13.5 Quick Movie Reviews

2009-01-17 5:32:32 am

Hey gang, sorry again about my complete lack of posts lately, things have been crazy. I have been keeping myself busy with movies though, so here are 13 short reviews about some flicks I've seen lately, plus one movie I didn't watch.

SIX STRING SAMURAI (1998)
I really liked this post apocalyptic-like road trip movie with a samurai Buddy Holly. The howler-monkey kid got annoying fast, but the action and snappy dialogue kept things moving along at quite a clip. Much better than I thought it would be.

OUR MAN FLINT (1966)
Flint's a swinging secret agent int he 60s more worried about having a good time than stopping an international incident (at first at least). Great, campy 60s spy fun, that both pokes fun at but also sets itself up in the same universe as James Bond. A lot of fun, can't wait to check out the sequel.

THE MAJORETTES (1986)
I don't actually remember too much about this movie other than it involved some maniac hunting down and killing high school cheerleaders. It's a way lower budget movie and apparently very little of the money went to snag actors who can, you know, act. Skip this one unless you're a horror completist or you're looking to cross another movie off in your copy of Creature Feature (like me).

DAY OF THE DEAD (2008)
I was actually pretty impressed with this remake-in-name-mostly of Romero's Day of the Dead. I'm not a huge fan of the original or anything, but I wasn't expecting much out of this flick and was surprised. The story moves along the same speeds as the fast Zack Snyder/28 Days Later-like zombies, but my favorite part is seeing actual people I recognize like Mena Suvari, Nick Cannon and Ving Rhames killing and becoming zombies. When was the last time you saw a non genre actor semi-famous person in a horror movie after they became famous? Hopefully it's a trend that will continue. I'm actually kind of surprised that they didn't release this movie in theaters. Oh well, a pretty good zombie movie all said and done, though not a classic.

THE SHADOW (1994)
In my opinion, it's hard to go wrong when you populate a movie about a pulp hero with actors like Alec Baldwin, Peter Boyle, Tim Curry, Ian McKellen, James Hong and Jonathan Winters and luckily The Shadow held up my opinions. I'm not all that familiar with pulp heroes, especially the Shadow, but I like the idea of him having a network of people all over the city (usually people he has saved) who help him out. There's all kinds of cool stuff like secret labs and ancient forces of good and evil. Oh and for 30 Rock fans, I highly encourage you to think of these as the early days of Jack Donaghy.

LAST MAN STANDING (1996)
A pretty cool story about a gangster-era hitman (Willis) holing up in a ghost town populated by two rival gangs, gets slowed down with a little too much back and forth back stabbing. I definitely don't remember all the details about this one, but I'm a Willis fan. Michael Imperioli plays pretty much the same role he always does and Walken stars as Willis' main competition and they fight which is cool. Can you imagine Walken fighting now? Aside from a dance fight I mean. Oh, also Walter Hill of Warriors fame directed LMS, so it's gotta be pretty good, right?

FOXY BROWN (1974)
So far my experience with blaxploitation films as been hit or miss, but luckily Foxy is enough of a hit. In the plus column, Pam Grier cuts quite the figure, plus she kicks ass. I also like the idea of a group of inner city dwellers taking the law into their own hands and creating their own kind of police force. I'm not a big fan of the sexual assault stuff, but I guess that's all part of the exploitation riff. Too bad Foxy and Shaft never got together. That would have been a great flick.

LEATHERHEADS (2008)
I'm not sure if I've professed my heterosexual man love for George Clooney on the blog before, but I'm a big fan. I think we'd get along smashingly. I do know that I've talked about how much I like the American Office, so you probably know I'm a John Krasinski fan. So, Leatherheads was a good flick in my book. It doesn't make my top 10 sports movies of all time (well, maybe, I'd have to come up with that list actually), but it's fun and it offered up a look at a period in professional football that I am completely unfamiliar with, so that was cool. Of course, it's a comedy, so I'm not sure how accurate it was, but who cares? Like I said it was fun. Has similar story elements to League of the their Own (which probably would make my top 10 because I'm a huge softy). Not groundbreaking by any means, but worth a watch.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (2008)
I liked Leatherheads more than Journey, but it's not a terrible movie (even if it is very predictable). The special effects bounce back and forth between boderline okay, pretty good and not so great, but the effort is there. I really wish I would have been able to see this bad boy in 3D. I missed out on the phenomenon in the 80s and have gotten a taste for it by watching Superman Returns (ugh) and Nightmare Before Christmas in lame separate the background from the foreground 3D. I can't freaking wait to see My Bloody Valentine 3D!!!

KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE (1988)
Holy crap I loved this movie. Rickey got me a subscription to a horror movie mag called Horror Hound that's not expertly edited, but still offers up tons and tons of horror goodness. One such bit of goodness was a whole feature on Klowns. The movie is just so much freaking over the bigtop fun. I really can't believe that a studio made this movie. Please, do yourself a favor and check it out. Also of interest on the DVD is the Chiodo brothers' home movies from when they were making monster movies as kids. Pretty impressive stuff for pre-teens with a 16mm camera.

VAMPIRE EFFECT (2003)
The combination of Hong Kong action and vampires drew me to this flick pretty quickly on Netflix. Heck, it's even got Jackie Chan in a roll that's more than him just walking on and being called Jackie (which he is). As with a lot of movies like this that I've seen, the special effects and fight scenes are sick, but the story itself is nothing new. I did really like the cool retractable whip/sword weapons they used. I think I designed something very similar what I was younger.

LICENSE TO DRIVE (1988)
If you thought Corey Haim could have been a little bit smoother, though still pretty spazzy in Lost Boys and Corey Fledman from the Burbs could use a little mellowing out, then License to Drive is the perfect 2 Coreys vehicle for you (puns!). Haim fails his driving test, but still tells a young (though still 18 by my math) Heather Graham that he can pick her up. It's basically like an episode of a sitcom, but stretched to 90 minutes and definitely edgier than your average Saved By The Bell. Good stuff. Next up from the Coreys? Dream a Little Dream (which I have absolutely no knowledge of).

LEGEND (1985)
Legend is one of those movies that I don't remember at all, but have since come to find that it's kind of a big deal (to some people). I knew that Tim Curry was in it, but had no idea Tom Cruise was. I thought it might be kind of a funny movie, but when I saw Tom prancing around the forest or whatever I clicked this badboy off and deleted it from my queue. I am no fan of fantasy movies.

JOHNNY BE GOOD (1988)
I'm becoming a pretty big fan of Netflix's recommendations. I started watching Johnny after digging License and wasn't disappointed. It's got an older and more confident Anthony Michael Hall and a completely goofy Robert Downey Jr.. There's a good deal of goofiness to this movie, which focuses on Hall as a football star getting courted by and visiting different colleges that want him. Downey plays his wacky best friend, but what struck me about the movie is how real it can be at times. Hall and Downey sell their characters like they're up for an award. Oh, it's also got Uma Thurman as Hall's girlfriend and Jennifer Tilly has a quick role. If you're an 80s movie fan, or just curious to see what Downey might have been like back in the late 80s give Johnny a look.

AUGUST RUSH (2007)
Sometimes you've got to add a movie for your lady to the ol' queue. I was pleasantly surprised with August Rush, not because the story is all the unique (you've seen the broad strokes before plenty of times), but because of it's view of music. The way they show the young boy experiencing music in everyday life, what it means to him and how he's eventually able to play it in his own unorthodox way really struck me. If you've got to watch a chick flick with your girl and you're a music fan, this is a good choice. Also, Keri Russell is in it and looking good.

KING OF KONG (2007)
If you haven't seen this documentary about the surprisingly competitive world of classic arcade high score competitions, please stop reading and watch it right now. This one makes it into my top 10 movies of 2007 (should a list ever actually exist). First off, it shows off a world I've never seen, which you know I love. Also, that world is full of deceit, greed, cowardice, heroics, villainy, triumph and defeat. The way the story is put together feels like a really well scripted feature film, though the events and the ups and downs are completely real. If you've ever liked anything I've written about on here, watch this movie.

SUPERMAN/DOOMSDAY (2007)
Seeing as how The Death and Return of Superman is the story that got me collecting comics in the first place (and how deeply and utterly I bought into the idea that any of the four subsequent people could be the real Superman), I was very excited when I heard a few years ago that DC/WB was going to make an animated movie about that very event, I was psyched. I figured it probably wouldn't have EVERYthing that made the comic so cool (Superman turning back to save a family instead of finishing Doomsday off, that very 90s JLA facing off against Doomsday, an eyes-swollen-shut Guy Gardner asking his teammate to aim his fist at Doomsday so he could blast it, not to mention the four other "Supermen"), but that it could offer up a cool new look on the idea. And it's definitely a different look. I would have preferred them either go straight with the established look and continuity of the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini-verse or have a drastically different art direction on the project as little things like Superman's cheek lines become distracting. I was also distracted by the different voices for these characters that I recognize from a specific other incarnation that looked very similar but sound completely different. Even at 77 minutes it felt kind of slow, but the fight scenes are pretty great (though they don't hold a candle to JLU). I still hold on to my dream of one day seeing an epic, animated incarnation of the Death and Return of Superman though. A boy can dream, right?

Halloween Scene: Dance of the Dead (2008)

2008-10-08 3:38:35 pm

Wow. I haven't enjoyed a movie as much as I enjoyed Dance of the Dead since...well, I can't really remember actually. I was so into this movie and excited by how good it was that I was actually giddy when it was over. I was also tired, which is why I didn't immediately blog about it last night. Dance is a perfect cocktail of some of my favorite genres including zombie, horror, comedy and late 90s teenage movies (which makes sense because according to Wikipedia and IMDB, the script was originally written in the 90s). If you like anything I just mentioned, you NEED to check out this entry from Lionsgate and Sam Raimi's Ghost House Underground imprint which produced 30 Days of Night (eh) and The Grudge (nope). If you're not already convinced, read on, but be warned, the review is, as usually SPOILER FILLED. Thanks to Wizard Staff Writer Steve Sunu for passing the full set of Ghost House Underground DVDs my way for review, I'm super psyched to make my way through them.

Anyway, the very basic idea of the movie is that this huge zombie infestation takes place on the night of homecoming and it's up to a combination of our unpopular hero, the sci-fi club, the crazy bully guy, the prom planner girl, the cheerleader and the punk rock kids to save the day along with the the gym teacher. Now, I know that sounds like a lame premise, and it is, but the mix of comedy, action and gore really puts Dance head and shoulders above most of the other horror movies I've seen. I think I might even like it more than Shaun of the Dead (blasphemy, I know) because of how deftly the screenwriter Joe Ballarini balances the cliche moments with the humor and the violence. It's perfectly over the top without crashing and burning on the other side. The cast is also fantastic and, hey, surprise surprise, they're actually young. I'm not sure if they're exactly high school age, but you're not looking at a bunch of kids who are clearly 27 and were probably home schooled anyway. Kudos to director Gregg Bishop for getting such great performances out of the unknown cast (I didn't recognize anyone) and putting together such a great flick.

And now some actual evidence of why this movie is so great, aside from the tone, humor and story, there's also some really great scenes, both poking fun at and celebrating all the movies it lovingly hearkens back to. The movie opens on a graveyard where the groundskeeper nonchalantly cuts off a zombie's arm and then throws it on a pile of other wriggling undead body parts. The camera pans up to reveal a nuclear power plant in the background and then the title of the film appears in old school green spooky letters that reminded me of a Troma movie.

From there you get a glimpse of the school with it's over the top jerk@$$ biology teacher and tough as nails gym coach. You've also got plenty of high school relationship stuff set up that plays out through the rest of the movie (make-ups, break ups, crushes, that kind of thing). The actual night of prom starts off with all of our leads not actually at prom, they're out in the town as the sci fi club goes to the cemetery and the zombies let loose. There's this awesome scene where they're running through the graveyard as zombies are jumping out left and right. There's none of that boring "here's one zombie, here's another," there's a freaking LEGION of zombies out there.

The individual groups of kids start meeting up and one of my personal favorite scenes in the movie comes when our hero Jimmy meets up with the bully/backyard wrestler and they fight the zombies. The bully dude (who's the only one who looks like he's older, but that's the whole point) goes crazy, ripping arms off and kicking ass. He even rips a zombie's arm off and shoves it down her throat. AWESOME!

So after some more trials and tribulations most of the main characters all meet up at a house that turns out to be a mortuary (great twist and reveal). Meanwhile, the three dudes in the band are getting high in a garage and playing music. They open up the garage door to get some fresh air and there's a half dozen zombies waiting outside for them. The lead band dude, Nash, stumbles backwards, kicks his guitar and the feedback stops the zombies. That's right, ROCK AND ROLL apparently screws up the zombies' ability to communicate with each other (like bees, one of the characters explains later). What an awesome moment and it gets brought back up later once they get to the prom.

The kids get out of the mortuary and meet up with the coach who happens to have an arsenal in his garage. He arms the kids and then they make their way to the prom, first stopping off to save the dudes in the band who bring their instruments as their weapons! But once they get to the prom, it's completely overrun with zombies. The coach has a plan and the kids do their parts, but the coach's detonator falls in the middle of the zombie jamboree so Jimmy runs in to grab it. His girl follows him and they have an awesome, back to back fight against a crowd of zombie. Just as things aren't looking so good for them, the band starts playing again, but our heroes don't just scramble around looking for the device, they SLOW DANCE their way around. Again, it sounds wacky, but the DOTD crew pulls it off masterfully. From there the ending rolls out and is highly satisfying, even setting things up for a sequel. Seriously you need to see this movie.

Still not convinced? Sheesh, okay, let me relate my favorite scene from the movie. You see, the Jimmy's friend has this crush on the cheerleader, but she's got a crush on Nash. Towards the end (SPOILER) the cheerleader gets bit by a zombie, she pulls Jimmy's friend into the bathroom and asks him to hold her, which he does, but only after being completely grossed and freaked out. She even starts kissing him, which he's into until she bites his lip off and starts attacking him. Later, we pick back up with them, now they're both zombies and they start making out again in the bathroom hot and heavy, which leads to even more face biting. It's great, hilarious stuff.

I could honestly go on and on, there were that many awesome moments, with more and more popping into my head as I type this (the convenience store scene, the cheerleader asking Nash out) but I don't want to ruin EVERYTHING. Do yourself a favor and check Dance of the Dead out, it'll be the best 87 minutes of your day guaranteed (unless you also happen to win the lottery or something along those lines).

Halloween Scene: LEGO Zombies

2008-10-08 2:11:03 am

Thanks to /Film (the best movie blog out there in my opinion), I found out about Flickr member Dunechaser's Zombie Apocafest 2008 pictures from this year's BrickCon in Seattle.

For more details you can check out the /Film story above or the official BrickCon site, but either way, you should definitely view Dunechaser's pics as a slideshow to get the full effect of this awesome zombie cityscape done entirely with LEGOs. Be sure to keep an eye out for cameos by The Joker, Batman and Spider-Man. The amount of effort these folks put into creating this whole thing is stunning and it comes off as truly awesome. It's a must for any horror, zombie or LEGO fans and even Em, who hates zombie movies, really enjoyed it.

Halloween Scene: The Zombie Diaries (2006)

2008-10-08 3:32:31 am

I'm not a big fan of the whole "first person shooting video" genre which most people call mockumentary. It's a hard format to shoot in because, on the surface, it seems to defy logic. Why would you be recording something when your life is in danger? That's what I thought until I saw a show this year on 9-11 about people that did just that as the Twin Towers fell. They grabbed their cameras and started recording everything around them. I don't mean to compare a horror movie to such a big, real life tragedy, but I think it informs our fiction intake when we see how real people react to real situations. So if it happened in real life, it makes sense that it would happen in a movie. Fine.

But my other problem is a bit more meta. The basic idea behind these kinds of fake documentary movies is that we the viewers are supposed to be watching the movies as if we exist in the same world the movie does, right? In Cloverfield the footage was found and presented to the viewers (maybe, our "role" is that of a government official or something on TV after everything gets back to normal). Right there is my problem with Zombie Diaries as a whole. The film consists of four different groups of people recording their experiences after the zombie outbreak. By the end of the movie you discover that all four connect somehow (I think, but more on that later). Now, in the world of the movie, that means that someone had to find all four tapes (one of which belongs to the military, so we'll assume they're the ones that find them), watch all the tapes and then edit them together so that they have a big reveal at the end to show how they were all connected. Aside from being highly coincidental, it just seems silly. Who would watch that kind of thing? If it's a government video, it wouldn't be so creatively edited, the content would make it less than suitable for TV (even British TV) and what kind of person would want to go to the movies to see a documentary about people turning into zombies, getting attacked by zombies, rape, murder, etc? If the film was shot like a regular film, none of these would be problems and I'm probably thinking a little broadly here, but it's something that came to mind while I was watching the movie.

If that kind of big question isn't the kind of thing that would put you out of a movie, it's a pretty good flick. The basic premise is that a zombie outbreak hits England and we get four different video accounts of what happened. The initial and final ones are present day videos being down with the army. Then there's a group of TV news people who are out in the countryside when it first hits, two dudes and a woman and then a bigger group of people on a farm. I really liked the opening post-army guys with the TV people. It had a good sense of atmosphere and actually made sense for the most part because the guy recording was actually a cameraman.

Without getting too much into the plot (SPOILERS) here's what happens. We see the outbreak through the eyes of the TV people, then we jump to the group of three where we get to see our one and only straight-on scenes of zombies attacking people and then it turns out that the leader of the larger group at the farm is a twisted bastard with a woman tied up in another part of the farm. Well, guess what, it's one of the TV people. Oh, and one of the farm people also probably killed the last living guy from the group of three as he ran towards them as they fired their guns, wailing and not actually calling out like a normal, thinking, rational human. They killed him thinking he was a zombie, as well they should have, the idiot. Finally, we watch as the army saves the girl after the crazy guy leaves the farm.

Now that I think about it, Zombie Diaries would probably greatly benefit from another watching, though I'm definitely holding off for now. Before getting into some more complains, I have to say that what I could see of the zombie makeup looked pretty good, the "getting shot in the head" bits looked alright as far as I know and the acting was good and realistic without being too over the top or just plain bad).

Okay, now onto the last few complaints. Due to the mockumentary style, we miss out on a lot of the action because the camera's facing another way. That's annoying. On the other side of that, though, you've got these people videotaping terrible things happening to their friends like when the two guys in the group of three have to leave the girl after a car accident and when the last surviving guy has to shoot the other guy in the head so he won't turn into a zombie. That's CRAZY! Why would you tape that? They also don't cut away when a woman from the larger group decides to shoot a little girl in the head. She's not even a zombie, she's just badly injured. The cameraman puts the camera down RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER and gets a front row seat for her death. Also, how do they keep getting tapes and recharging their batteries for these cameras. It's a month into the infection in most the cases and it doens't look like anyone has power (though I assume the army guys are all set). Oh and finally, the larger group of people at the farm have this ridiculous habit of running outside at night to shoot at zombies. Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Just freakin' wait until morning or get some better locks on your doors. That's a terrible, stupid idea. Maybe it's because they were being lead by a terrible stupid psycho guy, but maybe not.

Ugh. Even with all that, I'd recommend checking this one out if you're a horror or zombie fan, but if you hate the mocumentary style (and I think I'm starting to) you can skip right over this one.

Oh, crud, one more thing. The box of the DVD which I have here, but couldn't find an image of online is completely misleading. It's got this Steve Austin/biker-looking guy walking down a devastated street with plenty of zombies. He's got the bio hazard symbol on the back of a vest and he's carrying a shotgun and a handgun. NOTHING LIKE THIS EVER HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE, but damnitall if I don't want to see THAT movie. Actually, I'd like to write that movie, maybe I'll start on that tonight...

Dead Alive and Loving It

2008-07-31 3:52:55 am

Okay, so the title of this post is somewhat misleading because, even though I did in fact watch Peter Jackson's (yes PETER JACKSON'S) Dead Alive (or Braindead as it's known in New Zealand) I didn't quite love it. I'm a bit torn between hating the story and a lot of the acting and LOVING the gore. Sure the gore was great, but the story was difficult to follow at best and completely nonsensical and cartoony at worst. I do remember seeing this video at the video store and wondering how it was with that freaky skeleton leering out from that girl's mouth. I'll put it this way, if you're a gore fan you NEED to see this movie. Between the dinner scene where mom's falling apart, the zombie sex scene and the last 15-20 minutes or so of the movie, you'll get your money's worth. Just don't expect the kind of flick you normally would from the guy who directed those Lord of the Rings movies people like so much. That being said, I'm just going to publish my viewing notes on this one again. Enjoy!
Oh, duh, the movie's about this doofy guy whose mom gets bitten by this rat monkey thing that got imported from what looks like King Kong's Skull Island. That turns her into a zombie, of course, and then she in turn turns a bunch of other people into zombies, ignoring the first rule of not getting your head ripped off my a zombie: cap anyone you even THINK is a zombie. Sorry folks, but that's how you gotta roll if you want to survive.

Dead Alive/Braindead (1992)

Written by Stephen Sinclair, Fran Walsh & Peter Jackson
Directed by Peter Jackson
Starring a bunch of New Zealanders

Braindead/Dead Alive

Claymation rat monkey is awesome, holy sh!t, he ripped a chimp's arm off

Old lady crushes the rat monkey's head-AWESOME

His mother sucks

"Your mother ate my dog!" "Not all of it" HAHAHA

Needles to the eyes and nose, nice

I should be paying better attention

The old guy in a purple robe just kicked a dude's head off and then died

Why is he not killing these zombies?

Zombies copping a feel and making out and having sex?, oh god, he lost his face

Monster baby in the park - hilarity ensues

THIS guy directed Lord of the Rings?

Haha, he punches zombie baby in the face, the homeless guy loves it

Who's the guy who thinks he's a Texan Elvis? Why isn't he FREAKING OUT about the walking dead? Oh, he wants the house, maybe (?), I should have paid better attention

Annnnd, now there's a party? WHAT!? THERE'S FREAKING MONSTERS IN THE HOUSE!

Haha, it's a wig

They think burying the undead will do anything? Hey, back to the party!

Oops, he gave them stimulant instead of whatever he meant to and now super-zopmbies are bursting through the floor!

They ripped that dude's RIBCAGE out! And that dudes' face off! There go her guts!

Now they're ALL zombies! What a terrible party

That guy's entire lower skin got ripped off (he's just leg bones)! She got punched through the back of her head!

Really? A running-in-place-on-blood joke?

Elvis just tore out that zombies teeth with pliers!

That lung/intestine monster looks pretty cool

That baby zombie just won't die

There's a dead broad in the attic?

Elvis may be a jerk but he does a good job of hacking those zombies to bits. He has a bit too much fun doing it though. Yeesh

Elvis gets his spine ripped out by what looks like a Todd MacFarlane monster

Finally, the infamous lawnmower scene, later zombies. Bloodies scene EVER

They blended a head

Elvis as a spine monster looks rad, like something out of The Thing

These are probably the best 15-20 minutes in gore history

Oh! the baby just ripped that ladies head open FROM THE INSIDE

Mental note, get a manual lawnmower, just in case

Mother vs. son, woah, gnarly rack monster mom

You tell that bee-yotch sonny boy, she was a murderer even before she turned into a zombie

Her belly just ate her son and he promptly punches his way out. YEAH DUDE

IT'S OVER!