Posts from — May 2007

God bless The Asylum. When it comes to low-budget horror movies that are intentionally similar - at least in title and concept - to tentpole theatrical releases, they’re basically the best there is, which is to say that their films are never more than incompetent and unwatchable. Last year alone, they distributed When A Killer Calls, Hillside Cannibals, The Da Vinci Treasure, Pirates of Treasure Island, Snakes On A Train, and Dragon. This year we’re getting Transmorphers, The Hitchhiker, and The Apocalypse. Basically, if you want to make a crap movie that is a lot like a popular movie, The Asylum are the guys who will hook you up.

My plan with Snakes On A Train was to watch it drunk and make with a running commentary, a la my initial post on Skeleton Man. But Snakes On A Train is a movie that you need to really wrap your head around before you can really write about it. Why? Because the film is basically the story of the Nativity, except with killer snakes. And a train. Which the snakes are on.

Alma and Brujo are basically analogs for Mary and Joseph. With some slight differences. For instance, instead of riding a donkey into Bethlehem, Brujo drags Alma’s unconscious body across the border from Mexico. Luckily, they aren’t targeted by racist vigilantes, which would make for a short movie. On the other hand, where are the Minutemen?

If you didn’t already know that ‘brujo’ is Spanish for ‘male witch’, it becomes readily apparent when he starts casting crazy spells. What do the spells do? I don’t know. I’m operating under the assumption that they don’t do anything and that Brujo is really just crazy. I do know that Alma starts to throw up a bunch of harmless garden snakes, who then go and kill some random cowboy with their nonpoisonous bites. After that, Mary and Joseph get on the train. Train = Manger.

Really, what writer Eric Forsberg is doing here is challenging the accepted notions of the Christian tradition, many of which are disputed by modern-day archaeology. Snakes on a Train is a brave allegory that says to its audience, ‘Hey, maybe a manger isn’t a barn. Maybe it’s something more like…like a train.’

After giving the inevitable snake-victims some face time and introducing some danger to the Holy Family via a gang of surly undocumented stowaways, it’s finally revealed that Mary has snakes inside her because of a powerful Mexican curse. Brujoseph is not strong enough in his shamany arts to cure her, so they’re headed to the mystical center of Western civilization to find someone who can help her: Los Angeles. Little do they know that, upon arriving in LA five out of every ten people they meet will claim to be a magician, seven out of every ten people will assault them and beg to be in their movie, and only three of those seven will be wearing clothes.

The train passengers themselves are completely tangential to the movie. A pair of drug-running teen girls have a forced subplot that involves one of them getting naked, but that’s really as engrossing as it gets. They’re clearly people who are here only to die, but since this isn’t a typical slasher/dead teen movie, none of them have even the requisite wisps of development that establish why they deserve to die.

Back in the cargo car, things get heated between our heroes and the illegals whose turf they’re squatting on. Yes, illegal Mexicans = Herod. Obviously, Brujo’s a bit on edge because of his magical snake-vomiting girlfriend, so he gets a bit violent with these guys. One of the things I never realized about Mesoamerican civilization is that all shamans are superninjas, and Brujoseph dispatches most of the gang with ease, except for a slouchy, out of shape guy who looks like Dave Attell. After a protracted fight, Dave gets stabbed with a knife that appears to be made out of tin foil and packing tape, and then he’s thrown off the train. Which, you know what? No matter how bad the movie is, that’s always awesome to watch. In fact, even with the admittedly poor quality of the fight choreography, acting, and effects, it’s still satisfying to watch Brujoseph get down in the latter half of the movie, as he does awesome stuff like use magic to mess up the train’s electronics, drive the train after the conductor gets eaten by a giant snake, and remove a snake victim’s heart with psychic surgery in order to save his life. He’s like Doctor Strange, except with an obvious fake knife and a less flashy wardrobe.

Now, Mary keeps throwing up more snakes, getting larger and larger. They get out into the train and start killing people. Nearly every death is completely unrewarding, but just like with the awesome of Brujoseph, there’s a hidden gem here: one of the characters has a wound on his forearm that a snake leaps inside of. Does it make sense? Absolutely not. But you’re watching Snakes on a Train. The inevitable climax is that the train doesn’t get to L.A. in time. Mary turns into a giant CGI snake roughly the size of the train itself. Yes. Snake Jesus.

Snake Jesus starts eating the train, until one of the illegals, in true deus ex machina fashion, reveals that he’s a powerful shaman, and magics SJ away. Of course, all of the survivors are stranded in the desert, but them’s the breaks.

If you like bad movies, and you have a bunch of friends over, this is the exact kind of film you want to watch. It’s easy to make fun of, has a bunch of unintentional comedy, and has one or two real diamond-in-the-rough moments. And it’s the story of Christmas, to boot.

Look, I normally don’t have a huge problem with Frank Cho. There’s a certain thing he draws well - we all know that, and at the end of the day, I’m too much of a guy to fault him for it. But this, well, I’m at a loss for words. I mean, this is 90s-bad. And given the ongoing brouhaha re: Marvel’s attitude towards women, it’s probably the worst possible week for Mighty Avengers #3 to come out. If this were a MAX or Icon book, I’d be a lot less bothered, but full-frontal Ladytron in one of Big M’s headlining books gives me, to say the least, some reservations about purchasing it. The level of gratuity on display here does nothing for me, except maybe embarrass me.

It’s easy to compare Smokin’ Aces to any one of the sleek, hyperviolent crime action jaunts that have popped up in the long wake of Reservior Dogs. After all, it’s got a too-big cast full of geek-cred names, snappy dialogue that’s high on its own swearing and pop culture referencing, a convoluted plot, and an absurd amount of bullets and blood. These are all true facts about Aces, but it’s a film that’s better than the sum of its parts suggests. Joe Carnahan’s follow-up to the criminally underrated Narc is almost the antithesis of that movie, but it’s every bit as fun as Narc is bleak.

The plot starts bare-bones - a mob boss has a hit out on Vegas entertainer/Cosa Nostra wannabe Buddy Israel and every hitman in the known world is vying to be the one to cut his heart out and collect on the bounty. Throw in the FBI and a gang of low-rent bail bondsmen trying to keep Buddy alive, and it’s a recipe for chaos. As twisty and chaotic as the proceedings get, the basic plot remains unchanged until late in the game. It’s fairly simplistic, but it’s good that it is, since the first quarter of the film is spent bringing viewers up to speed on the roster of hired killers in play. It goes long, but it’s probably the most entertaining part of the movie, so it’s forgiveable rather than boring.

Jeremy Piven as Israel and Ryan Reynolds as fed Messner basically own the movie. Every other character is there as set dressing for them to gnaw. Alicia Keys as hitwoman Georgia Sykes has some winning one-liners and carries her few scenes pretty well. Martin “Torque” Henderson plays hillariously against type as ex-cop Hollis, and Matthew Fox turns in a totally unrecognizable and too-brief cameo, but beyond that, you’re not likely to remember much. There’s not a lot here beyond that, and if it weren’t for Carnahan - who I’m banking on becoming the next Shane Black some time within the next year or two - Aces might not be worth your time. But if you like this sort of kinetic hipster-action, it’s a must see.

FUN FACT: 12 years ago, Joe Carnahan wrote a screenplay for a film called Karate Raider. I’ve never seen it, but the title makes me want to.

‘Experiment’ is an oddly prescient word, in the sense that The St. Francisville Experiment is a concerted, scientific effort to discover just how bad a movie can be.

The 2000 film follows a team investigating an estate in St. Francisville, Louisana - formerly the capital of West Florida - for evidence of the paranormal. The film purports to be a documentary, with the footage recovered from the team’s abandoned cameras. The footage consists of the four wandering around the house, fussing and fighting amongst themselves, until spooky things start to happen.

You’re probably thinking to yourself that it sounds a lot like
The Blair Witch Project, the divisive but unquestionably popular horror mockumentary from 1999. This is because, in true horror genre fashion, every wannabe filmmaker and their brother found a bunch of unknown talent, a camcorder, and a spooky locale and mixed liberally with poor lighting, stilted mythology, and a heck of a lot of shaky cam in order to try and make lightning strike twice. Unfortunately, the makers of St. Francisville remembered all of the ingredients save the most vital - The Blair Witch Project is actually good. Experiment, well, it’s like me putting a green dress sock on my hand and pretending it’s Kermit the Frog.

What is supposed to be tense infighting comes off as people just stepping on one another’s lines, and the sense of verisimilitude that the low-budget faux-doc tactic is supposed to evoke is never fully sold. ‘Psychic’ Madison consistently hams up her dialogue about “the white light” which she believes to be protecting the team, to the point where it’s glaringly obvious that no real person talks like that. Ditto for ‘historian’ Ryan’s constant screaming and crying and ‘film student’ Tim’s ever-present, over-the-top abrasiveness. The goal here seems to be the recreation of a by-the-numbers ghost hunt that goes horribly wrong - even the name of the film is a shameless grab at the parapsychology audience, with St. Francisville being a real-life paranormal hotspot. The problem is that the recreation comes off as so fake and hollow that the viewer is going to be constantly distracted by just how fake and hollow it is.

By the time the haunt begins in earnest, I’ve missed my window for becoming invested in these characters and honestly can’t wait for them to die, but they can’t even do that right. And speaking of lacking achievements, the few brief ghost effects we see on camera are godawful and will tear you right out of the movie, should you by some chance find yourself engrossed in it. In a movie so low-tech and so intent on establishing that ghosts don’t want to appear on camera, the filmmakers go out of their way to throw some stale made-for-tv effects in at the last minute. The film’s final scene tries hard to copy Witch’s last few minutes, but as with everything else in the movie, the attempt falls flat on its face.

I never expected St. Francisville to be good, but I expected it to land squarely in so-bad-it’s-good territory. I wanted to like it, and I kept holding out for it to get better, but it never did. On the heels of a post about my tendency to like things, it pains me to admit that there’s nothing good about this movie at all.

File under avoid.

There’s not a whole lot to say about Spider-Man 3 that hasn’t been said already, so I’ll keep it brief: I liked it a lot, and haters be damned. That jazz dance? I could have done without, to be honest, and I don’t think Bernard should ever have had actual important dialogue, but the film was a hearty blend of great action set pieces, soapy melodramatics, and goofy charm. In short, it plays like a comic book. And comic book fans don’t like it. That bugs me.

Being the third film in the franchise, we honestly should have seen the backlash coming. It’s the way these things go. When the first film comes out, the fans are set to hate it, concocting all manner of ways for it to go wrong. And when what comes out isn’t horrible, we cheer. A sequel gets to cash in on the first’s earned good will, but it also has to face raised expectations (remember, nobody believed the original would be worth watching when they plunked down their 8 bucks for it). In the face of all that, it just doesn’t perform as well. Not because it’s bad per se but because it wasn’t the most amazing movie we’ve ever seen.

And here the decline starts. Fanboy hyperbole can be powerful in a slow, subtle way. Every single one of you who likes Return of the Jedi and stays quiet about it knows what I mean. We don’t like the third film, not ever, because we’ve set too high a bar and been let down too hard. And by this point, we’re making flow charts and running bible codes to determine what ‘needs to happen’ in the next installment. It’s hardly ever like the finished product, though, and this just makes us, the jilted audience, bristle at the film itself for not accepting our genius. If you think that I’m wrong about this, talk to your friends about The Phantom Menace sometime - a genuinely mediocre film that is lambasted as a cinematic hate crime largely because Lucas’s plot was not “OMG JEDI FITE CLOEN!!!!”

Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes threequels are just bad. Like Scream 3, or Superman 3, or The Godfather 3. That just builds the mythology, so to speak. It prompts viewers to walk into good third films and nitpick them to death.

There’s some transitory joy in the critique, but I’d rather enjoy a movie on its merits than damn it on its few obvious flaws. Let’s avoid being callow for a second - just a second - and ask ourselves if Spider-Man 3 did what it was intended to. Other than make money. I’m pretty sure that it did, and that the negativity we’re seeing towards it is a perfect storm of expectation and/or demand that affects every franchise that gets this far.

This evening, we humbly submit the following for the Announcer’s consideration:

The existential struggle between man and his furnishings is a stark and violent one.

A friendly reminder that FNF is proudly sponsored by:

I’ve never read The Golden Compass before, so I don’t have any context for the image I’m seeing in this teaser poster that I stumbled on at AICN. That said, context doesn’t matter when you see the coolest thing ever. Ever.

No, really. Ever.

If you’re easily rocked or have small children in the room, you may want to click away right now.

Last chance…

But Jeff, you’re saying, there’s some little girl there. That’s not cool, unless it’s Runaways.

When Le Pacte de Loups came out I voiced a theory to my friends regarding the lack of an English dub in the theatrical release. The movie, I asserted, had to remain in French because it otherwise would have been too awesome for audiences. Like the “Master Exploder” scene in Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. The French was the AIM-engineered cube holding back a vast and incalculable amount of cosmic power.

In much the same way, this little girl holding a magic compass is bleeding off some of the sheer face-shattering power of a giant polar bear wearing golden armor. In the original one-sheet, the girl was replaced by a samurai pirate who was riding the bear; it crashed the internet for two hours, and the first person to browse onto it is now blind, except that they can see angels.

Over a week ago, I packaged up everything I own into boxes and stored them in my attic. Well, not everything; my clothes are fine, and my 360 is hooked up, but basically everything that I use to define myself has been scattered irretrievably to various corners of my house. It is not even physically possible to get to my long boxes at this point, for example, and I’m fairly certain that my guitar is in an extradimensional vortex of some sort and that I won’t get it back until before I bought it.

Why? We’re renovating. And what should have only taken a handful of days has turned into a nightmarish process. And without my PC, I’ve basically been cut off from life outside my hovel. It’s a scary thing.

But finally things are back in order and I should be net-enabled once again over the weekend.

Some thoughts:

* Downloaded the Hero Pack for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and have basically only used Hawkeye. In fact, I’ve had fun running around using only Clint Barton. Unfortunately, his voice acting is probably the worst in the game. But at least he’s there, you know? Unlike so much of the DLC available on Live, this one is worth the bucks.

* I’ve not seen Spidey 3 yet, as the special 2-hour Grey’s Anatomy really taxed me; I was frankly too tired to take in the midnight show. I hear there’s a lot of crying, though.

* 52 ended strong, though I’ve liked it for pretty much the whole ride. The book had some pacing problems that were not the fault of the creators as much as they were the fault of the book’s ‘real-time’ concept, but on the whole, it was a rewarding read from start to finish. Still wary about the multiverse, but I can deal. I’m also psyched about Countdown.

* Disturbia - top-notch b-thriller. Like Panic Room in a lot of ways, but not as slow. LeBouef and Morse rock the house.

* Hot Fuzz - despite its numerous Bad Boys II homages, Fuzz surpasses Bay’s sequel as the best actioner I’ve seen in the past five years, all while being amazingly funny. Saw it twice.

* Severance - What Hot Fuzz does for the cop film, this does for slasher films. Hilarious without being a send-up.

* Some sort of Whedon Event occurred on a cosmic level this week. 3 books, each of which was excellent. I’m loving Ryan’s pencils on Runaways. Puts his work on New Excalibur to shame, honestly. And his stuff on New Excalibur was great.

* Word of the Week: Awesomed.

* It’s time to start culling my longboxes, so there’s sure to be a linkpost to a bunch of full runs on eBay shortly.

* On the cancellation of Drive: I can’t wait for FOX to cancel House so I can stop watching the network entirely.

* On the cancellation of Gilmore Girls: It’s time. I don’t have the hate-on that some fans do for this final season, but it’s been moving inexorably toward a conclusion for awhile now. If CW manages to take the other two shows of theirs I watch off the air, I suppose I should thank them for creating a world in which I don’t have to watch The CW.

I should be up and running again in earnest in time for Friday Night Fights. Catch you later, loyal reader.