in focusing on a small set of characters in small-town-Midwest-America and making us like them in between scenes of pitchfork nastiness. I’m always kind of fond of movies set in small-town-Midwest-America as I can still relate to that having grown up in a town so similar to this movie’s Ogden Marsh. I’m not sure why I didn’t like The Crazies more than I did as it had the perfect set-up (for me) and, at first, seemed like the type of movie I was really going to enjoy. Had they focused on the character development a little more and the violence a little less, I’d have rated this more highly. Plus, there’s a big explosion at one point that looked so dodgy that I couldn’t help but laugh even though I don’t normally notice that kind of thing.
I think I was just too distracted while watching this because, like with most movies I watch at home these days, I’m sure I was getting a blog post ready while it was on as I don’t have time to do just one or the other. That’s why I’ll be cutting way back on my number of posts once October is over – I want to enjoy movies again when I actually make the time to watch them. Sorry for the little tangent but I’m just trying to explain why I maybe didn’t fully appreciate The Crazies. If I ever watch the original, I may revisit the remake again as well and see if my opinion changes. I wanted to like it more. I’ve certainly seen worse! (Like, the four movies below….).
My Rating: 6/10
Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971)
Directed by John Hancock (I wonder what his signature looks like?)
Starring:Zohra Lampert, Barton Heyman, Kevin O’Connor, Gretchen Corbett, Alan Manson, Mariclare Costello
Plot Synopsis: (via IMDB) A recently institutionalized woman has bizarre experiences after moving into a supposedly haunted country farmhouse and fears she may be losing her sanity once again.
My Opinion:
Let’s bore Jessica to death by making her watch this movie. Apparently this is a cult classic? Well, that’s said about lots of old horror movies so I don’t know if that’s true or not. Don’t get me wrong – there are elements of this movie that I did like and I’d always choose to watch some old moody & atmospheric 70’s horror movie like this, bad clothing and hairstyles and all, over the crap that gets made nowadays. But this one really is just too damn boring, even for an older person like me who has a fair bit of patience and can appreciate a slow build-up. I thought nothing was ever going to happen in this thing. Luckily, the last twenty minutes or so are pretty good. Well, compared to the rest of the film anyway. Or maybe I was just happy that something finally happened?!
So, Jessica is nuts and her husband moves her to a secluded farmhouse to recover after she’s been released from the hospital. But all this weird stuff starts happening and, through Jessica’s rather annoying thoughts (which we can hear out loud during the whole movie), we don’t know whether she’s once again going mad, if her husband and all the creepy locals are playing games and trying to drive her insane, or if there really is some ghostly shit going on. Jessica becomes obsessed with an old photograph in the farmhouse showing the family who once lived there & is told by the local antiques dealer that the young woman in the photo drowned and that she now haunts the area as a vampire.
So what’s really going on?!?! I have no idea because I lost interest! Which is too bad since this movie was almost cool at the end – it had a real Rosemary’s Baby feel for a few minutes there with some eerie old small town locals (in that picture up there). Well, I suppose that’s an insult to the far superior Rosemary’s Baby. If you really REALLY love low-budget 70’s horror that’s more about mood & atmosphere than actual gore & violence, you might like this okay. It’s the type of thing I normally like but this one just didn’t work for me. It probably didn’t help that Jessica was annoying as hell.
My Rating: 5/10
The Quiet Ones (2014)
Directed by John Pogue
Starring: Jared Harris, Sam Claflin, Olivia Cooke, Erin Richards
Plot Synopsis: (via Wikipedia) The Quiet Ones is a 2014 British supernatural horror starring Jared Harris as a college professor attempting to prove poltergeists are manifestations of the human psyche and not supernatural beings. The film is loosely based on the Philip experiment, a 1972 parapsychology experiment conducted in Toronto.
My Opinion:
Good lord – this was as boring as Let’s Scare Jessica To Death! But this one doesn’t have the advantage of actually being made in the Seventies like that one (although it’s set in 1970-something), so therefore it’s not groovy in any way. Fake Seventies grooviness just doesn’t work in the same way – American Hustle is proof of that! This is just a boring movie made in 2014 in which the characters wear ugly clothes & listen to Slade’s Cum On Feel The Noize over & over. (Although I’m not gonna lie – I totally like that song because I’m old & thoroughly uncool).
So there’s paranormal stuff and experiments on a crazy girl with a doll and Slade and the chick I couldn’t stand in Gotham (Barbara) which I stopped watching along with most every TV series I’ve attempted to watch in the last five years and, hey, the crazy girl with the doll is the girl in Me And Earl And The Dying Girl which I kind of wanted to go see but couldn’t talk the hubby into and my god they play that Slade song a lot in this (just in case you forgot it was 1970-something!!!) and the Me And Earl’s Dying Girl spits a lot of black shit out and most everyone gets killed and I really was paying no attention by the end and was questioning why I watch shit like this just to have something to “review” in October.
My Rating: 4/10
Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman
Based on The Necromerchant’s Debt by Terrance Zdunich & Darren Smith
Starring: Alexa Vega, Paul Sorvino, Anthony Stewart Head, Sarah Brightman, Paris Hilton, Bill Moseley, Ogre, Terrance Zdunich
Plot Synopsis: (via IMDB) A worldwide epidemic encourages a biotech company to launch an organ-financing program similar in nature to a standard car loan. The repossession clause is a killer, however.
My Opinion:
What the fuck? No, seriously – what the fuck?!? No, really – can someone explain this thing to me?? I’d never even heard of this one until someone mentioned it somewhere on my blog recently (I don’t know who or where but I think they said something favorable about this movie. Here’s hoping whoever it was doesn’t read my review. If whoever you are is reading this, I apologize). 😉 Because I hated this stupid piece of shit!!!!!!!
That’s Sarah Fucking Brightman of, like, famous musicals fame & shit. In this fucking movie! WTF?
So this was some actual opera several years before the movie, I guess. I didn’t do much research into it as I disliked the movie so much but, as far as I can tell, this has a following in the same way that The Rocky Horror Picture Show does?? I saw plenty of cosplay photos when looking up images for this post. Okay, fine – I can understand that. This movie is clearly about “image” and I can see why girls would want to dress up as Brightman’s Blind Mag or Shilo, the movie’s young heroine:
According to Wikipedia, this movie is a “splatterpunk, rock opera, musical comedy, horror film“. Splatterpunk?? I’d not heard that phrase before but it sounds like the perfect way to describe this one. Splatter indeed! Of these five movies, this one is the goriest & most blood-splattered by far. As you can see from the poster, it’s from the producers of Saw. Barf! I hate the Saw films (well, the first was okay). I didn’t know this before sticking the movie on when I saw it was on the Horror Channel. Just like I didn’t know that Paris Hilton had a big role in this. Paris fucking Hilton! She plays a spoiled rich bitch addicted to plastic surgery. At least her face falls off:
I think what annoyed me so much is that this movie sounded kind of cool and I was excited when I saw that I’d be able to watch it. And it started out okay and had the potential to be a bit of fun. Plus the repo man himself looked pretty rad:
This movie is a Goth Sado-Masochist’s wet dream. If that’s your sort of thing, rush out and watch this movie immediately. No, really – you’ll love it! I’m not being a smart ass – I totally understand why this movie has a fan base. That’s why I’ve included all the pictures as it’ll give you an idea of what this movie is like. But, goddamn, the movie is a fucking mess. It’s just really bad. It looks good, yes! The visuals and the costumes and the set and the comic book imagery scattered throughout the film are all pretty impressive but they don’t make up for the godawful acting or the fact that half the actors can’t sing for shit (not that it really matters with such unmemorable, mediocre songs). Plus, the constant singing with the constant, obnoxious, “heavy metal” guitar noise drove me mad. MAD! I wanted to repo the cast’s fucking vocal chords!
Hey, though, Anthony Head is in this monstrosity. Remember when he had that “coffee romance” over a series of several Taster’s Choice commercials? I loved those! I always thought they should do more commercials that told a story like those. And I found out a few years ago that the woman in those commercials is Alice Eve’s mother. “Alice Eve hot” is one of my top search terms so, awesome, I just managed to mention her again in a wonderfully obscure & roundabout way!
Anyway, those Taster’s Choice commercials were a million times better than Repo! The Genetic Opera. I think the main problem is that this movie tries too damn hard and ends up feeling completely forced, desperate, and pathetic. Basically, this movie is a 40-year-old stripper. Get off the damn pole and look for a new career! Speaking of strippers, let’s move onto the worst movie I’ve watched in the three-year history of my blog…
My Rating: 3/10
The Victim (2011)
Directed, written by & starring Michael Biehn
Starring: Michael Biehn, Jennifer Blanc, Ryan Honey, Denny Kirkwood, Danielle Harris
Plot Synopsis: (via me) The slutty brunette stripper (who we find out in flashbacks is actually a sweet slutty brunette stripper), gets killed. Michael Biehn fucks the blonde stripper. I don’t know what happens after that as I only saw the first half of this movie & that was more than enough for me.
My Opinion:
I’ve mentioned my love for Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese several times on this blog. So, one day, Filmnerdblog’s Laura tweeted me about a movie on The Horror Channel that was directed by, written by, and starring my beloved Kyle Reese. Er. Um. Ugh. (Do you think there’s any chance that Michael Biehn might read this?? I better keep it short as I actually still find him pretty hot).
Two skanky strippers pick up these two guys (cops if I remember correctly – I can’t be bothered to verify). They go into the woods and the fucking commences. The cute one (Danielle Harris – she’ll be very well known to horror fans. What are you doing in this, Danielle?!?) lets one of the disgusting dudes screw her Game-Of-Thrones-Style (from behind like a dog) while she looks bored & says things like “Why don’t you just come already?”. Charming. So he snaps her neck. Do strippers know how to pick ’em or what? The blonde stripper gets away & ends up at Michael Biehn’s house in the middle of the woods. He’s a hot old recluse. They screw & she says something along the lines of “you may be 54 but you don’t fuck like you’re 54″ (or whatever age he was in this). Really? Oh, Michael Biehn… You were so damn sexy as Kyle Reese but I really question your writing skills.
Anyway, one of the two guys (the actual killer or the other guy – I don’t remember) ends up at Biehn’s house & Biehn ties him up and starts to torture him a bit. At this point I turned it off as I couldn’t be bothered with it anymore. I did, however, plan to finish it another night (while writing a blog post as it played in the background). But when I went to play the recording, it had disappeared off the box! I was devastated! And by “devastated”, I mean “relieved”. I’ve forced myself to finish every single movie I’ve started since I began this blog. It’s, like, my duty as one of a million shitty blog writers! I’ll now never know how this sad stripper tale ends or be able to see more cheesy flashbacks of the two strippers having a girly chat to prove that they’re actually “nice, sweet strippers” who don’t deserve to have their necks broken. Okay, I could read about the ending online but I’m happy to let the rest of the film forever remain a mystery.
Starring:
Vin Diesel
Radha Mitchell
Cole Hauser
Keith David
Running time: 110 minutes
Plot Synopsis:
A bunch of hateful people crash land their spaceship on a planet filled with aliens who, luckily, attack them thanks to the fact that they’ve landed on this planet at the worst possible time.
Halloween Horror Fest:
I’ve watched most of the films now for my Halloween Horror Fest and just have to finish writing up the rest of the reviews. I’ve loved a couple and hated a couple. I didn’t love Pitch Black… Here’s the list of films I’ve watched so far:
There was a lot of talk about Pitch Black as whatever number Riddick sequel thingy was out recently so I decided to finally check out Pitch Black after reading the following reviews for both of them: Pitch Black reviewed by MovieRob HERE and by Dan The Man’s Movie Reviews HERE plus a Riddick review from Gregory Moss at Mossfilm HERE.
I hold none of these people responsible for making me watch Pitch Black. It was entirely my decision to watch a Vin Diesel movie! 😉
My Opinion on Pitch Black:
The most positive thing I can say about it is that it definitely had potential. It COULD have been a pretty good film. And some of it LOOKED pretty cool, at least. One of my all-time favorite movies is Aliens (and Alien). I’m not going to be able to help but compare Pitch Black to Aliens throughout this review as it’s basically Aliens but shit. Take out all the things about Aliens that make it such an awesome film and you get Pitch Black.
Characters:
The characters in Pitch Black were, for me, the film’s biggest weakness. I didn’t care about them at ALL. I don’t know who the hell they even were or why they were on this ship. But I’ll come back to all that later…
Okay, the characters of Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell) & Jack (Rhiana Griffith) weren’t TOO bad – they were the only ones I maybe (kind of sort of) wanted to survive. Jack is the only somewhat likeable character and Fry would be if it wasn’t for something that happens at the beginning of the film (But it’s pretty important when it comes to what happens at the end of the film so I didn’t have a problem with that. In fact, this little bit of story was the only thing that gave one of the characters a bit of depth whereas none of the others had any at all).
And RIDDICK? What a horrible movie character. And the sequels are all about him? Um, no thanks – I’ll be skipping those. You see, he’s a “prisoner”. I have no idea what the hell he did or why the hell he’s on this spaceship. I don’t know if he’s a bad guy who’s actually kind of a good guy. I don’t know what he says half the time because I can’t understand him. I don’t know anything about him at the start of the film and still don’t know anything at the end of the film. What’s the point? Are we meant to like him? Are we meant to hate him? Are we meant to identify with him in any sort of way? Are we meant to think he’s cool because he has muscles and mumbles a lot and has freaky eyes because he paid someone to give him eyes that could see in the dark since he was going to spend his life in a dark prison? (Did I get that right?). Oh how convenient that he was on this spaceship with those eyes! But I’ll come back to that later too…
So here comes my main comparison to Aliens: You can argue that Aliens also has some pretty one-dimensional & cliché characters as well. A lot of sci-fi does, which is unfortunate as I’d have to say sci-fi is probably my favorite genre when it comes to movies if I was forced to choose just one. But Ripley is pretty complex and has a backstory and KICKS ASS so Radha Mitchell’s Fry has nothing on her. Say what you want about Newt but I loved the Ripley/Newt relationship. Pitch Black makes a small, pathetic attempt to give us a similar sort of relationship between Radha & Jack. Meh. Who Cares.
Riddick is a combination of several characters from Aliens, I suppose, but Hudson is the first one to come to mind. The prick. Hudson is SO cliché but, honestly, who doesn’t actually love that character?! I actually know more about all the lesser characters in Aliens who you KNOW from the start have been put into the film just to die than I do about Riddick or anyone else in Pitch Black. I can even name all the characters who are “just there to die” in Aliens but I had to look up everyone’s name in Pitch Black immediately after seeing it (other than Riddick’s and I mainly knew that thanks to the sequels being named after him)! My long winded point is this: The characters in Aliens, although pretty cliché, just WORK. They don’t in Pitch Black. Is it REALLY that hard to give a movie some decent characters?? It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
The Story (SPOILERS!!!):
I know Hollywood scripts are full of things that are WAY too convenient sometimes but, holy hell, Pitch Black really takes the cake! I admit that I was confused throughout this movie (probably because I didn’t care). I’ve even read the whole plot online now, though, and nothing is explained so maybe it wasn’t just a case of me not paying attention. Here’s what I don’t get:
– Who the hell are these people and why are they on this spaceship and where the hell are they going? It’s such an odd assortment of people! And why oh why is a prisoner also onboard and all chained up? And why is there a young kid also there with no apparent family?
– So while on autopilot, the debris from a comet damages the ship and (um, luckily?) the second-in-command, Fry, is awakened (from, um, hypersleep?) after debris kills the sleeping captain (convenient). Okay. I can buy the comet causing the ship to crash. Shit happens. This is necessary for the movie.
– So Fry manages to land the ship on some strange planet. Okay. This planet has three suns or some such shit, meaning it’s ALWAYS daylight. Okay. Fine.
– This planet has creatures/aliens that can’t stand light and are actually hurt by any sort of light so they have to live underground in caves (how sucky for them to have to live on this three-sun planet, then). But… Wait!
– This planet has a year-long eclipse every 22 years, allowing the creatures to come out & play! And guess what? The ship just happened to crash land on this planet JUST as this eclipse is about to start! Convenient.
– Vin Diesel/Riddick/the mysterious prisoner reveals that he had some operation or whatever to give him eyes that can see in the dark. Oh! VERY convenient!
– These special eyes can not only see in the dark, they can also tell that the young boy who is so obviously being played by a girl is actually a girl AND she’s having her period, drawing the creatures to them all. Wow, those are some pretty amazing eyes! Convenient. And stupid!
– Blah blah. Most of them die. Except Riddick, obviously. And I had to Google his final line because I couldn’t even understand what he’d said.
I’m sorry – this “review” is actually just me bitching. I was going to say a couple nice things but I’m sure everyone has stopped reading by now. 😉
I’ll just give you my rating, which isn’t as low as you’d think after all my bitching. Because the film DID have potential but that annoys me even more than when a movie is just 100% bad. I love sci-fi and the alien creatures in this aren’t too bad and the whole look of the film was interesting. Shame about the characters…
Cinema Parrot Disco 