Posts from — January 2007

A few minutes into The Marine, John Cena’s super-Marine badass John Triton fires a grenade launcher point blank at a terrorist, an act he follows by clocking a guy in the face with a flaming 2×4. After taking on nine guys single-handed, Triton rescues some soldiers from a nasty beheading and they wander out into a ridiculous firefight. “How do we go around this?” one of the rescuees asks, to which The Marine cocks his grenade launcher and says, “We don’t. We go through it.” The way you react to this sequence is your primer for the rest of the movie. Personally, shooting a man with a grenade is pretty awesome.

Unfortunately, The Marine is discharged for disobeying orders on the rescue mission, so we don’t get to see him empty a full pistol into one guy for the rest of the film. That doesn’t stop Cena from beating the holy hell out of everybody and everything in his path, nor does it stop stuff from exploding constantly.

For reference, here’s a handy guide to the violence in the film.

2 police cars explode, one while it’s sailing through the air at high speed.

In addition, a gas station, an abandoned shack in the middle of a swamp, and various other buildings also explode.

A man is eaten by alligators.

A man is savagely kicked in the face.

During a crazy-ass car chase, an insane amount of bullets are expended.

A semi drives through a building while The Marine is hanging onto the side of the truck!

A man is thrown through a window.

A woman is thrown from a a moving vehicle through the windshield of another moving vehicle.

Robert Patrick orders satellite TV.

Expensive art is used as a weapon.

A guy totally gets dropped through a glass coffee table.

If I haven’t convinced you that this is worth seeing yet, my only recourse is to pray for you.

Bloodrayne is a movie that ALOGT’s readers have literally asked me to sit down and watch. So, yesterday, I rented two movies. One of them was surprisingly and genuinely good, and the other was Bloodrayne, and it’s Bloodrayne I’m going to talk about today.

I’m going to stick up for Dr. Boll on two things right out of the gate, and that’s the last equal time you’re likely to see him get. First of all, Bloodrayne is far from the worst movie ever made. Second, if Uwe Boll sat down at the first pre-production meeting and said, ‘I want to make a movie with a smoking hot girl and a metric shit-ton of arterial spray,’ then Bloodrayne is actually an unmitigated success. From a certain point of view.

During the director’s commentary, Boll comments negatively on Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing. And if it were anyone other than Uwe Boll, I’d more than likely have agreed with the sentiment. I mean, Van Helsing is really bad, unless you really, really like to see Frankenstein’s Monster swinging from a rope, Errol Flynn style. If you like that, Van Helsing is THE movie for you; not even Monster Squad has that business.

Where Boll’s distinguished competition went right, though, was in its attempt to make a fun, campy swashbuckler. Bloodrayne, for contrast, plays it straight, and after maybe 15 minutes, it becomes strenuous to watch. All the film’s dialogue is long, drawn-out and free of contractions, let alone common sense.

Bloodrayne appears to take place in Europe in ‘the past’, but I’ll be damned if I can determine when. Best as I can tell, it’s a pre-industrial Eastern Europe where people rode horses, fought with swords, and dressed like extras in a Falco video. Hell, I guess it could take place in the modern day. The biggest offender when it comes to fashion faux pas in Bloodrayne has to be either Michael Maden or everyone’s favorite theatrical rocker from a bygone era, Meat Loaf. I love the hell out of Meat Loaf, but I needed to leave the room and vomit during his big scene, a scene in which he is apparently so fucking high and surrounded by Romanian hookers. Right after this, he fights Madsen’s epically coiffed character Vladimir, and it’s like Dave Coverdale and Steve Perry get into a bitch-slapping contest.

Despite all the internecine double-dealing and secret history in the movie, Bloodrayne’s plot is ill-defined and pretty bare-bones. Talking is only a vehicle to move characters to places where they get to make other characters spray their blood all over the place. And I mean all over the place. Likely, this is to distract people from the fact that the fight choreography was done by the film wizards behind the Hobgoblins rake fight. And oh god, there’s a lengthy (and clumsy)kata sequence. Really, the best fight in the movie has to be the ‘duel’ between Rayne and Michelle Rodriguez’s Katarin. And it has nothing to do with the fight itself. Look at this:

Kristanna Loken’s stunt double, dressed as Rayne, is standing there watching. It’s completely surreal. I kept expecting another, more dishevelled Rayne to walk into the frame and start to speak-sing “Rocket Man.”

What’s the best part of the movie? Well, it’s Ben Kingsley. It’s like after Dungeons and Dragons, Jeremy Irons made some kind of bet with every other respectable British actor that they couldn’t appear in a worse film. Kingsley is great to watch because he doesn’t give a shit at all. Hell, in one scene near the end of the movie, Kingsley gives a rousing speech to his army of thralls (one thing Bloodrayne never tires of explaining is that Kingsley’s evil vampire Kagan has an army of thralls) that sounds like he’s reading a grocery list to someone over a speakerphone.

Nearly topping the unintentional comedy of The Wicker Man, Bloodrayne ends with a slow-motion clip montage that has no meaning or context whatsoever. Watching it was like a religious experience, but not in the way you think. Watching this clip montage was like discovering that God doesn’t exist.

I said up top that Bloodrayne is not the worst movie in the world, but the catch-22 here is that the worst movie in the world – Nail Gun Massacre or Skeleton Man – is about ten times more entertaining than a simply really, really bad movie. I think I can best sum Bloodrayne up by saying that I’d rather watch Queen of the Damned.

Tomorrow: a horror film that rocks hard.

I watched The Wicker Man last night, not the good one from the ’70s, but the remake with Nicolas Cage. I missed this in theaters, so I have no idea what the SHOCKING ALTERNATE ENDING even was. You’d think that, if you were making a significant change to a film, that the original version would be available as at least a deleted scene. If you agree with me, you obviously had nothing to do with this film’s dvd release, which boasts a commentary by Leelee Sobieski and some other person whose name escapes me. Now, just in case you haven’t seen The Wicker Man, I’m going to clue you in: Leelee Sobieski is in this movie for maybe five whole minutes, and only spends about two of those minutes with her mouth open. Why not just throw the Best Boy on the commentary track, too? Or a couple of extras? I can understand you not wanting to have Nic Cage talk about anything at all, but what about, like, Ellen Burstyn or something?

The film is basically a thriller, and like most thrillers made these days, it has absolutely no ability to create or maintain suspense. Especially because this is a remake, and the big reveal of the film is also the title. Director Neil Labutte really, really tries to make Summers Isle seem creepy, but he fails so much. Yes, the ladies of the island seem cliquish, secretive and rude, but I would seem cliquish and rude if some asshole big city cop showed up unannounced and went out of his way to be a flaming cock to absolutely everybody. Cage’s character - who is nothing more than a traffic cop, as near as I can tell - has no idea how to do anything approaching detective work, either, as evidenced by his penchant for walking to a crowded room and browbeating about 20 people at a time instead of actually asking questions or soliciting assistance from potential witnesses. By the time Nic busts into a schoolhouse and tells the kids they’re all jerks (actually happens), you get the feeling that nobody’s talking to him because he’s an abrasive idiot; the creepy cult and its secret plot are merely incidental. Showing some Batman-like prowess, Cage’s amazing detective skills, when they are on display, consist of asking the same question four to five time without allowing any time for a response. My favorite example of this is, “How’d it get burned!?” If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean.

I think that certain elements of the film could have benefited from, say, new music. The scene where Cage is chased by enraged bees, for instance, would go great with Yakety Sax. And this - scenes that are supposed to be taut and tense, but are actually fucking silly - is the hallmark of the film. The gran gala of this comes at the film’s climax, when Officer Cage runs wild through the creepy village, kicking down doors and tearing masks off of kids’ faces, all in an last, desperate attempt to locate his missing daughter. Out of context, though, this looks like a man going from door to door and ruining a very festive party. Which is a movie I would watch in a heartbeat, but not one that I’m prepared for when I sit down to watch The Wicker Man.

Really, the only good thing I can say about this film is that it begins with an explosion and ends with a giant fire.

Last night I watched a movie called The Spirit Trap, a film about Billie Piper and a few other young, pretty Britons who move into a haunted house. As young people are wont to do, they futz with the native spirits, people die, and Crazy Haunted Shit goes down. Honestly, the movie was pretty boring and forgettable, except for the part where a guy gets impaled by the pendulum of a clock. I have to hope that Piper made this movie before Dr. Who, and not after, because that would not be a step in the ‘right direction.’

Concerns about Ms. Piper’s life choices aside, it’s troubling to me just how many stupid young people find themselves in an inescapable, haunted death trap. I mean, it’s a common theme in film and literature, so it must happen all the time in real life. Because I believe in education, I am going to impart some easy lessons that should prevent this sort of thing in the future.

1. If a woman wants to sleep with you in an obviously creepy locale, you may want to consider ending the relationship and encouraging her to seek psychiatric help. This works the other way around, too, ladies.

2. Ouija boards = bad idea. To comment further presumes that you’re too dumb to benefit from help anyway.

3. A haunted house is a bad place to commit a murder. If you need to kill someone, there are better places to do it, like down near the soup kitchen. It turns out, at least, based on a multitude of bad ghost movies, that many ghosts are hanging around due to an unresolved traumatic death. Causing another unresolved, traumatic death in front of them will likely make them cranky.

4. Never assume that a ghost is friendly. Especially if it takes the form of a precocious little girl.

5. When bizarre things start to happen, do not investigate. It is time to, as the kids say, GTFO.

6. If you find a device or heirloom with strange symbols on it, do not play with it or try to fix it.

7. If someone wants you to stay the night in a place where eleventy billion people died in a fire caused by a riot caused by some sort of inhuman cruelty, punch them in the face as hard as you can.

8. Really, just stay out of the bathroom. Even if your housemates start to call you a hippie. If you have to bathe, shower only.

9. Locked rooms and hidden doors - avoid at all costs.

10. Nothing in the basement is ever worth investigating. Not dead bodies, not torture chambers, not hidden pirate gold. If you need something out of the basement, get someone you don’t like to do it.

After a long, comic-booky sojourn, I return to the land of trash cinema, brethren! And BEHOLD! For I bring a marvel in my wake!

If I told you in confidence that Luc Besson - crazy French Luc Besson - the guy who wrote (deep breath) Leon, The Fifth Element, La Femme Nikita, District B13, Kiss of the Dragon, Unleashed and Taxi - had written a period odd couple/buddy western starring two busty latinas robbing banks to save Mexico, would you be freaking out a bit?

I know I was when I heard that Bandidas was being made. Say what you will about Taxi, but most of Besson’s other writing credits are just absolutely madcap in a very good way. He’s the Grant Morrison of action movies, in that his movies rarely make sense, but are almost always awesome. Besides, just like Ice Cube in Torque, Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz are good enough actresses to have lots of broad fun with bad parts.

Now, I’m a sucker for Westerns. Along with pirate/swashbuckling movies, there’s no better type of film, in my humble opinion, and this belief makes me write off things that would make me rail against films in other genres. Like melodrama. I can excuse melodrama nearly everywhere, but in the context of a western, it deserves to be there. At its most sappy, Bandidas evokes Martin Campbell’s Zorro movies, but decides to play it a lot less straight. The result isn’t necessarily good, but it’s really entertaining. For instance, Hayek’s Sara is out for revenge, and screw all of Mexico, but there’s that inevitable scene where her partner in crime Maria Alvarez (Cruz) and the local priest take her to a hidden encampment of those dispossessed and downtrodden Mexicans who’ve had their land stolen by Evil Dwight Yoakam, the movie’s villain. This is the classic “my god, how have I been so blind” scene, and like many things in this movie, it doesn’t make a lot of sense: The evil Americans in Bandidas are pretty kill-happy, and we see them shooting up plenty of people over the course of the film. Why in pluperfect hell do you leave a big old camp of them out in the middle of nowhere when they can pretty obviously be seen or heard at night, what with the singing and the dancing and the bonfires?

Speaking of not making sense, if you watch this movie you will see a horse climb a ladder. I don’t know what else to even say about it, but really, go out and rent it.

The movie does have its flaws - for one, there’s a lengthy bullet-time sequence near the end that was cool at first but got laborious after not very long - but on the whole it’s a worthwhile diversion. The leads are obviously having a blast here, and watching them bicker is pretty fun to just watch. You also see Steve Zahn’s bare ass, and I know you’ve been waiting years for that, girl who still runs a One-ders fansite.

The verdict? Like Shanghai Noon, but with hot girls instead of Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan.

I continue to do a poor job of making this not a comics blog, as today I turn my attention to the new New Avengers roster. It’s getting a lot of flak from the anonymous comics fandom on the ‘net, and that’s frankly bullshit, because this is a superior roster, at least in terms of raw character.

In case you’re not up to speed on what I’m talking about, the team members are:

Luke Cage, who will be serving as team leader.
Iron Fist
Dr. Strange
Spider-Woman
Echo
Ronin (who is probably Captain America this time around)
Wolverine

Now, for those elitist jackasses who are already rolling their eyes at Wolverine, stop it. This is not the place for it.

Francis Leinil Yu, who is a beautiful, but apparently slow as hell, penciler, has also let it slip that Spider-Man retains his Avengers ID card.

‘Not powerful enough,’ the naysayers cry. Spider-Man, Cage, and Iron Fist only have super-strength, they say, not super-duper strength. Doc Strange is only the Sorceror Supreme! How will these guys handle credible threats?

And I hear their cries, I really do. Much like Superman, I float above the internet, my awesome cape flapping around me as I listen (really listen). And after long deliberation, I’ve devised an Avengers lineup more powerful than you can even fathom.

1. MS. MARVEL

With her history of alcoholism and her lack of self-confidence, Ms. Marvel is the perfect leader for this group of Avengers. She’s also really powerful. And good-looking.

2. HAWKEYE

Because this team is already too ‘New’ and not enough ‘Avengers’, we need a legacy member, and who better (besides, you know, a founding member) than Hawkeye, the indefatigable Clint Barton? Like Mati, of Captain Planet and the Planeteers fame, Hawkeye has the most important power of all, the power of heart. And trick arrows. Clint fills the valuable, ‘ranged combat specialist’ role.

3. EGO THE LIVING PLANET

With his massive intellect, frighteningly fragile emotional state, and crazy matter manipulation powers, Ego is basically a giant, psychic Hank Pym. There’s nothing he can’t build, no problem he can’t solve, at least until someone hurts his feelings. He’s also a great mobile base of operations for this team of Avengers’ many epic space missions.

4. THE SILVER SURFER

The team needs a flier. Ego doesn’t fly, he orbits. So you pretty much have to use the Silver Surfer here. In addition to his badass space surfboard, Surfer’s qualifications for Avengers membership include fighting the Hulk to a standstill, politely asking the Annihilation Wave if they happened to know who their collective daddy was, and…having THE POWER COSMIC, making him evenly matched with the rest of the team. Besides, Norrin Radd is a character that’s clearly ready for the big time. After schlubbing around with Galactus, the Defenders, and the Fantastic Four for so long, it’s spotlight time, baby!

5. WEREWOLF BY NIGHT

One of my favorite Avengers teams, the West Coast Avengers, had a violent loner (Moon Knight) and a furry (Tigra). Jack Russell not only combines the two into one appealing package, he also turns into a werewolf and wrecks peoples’ days.

6. PHOENIX

If you can just disregard the fact that Jean Grey can snuff out all life in the universe with, like, a thought, and that she is probably best known for turning evil at inopportune times, then she’s a great fit for the team. Besides, the team needs a sexy redhead, and with Wanda Maximoff off bazaar shopping on Wundagore Mountain, it’s either Jean or Pepper Potts. Pepper, not being possessed by an anthropomorphization of the life force, loses out by a nose.

7. THE MIGHTY THOR

Thor is, of course, a god. The real deal, not some lame-o robot clone. While ostensibly the god of Thunder, his portfolio seems to be more one of hitting things repeatedly with a hammer. Also as a deity, it is his obligation to talk like a Welshman giving driving directions. “By the souls of the noble Aesir who stemmed the tide of bloodshed at Edrigar’s Pass, I shall smite thee!” could very easily be Thor swearing an oath of smiting or some farmer telling you how to get to Cardiff.

It’s the lineup that Avengers purists are clamoring for! What do you think?

My personal favorite iteration of Chris Sims’ ‘30 Second Recap’ meme was a brief summary of Michael Avon Oeming’s Ares miniseries, a comic that should have had the subtitle All Y’All Are Fucked. TheDeadPenguin - The Penguin Who Is Dead - is responsible for producing the greatest single panel of any comic ever created, even though I have serious suspicions about whether he or she is, in fact, a dead penguin, a reveal that would make the image I am about to show you even more mind blowing:

“Aparo!” has been recognized by those far greater than I as the best sound effect ever used. It should become the default punching sound.

In a similar vein, I’m making this an open letter to comics, asking them to make “Infantino!” the noise of running really fast. Maybe draw it into speed lines. Just picture it, following The Flash around a huge panel where he’s saving a man from a car, kicking Heat Wave in the head, getting a kitten out of a tree, cleaning his house, hitting on a girl, giving a speech in front of the Flash Museum, and burning every known issue of the “Lightning In A Bottle” arc all at the same time, a jaunty INFANTINO! trailing behind him.

I think a BYRNE! would also work, but I can’t think of anything flattering to use it for. Hey, maybe if somebody ever rapes Superman (and by somebody, I think it’s pretty clear I mean Dr. Light*), it might come in handy.

*He likes to rape, you see.

As a man, I have to say that I am obviously not the target audience for Lifetime movies. As someone who watches and enjoys movies, that puts me in the same boat. I would love to tell you that there’s nothing wrong with [PAST PARTICIPLE] BY [EMOTION, TRAIT, OR QUALITY]: THE [A WOMAN'S NAME] STORY, but that would make me a dirty liar, which I only am some of the time.

To Be Fat Like Me is the story of a girl who is not fat, but pretends to be in order to get into college. In doing so, she learns a valuable lesson…wait for it…about herself and her prejudiced attitudes. You totally didn’t see that shit coming, did you? The film stars Kaley Cuoco, who, aside from having a funny-sounding last name, has starred in 2004’s The Hollow (a movie I have seen and should have posted about because it is devastatingly bad), and the animated Brandy and Mr. Whiskers, which is probably as good as it sounds.

Because Lifetime is a network about having feelings and being resolute in the face of woman problems, the film treats being overweight like it’s about 20 times more serious than it actually is. And, speaking as one of the over 300 million overweight Americans living today, I think it’s probably a serious issue. Just not as serious as this movie wants me to think it is. Which is where, exactly? Glad you asked. It falls somewhere between global warming and a man holding a knife to my throat.

Most of the characters in this movie go so far out of their way to be insulting to persons of size that I wonder if we’re not on some kind of alternate Earth, perhaps one ruled over by a particularly scrawny Crime Syndicate. Perhaps I’m not particularly insightful or perceptive, but I can’t think of the last time that I was verbally harrassed for just standing around or stared at like some kind of monstrosity. Every time Cuoco’s character walks down a hallway in her school, people stop to watch her and sneer in disgust. It’s as if she had goiter that was biting a flying monkey in an inappropriate place.

Now, I’ll let you decide whether you want to compare this to Soul Man or to She’s the Man, but either way, it’s the same basic thing, which just goes to show you the power of Shakespeare, what with Twelfth Night and junk. But the film, in addition to being horribly overexaggerated, plays out exactly like you’d expect it to.

The movie would have been vastly improved if the main character, driven over the brink by the taunting and teasing she receives, became a serial killer with a severe eating compulsion - like Gluttony from Se7en severe - stitching a new fat suit together from the skins of her victims.

One of the fat characters - genuinely for real tubby, not wearing some suit - says during a spontaneous conversation that sounds more like a bad imitation of a Barbara Walters interview, that being fat is like giving everybody else permission to judge you. To a degree, that’s correct, I suppose - obesity is the one thing left that it’s socially acceptable to hate. You hate someone for their race or their sexuality, and it’s bigotry. You hate someone for their age or their gender, it’s discrimination. You hate an alcoholic or a drug user, and you’re chastised because they’re victims. I don’t want to empower this piece of trash movie or get on a soapbox (definitely not that), but there’s a grain of truth in that. On the other hand, the fact that people - especially teens - are judging others is about as mind-blowing as an Eagles comeback tour. Do you mean to tell me that if I go out in public, others will have opinions about me? How unfair!

I mean, really, if it doesn’t stop, I’m writing a stern letter.

I am a big Wes Craven fan. I think I’ve said that before. I’d imagine that there are a lot of people like me, at least in that regard, because somebody in Hollywood discovered that I will rent or buy movies that I might otherwise pass over just because his name is on the box. I should learn better every time, but I just can’t or don’t or won’t. Wishmaster alone should have been enough to make me stop. But then I saw They, which is one of those Darkness Falls types of movies, the ones that have a lot of promise except somehow implemented poorly. And last night, I watched Wes Craven Presents Don’t Look Down.

As is my way, things I say come back to haunt me. In my post on Black Christmas, I said I’d rather see more original films in lieu of remakes. I’ve been proven wrong, because I’d rather watch a Vertigo remake than watch this film again.

Phobia movies are fun. In phobia movies, people who are afraid of, say heights, are consistently put in situations where they have to be up high, and are in danger. The thing that Don’t Look Down doesn’t exhibit at all is that sense of danger. There are plenty of situations where Carla, the protagonist played by Megan Ward, is in a high place during the movie, but she’s totally safe. There’s no tension in watching her flip out needlessly. Or in watching her overcome her fears to do something totally mundane, like take a step onto a bridge.

Even more annoying is that it’s pretty clear who is behind everything from the get go thanks to some GLARINGLY OBVIOUS CLUES. It’s Carla’s husband, who is bored with her and wants her money and house. What is not obvious is why he’s bothering to go and kill other people, when he could just hit her with a car or poison her or stab her or shoot her. No, he goes and murders the other members of her acrophobic support group in order to frame the doctor for their murders - a plan that is one good alibi away from being a total failure. Worse still, every murder is staged in such a way that it looks like suicide. Golly, I sure hope the police make some arrests fast!

You may be asking, “Jeff, what’s the most ridiculous part of this movie?” Well, nameless and debatably existent reader, it’s at the end, when Carla and her husband both fall over the side of the same cliff where Carla’s sister died at the beginning of the movie, prompting this whole stupid trainwreck. Carla is hanging from a ledge and expects her husband to save her. The same husband who 90 seconds previously told her to her face that he has been drugging her and plotting to murder her. It’s like Barbara Gordon asking the Joker to call her an ambulance.

I am honestly considering a move to Halifax, just to become hipper. Between Bryan O’Malley and Hope Larson, my friend Hugh, and Rachelle at Living Between Wednesdays - which I’ve just now started reading - I am forced to picture all of Nova Scotia - the New Scotland, or so I hear - as a burning ball of white hot crazy awesome.

Because I had too much free time and access to Photoshop this afternoon, I concocted photographic evidence that, as I claimed earlier, the song playing on Sleez’s beat box as he forced Big Barda to burlesque dance for him is none other than “Cool It Now,” the 1984 hit from the Bobby Brown-fueled boy sensation New Edition.

I heard that if this becomes a comics blog, the government will pay back part of my student loans.