F.U.M.B Films

Image, comment, score

2010-03-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

The Invasion - (2007)

No:

No point. 5/10

Transformers - (2007)

Fuck you Michael Bay. (3/10)

Alien vs Predator: Requiem (2009)

Everywhere I look is a darkness. 4/10

Cabin Fever - (2002)

A man, a banjo, a turd. Fuck off. (0/10)

The Fourth Kind (2009)

2010-03-14T05:24:00.000-07:00

Directed by: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Will Patton, and REAL PEOPLE BECAUSE THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED (Not)
Plot: THIS REALLY HAPPENED! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! No it fucking didn't, and no amount of whining at the beginning and end will make it real. Nor will more post-film "What happned next" notes than a TRUE FUCKING STORY will make this film truer than those. But basically this is Close Encounters of the Third Kind plus one channeled through Paranormal Activity and Northern Exposure.

Rule 1 for a film trying to make you believe it is a dramatisation of real events: Don't have the lead fucking star stand there almost practically superimposed and introduce the fucking film. That's so fucking TV it hurts. It's a quicker disconnect than the Church of Scientology have ever acheived. It is possibly acting as a caveat for the fucking stupid.

It's in that group of films of "Actual/Found" Footage, like Paranormal Activity, Blair Witch Project and Passion of the Christ, but it runs a dramatisation next to the "actual" footage to try and make you think that it's based on something that actually happened. Framed on a level up from this is the central character (now actually looking like your "classic" grey and a husk of her former self and speaking like Julie Hagerty in Airplane!) in an interview with the director in a glib attempt to add gravitas to the story being true. Or something.

I'll say it right now, you never see the fucking aliens. IF THEY EVEN EXISTED AT ALL. So you never get to find out if they look like David Morse, you never see if they're tall or short, grey or green. And you certainly never get to see if they look anything like fucking owls. Yes, I said owls. Why? Because when the film is doing the WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I SLEEP AT NIGHT? psychoanalysis bit early on, it turns out that every single one of them remembers seeing an owl just before their sleeping/anal probe troubles.

Now, apparently there are 10 species of owl native to Alaska. This is 9 more species than there are of humans in Alaska. I'm assuming that seeing an owl at night when your house is surrounded by fucking trees in an area where owls are as common as whining children is not a rare occurence. I'm also assuming that owls are still nocturnal in Alaska....so using owls as a plot device for linking cases just seems like a idea born out of idiocy when they could have used something like a wolf, a kodiak bear or Al Pacino. An owl is just an invitation to make your case load bigger than it could be. "Oh I couldn't sleep last night because there was an owl outside. It was hooting all fucking night." "Are you sure it was sticking a cold steel rod up your backside?"

And on it goes, and boy does it drag towards the end. Over the course of the film you've seen a couple of Milla's patients go bathshit mental during hypnosis - one that is so frightened by the experience that he goes home and murders his family before committing suicide, and the other that ends up levitating on his bed with his mouth wide opening speaking ancient Sumerian. Everything then focuses on Milla and her two children (her daughter has gone blind due to the trauma of her father's death) - still coming to terms with the death of her husband that you saw stabbed at the start of the film (and whose killer has yet to be caught).

After she's put under house arrest for "causing" three broken vertebrae in the levitating patient, things are starting to come to an end. Her daughter goes missing, supposedly kidnapped by the aliens and she is accused by the local sheriff of causing all this and takes her son into custody. Only one way to try and get her daughter back - go under hypnosis. This is probably the most effective scene of the film, and due to the 24 style double framing - the "actual" footage alongside the "dramatisation" before the fragmented Sumerian translation appears on screen. This is where it should have ended - the fallen camera and the air of WTF? mystery like at the end of Blair Witch.

Problem is, there's just no mystery. You find out that her husband actually shot himself and that she's been in denial all along. She's not to blame for her daughter's disappearence and she is now paraylzed from the neck down. Whilst intermittently effective, the film doesn't have a clue what it wants to be - it would have been far better choosing early on which path to go down - "actual/found" footage OR dramatisation. It dances between the two like a drunken Grandparent at a wedding - carefree and with no fucking regard to what is going on around it. And hammering home the "THIS IS REAL" point really made me want to punch something hard. It's an insult to the intelligence of everyone that watches it (though no doubt some people will actually believe it is real). What they should have done was lop off 25 minutes and gone down the "Actual" footage route, or just made it a straight up film about a mystery surrounding a remote town in Alaska.

That way I wouldn't have been playing a 90 minute game of eye marble over a film that is suffering from Multiple Film Disorder.

Overall: 5/10 - generous, perhaps, but it was done with enough style at times and the "chills" were effective enough.

Wanted (2008)

2010-03-12T13:24:00.000-08:00

Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov
Starring: James McAvoy, Mrs. Pitt and Morgan Freeman

I watched this a couple of weeks ago, but I've only just been hit by the curved turd bullet of "Holy Fucking Shit! What the convoluted fuck was that?" that this monstrous pile of utter rubbish propelled at me from an unspecified location made up of what I can only assume to be infinite pile of primordial gunk yet to have the catalytic spark that would turn it into something good.

That's not to say that I was aghast to the atrocity that I had just witnessed when, through sleepy eyes and practically haemorrhaging ears, I heard Morgan Freeman utter "Oh shit" (or was it Oh fuck? *apathetic shrug*) before having a bullet exit his forhead to cue the end credits.

Don't get me wrong, I like my balls to the wall action films. I just don't like them stamped into said wall and force fed to me through the guise of Mrs. Pitt's naked ass. I can imagine that from start to finish that this was some sort of mastubatory fantasy for a select group of people. However, I fall into this category and am not ashamed to say it, but I'm not one to be conned by a bunch of disengaging scenes with a fucking knitting factory at the middle of it.

Okay, so the "curving the bullet" and shooting the wings off a fly bits are a bit screwy, but it's a decent enough quirk for a film of this ilk. But for fucks sake, knitting death warrants into some fucking cloth, jesus? I know it's from a comic book and they like their stuff whacky and if you change too much then you're going to be burning letters from angry fanboys for the rest of your life, BUT COME THE FUCK ON! It would have made far more sense if you'd got a "Stich'n'Bitch" group in to sort out the murdering contracts.

Plot? Fuck off. Seriously, fuck off.

The plot for Wanted is somewhere in this jumper.

With the guy that directed Daywatch and Nightwatch this should have been good. But he fell into that "foreign director's first Hollywood film" trap and pandering to tastes. It's not gritty and the moments that it would try and claim are brutal would be beaten into submission by the interrogation of Chunk in The Goonies.

And despite all that, it is big, dumb and fucking annoying fun, though the law of dimishing returns would have me gnawing off my own leg if I ever had to suffer it again. But I might just watch it again to see if I can get the knitting pattern.

Overall: 3/10

Note: I am aware it wasn't knitting, but I don't fucking care.

Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

2010-03-08T13:40:00.000-08:00

Directed by: F. Gary Gray (or is it F. Gray Gary? or F. Gary Graybraham?)
Starring: SPARTA!, Ray Charles and Chief O'Brien

I'd already heard that this was a very bad film, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. It was far fucking worse than that. Imagine, if you will, a story cobbled together with shit and semen, hammered through a collander with a big fucking mallet when the convex head of a spoon would have sufficed, processed with offal and stale piss, covered with pastry, baked for two hours and then retrofitted with vomit and then muddied with a thousand lonely suicides.

Well, that's more appetising than this. Seriously, this film spends nearly two hours believing that is something it was never going to be. It quickly shot it's own moral load over its self-righteous face screaming "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!! There's a message here, a serious message about the American justice system...." and then quickly forgets that message while wiping its cock down in your face and secretly laughing at you.

Basically, Sparta is a family man that one night gets attacked by some petty crooks (not wearing balaclavas I might add) - one of these petty crooks decides that rather than just make off with some valuables that it would be a good idea to murder Sparta's wife and young daughter and leave Sparta for dead. As you do. Okay, so there's no film if this doesn't happen so I'm prepared to roll with it....

....and roll is what one of the crooks does when caught. Ray Charles is the prosecutor who has to break the news to Sparta that because of some fuck up with evidence and the fact that Sparta had passed out that his statement wasn't valid - the guy that did the killing is rolling over on the other guy to get a plea bargain whilst the other poor schmuck gets sent to death row. Sparta is mortified, but Ray tells him it's the only way they are guaranteed to get them both in jail as the case would probably collapse otherwise.

So, on we go. 10 years later, the day of the execution and Ray is there to watch it. Ad then something goes horribly wrong - instead of killing the guy easily it seriously fucks him up painfully before killing him. Oh I wonder who arranged that? Sparta then proceeds to help the other crook (who is now a free man snorting coke and screwing cheap hookers) escape the "three strikes you're out" rule as the cops come to his apartment. Well, help escape so he can torture him to death whilst filming it whilst speaking in Latin and doing a Cossack dance.

Anyway, they have no difficulty finding Sparta, who decides to strip naked prior to his arrest for some reason (six-pack quotient?). And then the "fun" begins. In the 10 years since the initial incident it seems that Sparta! has become an expert on law, bought shit loads of property and learnt how to make a perfect meringue in his mouth. Basically, he wanted to be caught so he could then orchestrate his masterplan.

And what is his masterplan? Well, here goes:

Get a mattress for a confession
Says the title of the film
Get a steak for a second confession of where the defence attorney for the crooks is buried alive
Oops, steak arrived too late and the guy is dead....
Kills cellmate
Gets sent to solitary
Watch as everyone is helpless whilst anyone that had anything to do with the apparent injustice 10 years ago is picked off one by one. Except Ray Charles. Maybe because he's a family man.

No one knows how this shit is happening, but right out of the fucking middle of nowhere it turns out via a CIA type that Sparta is actually some really fucking brilliant assassin type guy that can kill people without being anywhere near them. Like being in the basement of a prison somehow arranging a bullet through the head of a judge, four car bombs and directing a performance of South Pacific by the cast of Cheers WHO AREN'T EVEN IN THE FUCKING FILM!!

And then they throw in a red herring accomplice - not once, but fucking twice. Once by making you think that perhaps he is the mysterious "Chester" the boyfriend of the a girl working for Ray Charles that no one has ever met. That one is put to bed when he blows up her car. And then the black gloved accomplice that massacres more people at the funeral for the bomb victims.

Of course, the accomplice back door would be too weird now as everyone is seemingly accounted for or fucking dead by this point so they'd have to invent a person out of thin air to fill that role. I think I would have preferred this route, especially if they'd recruited Rutger Hauer or Malcolm McDowell. Or Paul Reubens. Now that would have been awesome. In fact, everything else would have been awesome.

Turns out that in the 10 years between the trial and execution that he bought a warehouse next to the prison and FUCKING TUNNELED INTO THE PRISON! Or every solitary cell to be precise. He's stocked up the tunnel with all manner of uniforms and equipment and right at the moment that Ray Charles and Chief O'Brien find this little treasure trove of potential destruction, Sparta is at City Hall planting a bomb that is going to wipe out the mayor and all the chiefs of police.....THAT PROBABLY WEREN'T EVEN IN THOSE POSITIONS WHEN HE GOT HIS REVENGE BONER 10 YEARS AGO!!! Well, he's basically trying to cripple the city in revenge for the sins against justice. That's the message.

Of course, Ray and Chief O'Brien play the old switcheroo and plant the bomb in Sparta's cell before he gets back....and he falls into their trap and makes the phonecall triggering the device....and that's it, Sparta is dead and we're no better off. We've learnt nothing we don't already know from watching Law & Order, CSI and Inspector Gadget. It could easily have made a statement about criminal injustice and flaws in the legal system but it takes the torture porn route. But in reality, we're the ones being tortured by this utter piece of crap....and it's crap that you've stood in and walked into your house.

And then to have the end credits roll and to find out that Sparta was a fucking robot and the real Sparta is about to torch Ray Charles house....well, that just takes the fucking piss.

This is possibly the worst mainstream American film made by people who have made decent films in the past - F. Gary Gray was responsible for "The Negotiator", and writer Kurt Wimmer has written some enjoyable fluff like "Equilibrium". But here they just invite themselves to a wank party and get jizz everywhere they weren't supposed to.

Overall 1/10

Note: Some parts of the story description have been added after the review was written to keep in spirit with what the filmmakers did.

Addendum 1: I've just figured it out - it's a reverse "Shawshank Redemption"!!! FFS!!

Knowing (2009)

2010-02-19T08:36:00.000-08:00

Directed by: Alex Proyas
Starring: Nic Cage, several child labourers, a man with a halogen torch in his mouth

Ah, end of the world films. Don't you just love them? All that build up to the end of the world and then a bunch of fucking people survive and it's not the end anymore, just a shift in the way of life as they fight through the rubble of destruction which you never actually see, though it's a little known fact that "The Road" is actually a sequel to "Deep Impact". [citation needed].
There are always survivors somehow.....and that's annoying. Damned annoying, as it cheats you out of the real end of the world bloodlust that you were hoping for. "Knowing" is slightly different. The world is totally fucking BBQed at the end by a Solar Megaflare, but there is a survival caveat....

So, how does this survival caveat come about and how do we get there? It starts off with a class 'Time Capsule' project in the 1950s and the creepy girl with a monobrow and a permanent frown just writes a bunch of numbers that confuses her teacher. Now, any normal teacher would have just put the kid on detention and torn up the paper and called the men in whites coats - especially in 1950s America where you could be committed to the funny farm for suggesting that Communism would work if you gave it a chance. But no, this teacher puts it in the time capsule.....

....flash forward 50 years to the Grand Opening and we have Nic Cage (sleepwalking through yet another role like a oversized hunchbacked goblin) and his son - that is the grieving Nic Cage as his wife had died a year before. That old chestnut is basically thrown in to make an excuse for Cage not actually giving a damn about what kind of film he is in. They could easily have had the happy family scenario played out on screen and probably would have if someone like Tom Cruise had played the role, but no, they picked Cage, signed his paycheque and he just showed a total lack of emotion and apathy....and when he does smile, it looks forced - kind of like in "Face/Off" after the face switch when he's John Travolta's character being Nic Cage's character......it's a smile of pure and utter fucking PAIN. "Do I have to smile?"........For fuck's sake Cage, you used to care!

Anyway, I digress.....so the capsule gets opened and lo and behold, Cage's son gets the bunch of crazygirl numbers and a pissed up Cage figures out that the numbers relate to the dates of major disasters and the death toll plus another number he can't figure out. There are three dates at the end that are yet to come....oooo, spooky. Wonder what the last one is? Cage can't figure it out as it is just 33 people and there is no number after it......

So Cage tries to convince his fellow professors that there will be a disaster the next day where 81 people will die - oh yeah, it should be mentioned at this stage that Cage is a Professor of Cosmology and rambles on about determinisim at MIT, so this all seems a little too convenient and really starts to blow his mind. Well, it would look like it's blowing the mind of another actor, but Cage's reaction is to look like a washed up tramp with no cares in the world and show little facial emotion.

Cue the next day and Cage is stuck in traffic - he sees his GPS and has a fucking eureka moment (with no facial emotion) - the missing numbers are the coordinates....and lookie here! They're actually the ones for the accident that is about to happen.....and it's here that the film is at its best - DESTRUCTION! The plane crash is simply fucking brilliantly done - horrific in the aftermath too. Definitely not something to watch the day before a flight or if your lifelong dream is to be a rescue worker.

Weird shit is also happening to his son - visited by some sinister looking men that you only see from behind. Are they like the Men in Black, but only the dour version? Or is there something more to them?

And so it moves on. He tracks done the daughter of the creepy number girl like a stalke whilst actaully looking like a stalker. When any normal women would have pepper sprayed him in the face, this women humours him for a bit until he brings up the numbers and the fact that another disaster is imminent. She then runs away from him with her daughter only to creep back to Cage after the next disaster prophecy comes true - another spectacular disaster set piece of a subway crash. They then figure that the 33 on the last disaster is actually EE but they have no idea what it stands for and the eyebrow daughter tells Cage that it's the day her mother told her she was going to die. Nice.

They then check out her mother's old home, which is basically a shack in the woods - the kind of place where a serial killer would hold bodies. In fact, I'm surprised that during the wooden scene that follows they don't stumble on the corpse of Nic Cage and a pile of copies of the "The Wicker Man" remake. After some stumbling around they find that EE stands for "Everyone Else". If this was a Roland Emmerich film it would have had REM' "It's the End of the World...." playing by now....

...meanwhile, outside the creepy mobile home the Mystery Machine has turned up to unmask the creepy backs of heads guys that seem to be menacing the kids. The kids scream and Cage comes running and chases after them. He catches up with one of them and then the strangest thing happens - the guy yawns and pukes pure white light out of his mouth. I mean totally Daz white kind of white. When Cage comes to, they're gone....

Next day Cage realises that the solar flare that has been talked about on news pieces during the film is actually going to be a global killer - the solar flare equivalent of the dinosaur killer meteor. They're fucked basically, and unless they're Johnny Storm they're going to be burnt to a crisp - not even a burnt out husk will remain. But they still think that perhaps sitting in a cave will be fine....WRONG! The radiation will boil them alive. But, they prepare to do that anyway - where's there's hope there's still a push to do something other than loot and pick up hot girls....

...so off they go to the school where Cage has found out the girl looked herself in a cupboard and came out with bloodied hands after his son just started writing numbers and carries on carving it into the desk with his fingers after the paper and pen are taken from him. It was another eureka moment....he then steals the whole fucking door of the cupboard, takes it home and tries to find the numbers that the girl may well have scraped with her fingernails....

...but nothing is showing up and the women legs it to the caves with his son and her daughter seconds before he finds the numbers.....they're the coordinates of the eyebrow girl. Of course, the solar flare is causing havoc with mobile phones. Cage has to try and find them, but obviously can't get through. Then in a necessary plot hole at a gas station, his son phones him from a landline - he gets through. Long story short: kids get taken in woman's car by strange torch-mouth men, woman steals a car to go after them but gets taken out by a massive lorry (the date for her death was right!) and Cage catches up with the kids whilst they're being led away by the strange men. Then a big fucking spaceship comes down - presumably because this was the only way they could have a happy ending without Superman turning up and sucking all the solar flare in and shitting it into dark matter, thus saving the global energy crisis - Cage is told by his son that he can't go.....the strange men then reveal themselves to be white glowing aliens who are only saving children because they belong to some intergalactic space paedo ring.

Off flies the ship (and many others like it) and Cage trundles home to his estranged father to face a massive wall of firey death (another spectacular scene), before we see the two kids skipping through corn on a CGI planet with an Yggdrasil lookalike tree. And no fucking buildings! The aliens basically dumped a bunch of kids on a planet with plenty of resources and no goddamn buildings, with a big gnarly tree and couple of rabbits - I mean, you would have expected a bunch of creepy torchmouth aliens who can predict the future down to the corpse to have at least read some William Golding, but fuck me if they haven't and they just leave the kids to start from scratch on their own - thus ensuring that the human race will soon be over.....

Meanwhile back on Earth.....

Overall: 5/10

Eagle Eye (2008)

2010-01-27T11:58:00.000-08:00

Directed by: DJ Caruso
Starring: Sheer The Beef, Michelle Monaghan, Vic Mackey and hundreds of CCTV cameras

What's it about? - Two people, seemingly chosen at random, to carry out a terrorist attack

Okay, so it starts with a military operation - wanted arab terrorist returning to a small village for what seems to be a funeral. He's resurfaced after years "underground" and this might be the only time the good old US of A get to take him out once and for all. Problem is, the computer system can't verify for certain whether it is really him and recommends an abort. Vic Mackey, Secretary of Defence agrees but El Presidento via the telephone overrules as it's their best chance for perhaps a few more years and greenlights the strike - BOOM....suspected terrorist and a bunch of innocents obliterated. Sounds familiar, you betcha, it's on the news nearly every day. But, don't forget that this happens because these kind of beginnings in films are always relevant later on.....

And here starts this bewildering techno thriller. Why is it bewildering? Well, it kind of undoes what is a great set up with a massive paradigm shift halfway through. Now, I know films these days require a huge suspension of disbelief, but when you require this suspension after an hour when it was doing okay developing as it was then it really gets fucking annoying. Basically, this goes totally William Webb Ellis halfway through and reinvents the ball game it was playing into something much less rounded and predictable.

Now, as a sci-fi fan I'm used to my far fetched stories, but the difference between your galaxy spanning sci-fi space opera and this is that at least with the former you're prepared for what you're about to see/read....this....well, unless you have spoons for hands and drive around in a clown car then nothing could really prepare for the asshattery that comes after a solid first hour.

The setup is simple - Shia and Monaghan are introduced to us - him a hard up college dropout who finds out that his twin brother has been killed and her a single mother packing her son off to play in his school band at the State of the Union address. As she packs her son onto the train you see some sinister guy make off with her sons trumpet. A few minutes later: Setup 1 happens: Shia has 3/4 million dollars deposited in his account and a whole load of weapons and bomb making equipment planted in his apartment. Then he receives a call from a mysterious woman to tell him to get the fuck out of there as the FBI are on their way....he doesn't, and ends up in an interrogation room where he screams "I've been framed" to Billy Bob Thornton who thinks its related to his dead brother - who was in the Navy. Cue a Navy investigator in on the case too. Shia gets his phonecall and the mysterious woman helps him escape by slamming a massive fucking crane of convenience into the room he's in, nearly killing him.....so he's out and away.

Setup 2: The same woman calls Monaghan and tells her that the train carrying her son will be derailed if she doesn't comply, so she basically does. Her instructions are to take a Porsche Cayenne (you know, the really fucking hideous 4x4) and follow further instructions.....turns out she ends up picking up Shia who avoids breaking his neck in a hefty fall and being hit by a speeding train in the space of a few seconds.

So there they are together, following instructions in a massive chase. The woman on the phone is controlling everything for them and their getaway is made easy by changing lights to green etc. Even easier when they get to a wrecking yard and the car crushers are on remote control and take out the remaining cop cars. Our two unwilling "terrorists" are away and free to follow the instructions of the mysterious woman. Other players are introduced doing little things and a neat little techno conspiracy is brewing - in kind not too far removed from "Enemy of the State". And then around the halfway mark, the big reveal - in part due to the woman explaining what is going on and in part to the Navy investigator being given special access to a secret level in the Pentagon that holds a superspy computer....as Rolf Harris said "Can you tell what it is yet?".

Of course, it's the fucking superspy computer pulling all the strings and getting unsuspecting people involved in the plot. Totally SkyNet. And now for the unravelling - it needs Shia because his brother worked with the computer before it killed him for suspecting something was a wry and his eye scan can put her plan into action, and it needs Monaghan to be the carrier of the tiny bomb crystal that is activated by sonic vibrations (her son's trumpet has the trigger in....) that is going to kill the President and other members of the cabinet (except Vic Mackey) all because her "Abort Mission" suggestion at the start of the film was ignored. So, once they're out of the way her plan is to have Mackey as president.....

Wow. Just wow. It's just plain fucking daft once you find out what is actually going on. If you'd found out at the end it might well have been better. I'd have preferred it to have been revealed that it was actually Dougie Howser pulling the strings - it would have made as much sense. I guess I'm annoyed at the damn thing because it was actually promising and quite enjoyable until the carpet disappeared and you realise your house is actually a magic carpet and you're falling towards the ground at an alarming rate only to crash into the second half of this pile of shit.

Overall: 4/10

Chopping Mall (1986)

2009-11-17T13:15:00.000-08:00

Directed by: Jim Wynorski ("Return of the Swamp Thing" 1989, "Cleavagefield" 2009 - what? "Cleavagefield"? Oh dear, oh dear *adds to list*)
Starring: The least fearsome robots in the world, 80s Haircut People
Plot: A shopping mall in Telford uses classical music to deter unruly kids from causing trouble, with "hilarious" consequences.

Or not.

The worst thing about this film is that there is absolutely no fucking chopping whatsoever. Seriously, the title is a total con. In order, there's a stab, a pinch, an electrocution, a cut throat, a head explosion, a burning to death, a throw from a balcony, a laser to the stomach and another electrocution. But, no fucking chopping. Honestly, they should have stuck with the original title of "Killbots". At least that had a shred of truth in the title. I was expecting limbs everywhere, people chopped in half etc. At least "Shark in Venice" had a shark in Venice. At least in "Wrong Turn 2" they took a wrong turn. At least "Pocket Ninjas" was made by a bunch of wankers. At least in "Boa vs Python" there was a boa vs a python....eventually.

But in this, there is no fucking chopping. A mere sliced thoat is the closest you come to a chop. It would be like having a Steven Seagal film where he shoots everyone, or having Clint Eastwood tickle everyone to death with a feather in the Dirty Harry films. It just doesn't cut.

Does it have anything to redeem it? Erm....it has tits, if that's what you're wondering. Otherwise, no. Like I said, it's got the least threatening robots in film history. The look like short squat versions of the original "Battlestar Galactica" Cylons, crossed with Johnny Five from "Short Circuit", with the threat and menace of Tweaky from "Buck Rogers". Seriously, they're shit robots. Under normal circumstances they look likely to provide a shitter protection service than the Protectron's in "Fallout 3".

Alarmingly, this film came out one year before "Robocop". So I can't help but think that Paul Verhoeven and co. owe a little bit to this film for coming up with the idea of robots that protect and serve.....and then go batshit mental and kill people. Not that the Protector 101 robots in this are anything like Ed-209....though for a simple shopping mall defence system, they're kitted out out like some really high-grade military shit. Something tells me that the US Army probably received some really tame robots with nothing more than tranquiliser darts and a taser.

Of course, something has to send these placid robots mad that would normally leave all staff alone.....and of course it's man's best friend.....Lightning. Yes, in an electrical storm just before closing time some lightning strikes and overloads the system. Of course, lightning has a propensity to turn programmed machines into relentless killing machines.

And this is no exception. That said, your average machine isn't tooled up with laser eye cutters, lasers, tasers and C4 (wtf?) but these lowgrade protector bots just happen to be tooled up to the thin red strip of an eyeball with these tools.

And off they go to kill some oversexed kids who decided that having a party in a furniture store after hours in a shopping mall is a good fucking idea. A party of 8. Woah. Rock and fucking roll. By the end of the party, the three couples are all shagging and the remaining two - the shy nerds basically - are busy watching B-Movies on a TV in the same fucking room as the sexkids. I mean, jesus. Would that really happen?

Anyway, these are the two that survive. You know that because they adhere to age old slasher/horror film cliche that you're safe if you don't have sex, keep your clothes on.....in fact, they're positively virginal at the start but you just know that when they're all happy at the end of the film despite their friends just being slaughtered that they're going to have a massive fuck, get all guilty about the circumstances and never speak to each other again.

Apart from the six sex fiends, three innocents get killed. Well, two really, as one was killed whilst looking at porn. They missed a trick here as he only got stabbed in the neck - would have been so much better if he'd been blinded....

So, how do they kill the bots? Well, they get some weapons from a sports shop - which at this point would have made it really fucking interesting had it been set here in the UK - a bunch of kids get slaughtered fighting three killer robots with badminton rackets, shuttle cocks, golf clubs and cricket bats whilst wearing replica football kits.....*lightbulb*

Basically, one bot gets killed in a lift explosion - and it is at this point that I recognise the shopping mall - it's the same one that was used in "Commando". On closer inspection (ie. wikipedia) it turns out that it was also used in "Terminator 2" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". So, basically the shopping mall is more famous than anyone in this film.....and infinitely cooler.

The second bot gets electrocuted due to that age old trick of using a mirror to reflect a laser. Brilliant, it basically then goes haywire, kills two of the kids and then blows up. The final bot gets lured into a paint shop by the nerdy girl who has tactically emptied loads of paint onto the floor so that the bot loses traction and can't get out. She then lobs a flare that she hid down her top ages ago at a point that I was starting to get restless.....this then makes everything blow up.

Fantastic.

Or not.

"Shocking Mall" would have been more apt. Chopping....yes, I'm still angry about being hoodwinked. The bastards.

Chopping action: 0/10
Shopping action: 4/10
Hair: 1/10
Overall: 3/10 - Pretty rubbish really. Should have called it "Killbots". Calling it "Chopping Mall" for the purpose of a cheap play on words and not having any goddamn chopping makes me angry. Very angry. Like watching "Contact" for the alien.

Supernova (2000)

2009-11-09T14:05:00.000-08:00

Directed by: "Thomas Lee" - aka. The new Alan Smithee. In reality, this was a combination of Walter "Mad Max" Hill and Francis"Model T" Ford Coppola and some other bloke
Starring: Some respectable actors and Lou Diamond Phillips

It's taken me four days to watch this. Seriously. Four fucking days. I started watching this on Thursday, but due to time dilation, time was moving quicker everywhere else other than inside the bubble of me and the film. This caused quite a problem. 10 minutes of the film was actually 2 hours of "reality". And the problem was getting worse as I then started noticing that for every minute of film time, more time was passing on the outside. I got worried that perhaps I'd start missing important things in the "real world", like work, birthdays, Y10K. Only now on Monday have I actually finished it, but that was largely due to coming into possession of a Macguffin that allowed me phase the two pockets of time and not risk missing our sun's own Supernova (okay, I know that as ours is a Class G2 star so will have a red giant stage before shrinking to a White Dwarf, but that's by the by....)

To say this film is slow is a fucking understatement. There are only two things slower than this: a date with Bill Oddie and a holodeck episode in Star Trek TNG. Essentially, there is nothing inherently wrong with the film. It is pretty much a 45 minute episode of Star Trek dragged out to 90 minutes with a half-baked story, more expensive special effects and gratuitous nudity. Which was the only reason that Robin Tunney was in this I feel - she was there to get naked, have sex with two different characters and then get flushed out of an airlock. Her character basically said nothing but showed her tits.

Oh god was it slow.....there is some plot, and it's a solid sci-fi Macguffin based story - some alien artifact that happens to make other aliens superstrong to hoodwink them into taking it back to their home planet/system, whereby it'll blow up and totally fuck with their civilisation. Variations of this type of Macguffin litter sci-fi and have huge stories based around - probably more than you can fit into a 90 minute to 2 hour film in fairness.....but this film skullfucks a good Macguffin harder than the last Indiana Jones film did.

The problem with high budget/high concept space based sci-fi is that it rarely fucking works because the concept ends up being toned down so that there aren't long bits of science to bog the audience down with before something fucking massive blows up with dramatic music playing. "Sunshine" worked by having enough plot devices in and around the core story to keep it going without getting boring. This is just one fucking plodding step after another - it's like a walk through an art gallery with no art and just some nice architecture. Like I said, it looks great. Ship design, special effects - all top notch.

As a slasher film in space it doesn't work simply because the man is powered by the Macguffin. Boring. He's not gone batshit mental. There are no aliens here, so it can't be an aliens in space film. And it clearly hasn't been written into a fictional "universe" with the sights on a franchise. No, it's a standalone film with a high concept and nothing else to salvage it from years drifting in space. A total fuck up (that everyone involved probably admits), and a prime example of why sci-fi films set in space rarely get made.

Overall 5/10: A little generous, but it fucking tried hard. But that's like saying you tried hard to take your pants off before you shit yourself.

Pocket Ninjas (1997)

2009-11-02T15:08:00.000-08:00

This is the worst film ever made. That's not me speaking, that's the users of IMDB speaking. For a reason that will become apparent over the next 80 minutes....no wait, 60 minutes because I fastforwarded about 20 minutes of fight/dance scenes that were recycled from previous fight/dance scenes. Yes, this is the worst film ever made.

It's also a kids film, and I strongly advise the authorities to track down any parent that has bought or rented this for their kids or has been present whilst their children watched it and lock them up for a very long time. This is a form of torture that *names of Government agencies and/or terrorist groups deleted* have yet to introduce. This is a form of torture so advanced that it is beyond torture and is probably somewhere in hell. Quite possibly on every single level and something so nasty that even Satan himself can't sit through it.

There's not much to say about this really. I mean, it looks like an 80s home video that was filed away for years and cobbled together 10 years later as some form of posthumous tribute for some poor kid that died. And if that is actually the case, then the "filmmakers" know no boundaries and probably participate in social necrophilia with their friends and family.

The presence of a "real" actor dispels this passing thought rather quickly. Well, when I say "real" actor, it's actually the guy that played "Maniac Cop" - he gets top billing in this piece of shit even though he's only in it in some weirdly surreal flashback type scenes......

....erm, like this one.

Actually, that video and the "VR" ending are the only things that you could consider slightly redeeming. And by redeeming, I mean only for those that would consider a fascist dictator saying "I didn't mean it" as an apology for genocide.

There is a plot to speak of, but I'm not going to speak about it. What's the fucking point? You're not going to watch it, are you? No one is......unless you're totally fucking insane. I only watched it for a joint experiment in mind control and torture techniques. I honestly wish that this film was dubbed in a foreign language....instead, it's quietly dubbed in English recorded in a room with a propensity to echo. The sound FX are about 10 times louder than the dialogue and some "actors" are barely audible....especially Maniac Cop, who only has about 20 words to say anyway which are all fluffed more than a porn star in a gang bang.

I feel sorry for the "actors" that have this as their only film credit, I genuinely do. In fact, I think the girl ninja changed her screen name to a one word name to protect herself and any possible acting career she might actually have despite this....

This piece of fucking shit also has the most ridiculous fight scenes I have ever witnessed.....I mean, who the fuck would fight whilst wearing rollerblades? Not even a pro I'd warrant, let alone some kids in clown masks.And then there's the shaky cam.....I think the makers of this would like to lay claim that they invented it. Personally, I just think it's because that the only equipment they had other than the camera was a cheap 5 foot tripod and for scenes that would usually require a dolly mechanism of some variety they just held the camera in their hands and walked. Everything else is from a fixed position, which I guess is fine if you're having a tense dialogue driven moment, but when you're trying to film "action" (in the loosest sense of the word) it just doesn't fucking cut.

In fact, cut is one thing the director probably never even fucking said in his life.....and this is an 80 minute film that should be 40 minutes long.....seriously. Even in the 60 minutes I actually fucking bothered to fucking watch there was more padding than a warehouse of pantyliners.

TURNS OUT IT WAS ALL A FUCKING COMIC BOOK THAT THE KIDS WERE READING IN A FUCKING TREEHOUSE! Oh fucking hell.....

GET THE FUCK OFF MY TELLY!

Overall: 0/10

Boa vs. Python (2004)

2009-10-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

Directed by: David Flores (?)
Starring: A couple of Playboy models, and some cheap actors

Boa Fact 1: Boas have two lungs, unlike other snakes
Python Fact 1: Though from the Boa family, Pythons are egg-layers, unlike Boas.

After some epically dramatic, yet inherently cheap credits that confirm that you're in for something terrible, we're straight into the Boa vs Python action.....well, not quite, because these are masked wrestlers called Boa and Python....what a lucky coincidence. Some guy that looks like Kevin Sorbo from "Hercules" and his girlfriend are watching from ringside seats....they speak....

....and what the fuck? Is that Italian? Yes it bloody well is. It fucking appears that I've "acquired" a dubbed version. Oh great. I mean, if it was in Spanish then I could follow it to a certain extent....but Italian? The only Italian I know is what I've picked up from watching Mafia films and listening to Sabrina albums.....

I think about turning it off, but think better of it. I mean, it's hardly going to be a dialogue driven film is it? Unless....

Boa vs Python is a sweeping epic of sheer quality that was conspicuous by its absence from the 2004 awards ceremonies. The dialogue is poetic at times, with hugely romantic delivery from all actors. The love story between two giant snakes is a story that needed to be told - a love that brings them together that eventually tears them apart. The glorious snake effects were drawn on an Etch-a-Sketch....it is the giant snake equivalent of "Gone With the Wind", with a tale of forbidden love from "Romeo & Juliet", and the random comedy killings of "Shark in Venice".

The ending is reminiscent of the Neo vs Agent Smith scene on the underground in "The Matrix". By "reminiscent of", I mean "nothing like" other than it is set on an underground platform and one of them gets hit by a train.....Python, that is. Head off, Boa survives due to...

....oh wait, I've forgotten to review the middle bit of the film here. Okay, from what I could gather with a combination of my grasp of Mafioso Italian, making bits of the plot up and reading about the actual plot on wikipedia after the film, the guy that we see at the start watching the wrestling is a massive wanker. We know this because he looks like one.

We also know he's hired some shady looking people to transport something in a lorry....something that escapes into the water supply....something that the title of the film suggests is either a boa or a python. It's an 80ft python, so we'll call massive wanker and his associates Team Python. Turns out the massive wanker had a plan to have some large scale urban Big Game Hunting.....okay...so he now has to bring his plans forward.

Python Fact 2: The Royal Python can reach lengths of 30ft

The FBI show up at the scene of the escape, which some news guy is putting down to Al-Qaeda, but they find a snake scale. So, the FBI guy goes off to Florida to recruit a blonde girl as snake bait (total guess) - who is showing off her underwater breath-holding that she will no doubt use later in the film to save someone's life. This always happens....always.

Off they trot to a snake reserve where, lo and behold, there is an equally giant snake, this one being a boa....so, this is Team Boa. Oh, and there is some scientist guy there who is a snake expert.

Boa Fact 2: Boas have internal leg bones which end in an external horny claw.

Right, that's enough of the facts.....let's wrap this pile of turd up.

Team Python consists of:

Massive Wanker
Massive Wanker's Girlfriend
Two white supremacist/survivalist brothers who arrive in a Volvo
An old Texan
Some other guy
A mentally unbalanced ex-army man

Team Boa consists of:

One FBI man
Snake scientist
Blonde breath holder
The US Army, Giant Snake Containment Division

There is an extended science bit as Team Boa prepare their giant snake with a camera implant and a brain zapping fail-safe. Then they release their Boa into the water supply, which seems like a good idea....fight fire with fire and all that jazz. I mean, you've got an entire division of specially trained Giant Snake Containment soldiers at your disposal, so you release another giant snake....

Sounds reasonable. And it wouldn't be the same film if they didn't. It would be "Python".

But, when you fight fire with fire....or Giant Snake with Giant Snake, you know that nature is going to bite you on the arse. Well, that and shitty IT as the tracking soon goes off and they lose their boa.....and end up losing some of the crack soldiers to their now rampaging and pissed off boa. Clever!

Crack soldiers? Have I been hoodwinked here? Are these really crack soldiers from the Giant Snake Containment Division? A quick google search confirms this and that there is no such division, so they're just crap soldiers basically and they're going to be outlived by a scientist and a Playboy centrefold.....boy, their grieving families are going to be ashamed.

So, everyone ends up in the water supply flood tunnels (can you tell what's going to happen here??) - Team Boa, Team Python, Giant Boa and Giant Python.....oh, except Team Python are one man down as the old Texan has been eaten by Giant Python already. FAST-FORWARD> FBI man killed by ex-army nut job who is then killed by Giant Python who then munches one of the white supremacists, whose brother is then killed by the flood because no fucker bothered to tell the water supply people that there would be a bunch of people in them. One telephone call telling them "DON'T FLOOD THE FUCKING FLOOD TUNNELS!", that's all it would have taken.....mind you, the water supply plant was probably short staffed due to a Giant Python eating most of the staff....and it looked like it was miles to the nearest temp agency, so, understandable really. And temp agencies would usually be a bit wary about sending their temps to replace "missing staff" in an area where there is a giant snake loose. Unless they just send their really rubbish ones....who wouldn't turn up anyway....

....sure enough, breath holding woman saves the scientists life with an underwater kiss whilst Python lurks overhead. In another location, Massive Wanker's girlfriend gets crushed by boa after dropping an egg, some other guy gets killed.....and the army come in and arrest Massive Wanker.....

....down to a makeshift army camp, where blonde girl and scientists are tracking their boa....despite the presence of lots of soldiers and some FBI agents, the Massive Wanker manages to skulk away and make off in an armoured vehicle....what? I'm literally at a loss for words now....I'm actually glad it's not in English.....

.....turns out the python is a party animal, but isn't a fan of a club DJ.....Massive Wanker turns up with a flamethrower (seriously.....) and starts spreading flames randomly....even more so when the soldiers turn up....he's gone fucking nuts and I don't have a crying fuck of a clue as to what is going on....we've not even had the promise of the title outside of a wrestling ring yet - they briefly met, fell in love and had sex. Anyway, scientist kills Massive Wanker and both snakes end up on the platform as mentioned above....

So yeah, boa survives due to the brain zapping fail safe which makes it pretty much fly off in another direction when activated leaving python to get killed by the train. And that is fucking that. No doubt some of the boa/python eggs we saw earlier will survive because the army were too dumb to fry them into a massive snake omelette which would have eradicated any chance of a sequel.....though maybe they knew that the ratings would do that anyway....

Literally and actually one of the worst films I have ever seen.

Snake Action: 1/10
Sex/Nudity: Yes, plus snake on human oral sex.
Bad Language: I'd tell you if I knew Italian swear words.
Violence: Snake related terror
Overall: 1/10 - For the opening credits.

Driven to Kill (2009)

2009-10-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

Directed by: Some guy you've never heard of
Starring: Steven Seagal and the bad Russian guy from the last Indiana Jones film
Plot synopsis: Seriously?

There was once a time when a Steven Seagal film would be the event movie of a summer. Just not in this universe. You see, there is an alternate reality in a parallel universe where Steven Seagal is the most respected action star that has ever existed. In that reality, he is a multi award winning actor/director/screenwriter and is the most powerful man in the film industry.

This is the reality that our Steven Seagal actually lives in. It could only explain why he still makes films like this. When I see the failed hypnotist's stare that is so crosseyed that it bends spacetime and looks at you from behind in the first few seconds, I know what I'm in for......

....and when I hear Seagal's take on a Russian accent I have to pause the film for a couple of minutes to recover from a cough/laughing fit. Imagine if The Godfather was about the Russian mob and they'd got Seagal to play Marlon Brando's role with the same husky drawl - yes, that's pretty much the accent that Seagal has, erm,"nailed" here. In fact, the accent is so fucking bad I wouldn't be surprised if he's on several Russian mob hitlists right now for insulting their mothertongue.....

Seagal looks alarmingly like David Dickinson here, except his face is more contorted than a broken Rubik's cube. Anyway, he's about to go to his daughter's wedding which is being paid for by his ex-wife's new husband. He's not seen her in years....so off he trots to New York, via some bar to get a gun as he's clearly expecting trouble at the wedding.....he gets into a fight and seemingly kills some guy for having an attitude - yeah, this Seagal takes no fucking shit from anyone....even if he is slightly more cumbersome than a gorilla playing drums.

Seagal meets his ex-wife's lawyer husband at their house and gets acquainted with his future son-in-law....

....and here comes some story - the man that his daughter is marrying is the son of a Russian mob man (that Seagal has a history with) who wants him to follow in his footsteps so isn't exactly happy that he doesn't want to and is going to settle down with his lawyer wife....

Seagal plants a plot device by giving his daughter a family heirloom ring.....

You just know some shit is going to go down, and sure enough, as soon as Seagal leaves some dodgy men that you saw hanging around outside go into the house, kill Seagal's ex-wife and leaves his daughter for dead and steal the plot device. Cue Seagal returning to meet the purely perfunctory bunch of detectives assigned to the case who are already resigned to the fact that they are going to be piling bodies high for the next couple of days. They agree with Seagal to pretend that his daughter is dead - to, like, protect her....

So, next day Seagal goes back to the house to speak to the strangely cheery "grieving" husband. This is a poor way to introduce something that you are supposed to think is a Red Herring but clearly isn't because they've just stapled a big fucking neon sign onto his forehead telling you that this man is clearly involved somehow. The director is clearly not into poker.

Nevertheless, Seagal doesn't see this sign - don't forget, he can't look at people in the eye and he's not in the same reality anyway. In his mind, he's chasing a giant killer clown in a sailor's outfit. Or, at least that's what they told him in the script. So, he takes the husband's suggestion for a weapons contact and doesn't smell a setup.

Obviously, some shit is going to so down here - and after a phonecall it does. Back in the Golden Age of Seagal's career (ie. before he blew up a fucking huge polluting oil refinery in "On Deadly Ground") he would have exclusively used his fists and feet to kill everyone. The older, wider and slower he got, the more weapons he uses. Instead of disarming the bad guys now, he just shoots them or beats them to death with bits of broken furniture. Look, the reason you watch a Seagal film is to see some great martial arts action......poor show. On his way from this scene he checks the mobile phone....sure enough, it's the "grieving" husband....

Next up, it's time to meet the Big Bad Guy - ie. the father of his daughter's fiance. Russian mob boss. Clearly the bad guy. You know this. Seagal is by now looking for a man in a leotard. I mean, he's obviously going to do this back to front.....he knows who the real bad guys are already, so he's going to cause a trail of destruction and perhaps put his daughter's safety at risk.

So here we go, with the fiance in tow, it's time for Seagal to kick...I mean, shoot some ass. First up, some pawn shop owner where the ring was sold to. Obviously having no confidence in his ability to intimidate someone with no fighting skills, Seagal just smacks him a few times and puts his head through the glass counter.....gets the ring back and moves on...

Next up, a tower block.....fiance gets his first kill...Daddy would be proud. Seagal is a little pissed as he was interrogating him. For what info I have no idea - unless he really had no fucking clue who had set this up. Which is pretty insulting to be honest. I mean, we've hardly had it spelled out with behind the scenes stuff that Seagal's character hasn't seen - no, he knows the same stuff that we do, yet is still seemingly oblivious to who is to blame.....

....so, off to a strip club for an obligatory strip club scene which is basically a build up to a very slow knife fight that starts after Seagal was distinctly unimpressed by a private show. This kind of harks back to the knife fight with Tommy Lee Jones at the end of "Under Siege" - and by harks back to, I mean it makes you wish this was of the same quality. Instead of fighting a guy in a leather jacket, he's fighting a Russian hip-hop star wearing a tracksuit. Quality.

Seagal ends up in police custody after putting the owner of the club's head on a letter spike. They don't really seem to care and who cane blame them? This is only their second scene - they're not getting paid much for this shit and just seem to be all shruggy shoulders when the "grieving" husband gets Seagal out because there is no evidence and no witnesses are talking....convenient.

But, he basically hands Seagal over to the bad guys....who then make that critical bad guy error of walking too close to a guy that can handle himself and could disarm a knife fighting monkey with a frisbee from 100 yards. So, he lives to fight another day.....even if he does run like a constipated Tellytubby when fleeing the scene.

At this point I've figured something out - with some tricky up close sub-Bourne style editing they make it look like Seagal is actually working hard for his Cheerios, but he's not. He's barely moving. Again, this is just lazy - back in the day you'd have seen some quality Aikido action from Seagal....now it's like watching slapstick clown fighting at the circus.

And now the final part of the jigsaw - Big Bad Guy finds out from a dirty cop that Seagal's daughter is still alive and Seagal and fiance take the "grieving" husband hostage.....and they're all off to the hospital. Seagal gets his daughter moved to a safe haven....

...and we're in for a hospital shootout showdown which is going to be a million times shitter than the hospital shootout at the end of "Hard Boiled". And it isn't.....one man against five.....

...and so it goes, Seagal picks them off one by one during the next few minutes as the World's slowest hospital fire alarm evacuation takes place. The eventual showdown between Seagal and the Big Bad Guy takes place and it does not disappoint....well, it does actually.....though in the context of the film, it doesn't. It's an actual fight for starters, and it does have the standard big fight cliche of both men being on top at least twice.....before the bad guy gets bored, draws his gun, has his arm grabbed by Seagal, gets off a few aimless shots before Seagal turns the gun right around and shoots him through the eye. Beautiful. Poetry in motion......

And, everyone lives happily ever after. Seagal manages to avoid all charges, snakes off back to California to write his novels, though as he can't even pretend to type properly I'd be surprised if he could actually type own name. His daughter gets married to her fiance and the New York police breathe a huge sigh of relief and burn all their paperwork along with their copies of the script and move onto better things.

Meanwhile, I've got 14 more Seagal films to watch..........

Seagal Action Score: 3/10
Bad Guy Score: 4/10
Acting: None
Surreal Moments: One - opening scene of Seagal being hit on by a young pretty girl. Like this happens.

Overall: 4/10 - based entirely on the fact that it's twice as good as Under Siege 2 and didn't suffer the indignity of being laughed out of the cinema.

The Horsemen (2009)

2009-10-19T15:55:00.001-07:00

Directed by: Not Michael Bay
Starring: Dennis Quaid (Not Doug Quaid)

Michael Bay Presents....

...oh, here we go. What a load of contrived bollocks that was! Basically a mismatch of all serial killer films since Se7en with a religious slant on it, and the added bonus of Dennis Quaid's aging ass through a frosted shower window. I did not need to see that tonight, it reminded me of regurgitated porridge.

So, basically, Quaid is a forensic odontologist (that's a tooth expert) with two sons who, as a family, are trying to get over the death of his wife. He gets called out to investigate some teeth that are found by the woodcutting brother of Captain Birdseye in some weird kind of ceremony. The first thing I notice about Quaid post porridge-ass scene is that he's looking really old and haggard. Which might have had something to do with reading this script.

Teeth, but no body....

Next up, a body - and we find this body in some fish-hook contraption in a kind of "Hellraiser" way, but not quite as gruesome. In fact, this corpse is so uncorpse like I thought that this might have been another sequel to "Mannequin". This thought is ripped from my mind when it turns out that the corpse was pregnant and the foetus has been removed from her.

Um, nice......

Cut downstairs to the grieving daughters - one of whom is an adopted Chinese girl (Zhang Ziyi) that Quaid tries to console before their red herring father walks in. This is purely for introductory purposes mind you. She's in no way a suspect......OR IS SHE? Actually, there are no clues....just that her tears look fake.

Another body - this seems to be teethman, again in some strange fish hook contraption. There's a woman in the closet and the man who's apartment this is seems to be missing and not the guy in the contraption. Are you following this? A point of mystery is soon thrown our way by a couple of 10 second glitches ON THE GODDAMN HOUR EXACTLY on the CCTV footage of the lift before and after the death.

My guess is that this is a lame attempt to make you think that it's going to be some dark forces at work....especially when Quaid makes the "Revelations/Four Horsemen" reference straight after this, with the help of his youngest son. His oldest is just a moody kid coming to terms with his mother's death that Quaid tries to bond with but totally fails to.

With the "Revelations/Four Horsemen" reference sealed, Quaid marches in to his office and tells his partner and superior. Who take it remarkably goddamn well. Pretty much a chin-stroking reaction to possible fire and brimstone....

And another body, but no fish hooks this time....cue, angry boxing Quaid and a missed parent's evening at older neglected son's school.

Remember that Chinese adopted daughter that wasn't a suspect? Well, she is now, but after an emotional chat with Quaid she only goes and pulls a bag out of her coat with her dead adopted mum's dead foetus in......FUCKING LOVELY. Thanks.....no, really, thanks. I didn't really need to see that, though it was only slightly less shocking than Quaid's ass.

So, she's basically revealed herself as one of "The Horsemen" by pulling out a bloodied Tiny Tears in a bag. She did it because she hates her adopted father....who we soon find out was abusing her....

And then for no reason at all, it switches to a character we've not seen before....a kid coming out to his brother who is not taking it very well. In fact, his brother is taking it like he's just been told he's going to have his penis removed in the morning. Not very well at all. After a botched mugging on the gay kid by a random bloke, we soon realise he's one of "The Horsemen" when he stabs him.....this isn't exactly turning out how I expected it to....

...nevertheless, the next victim is gay kid's bother....OH NO IT ISN'T! His brother is up in fish hooks, but has to watch as his little brother cuts into his chest with a surgical saw and removes his heart.....

So, two horsemen down and two to find. Chinese girl tells Quaid he's not going to find the last one....at this point I (correctly, as it turns out) guess that the final horseman is going to be Quaid's older son. This is a hunch purely based on the fact that these elegant crimes have been perpetrated by kids and not some weird fucked up S&M lovers or actual horsemen, like jockeys or something. Which again, might have been more plausible.

By the way, the third body - the one without the fish hooks was the third horseman and they basically killed him because he was shit. Or didn't fit into their plan, or was too old or something - I'd kind of lost the plot a little by then....no, sorry, I was bored shitless, they'd lost the plot. You see, this could have been a fine little addition to the serial killer genre, but the whole thing about a bunch of kids (all played by actors over the age of 24) in therapy for various reasons (abused, gay, neglected) was just so fucking ridiculous...throw in that once Quaid's son is up on fish-hooks (that he somehow attached to himself and raised up in the air himself too) with Quaid watching him die that it's all going online to a bunch of kids that are going to start an apocalypse....

OH GET THE FUCK OUT! It's just one fucking stupid Rube Goldberg machine. In fact, it's just a missed opportunity. A genuinely good idea fucked up by a ridiculous turn of events. It would have been more believable if it had actually turned into some big biblical apocalypse. It's also humourless. Quaid tries his hardest, and the rest of the cast aren't bad....but with this festering pile of shite that passes itself off as a story fucks up any chance that they had of redeeming it. Add to that, the complete lack of tension and sterile direction and you've got a pretty damn awful 90 minutes.

But, Michael Bay Presents....to him, this was probably an Awesome (TM) story.....

Overall: 3/10

Postal (2007)

2009-10-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

Director: Uwe Boll
Starring: Postal Dude, Osama Bin Laden, George W. Bush, Vern Troyer

Right....where the hell do you start with a review for a film like this? The trailer might be a good point of reference for the uninitiated. Actually, no, that's a fucking terrible point of reference as that 90 seconds makes more sense than the 100 goddamn minutes of the film.

So, where to start? The end? Yes, the end....Osama Bin Laden & George W. Bush skipping through a field as nuclear bombs come down all around them.

"Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah"

This is a bit of a different kind of review than normal, largely because I've had my eyes raped by a bunch of fucked up scenes that think they're pushing boundaries when all they're doing is making you think that Uwe Boll either tortured animals or was kept locked in a cellar and fed on snakes when he was a child.

It's fucked up, but it's supposed to be. From the opening scene where 9/11 terrorists are having doubts about their mission due to the confusion over the number of virgins they're going to get in paradise to the aforementioned fire from the sky ending, you're "treated" to a whole bunch of fucked up scenes that make very little sense but are still funnier than any amount of these so-called parodies such as "Meet the Spartans" and "Disaster Movie" etc.

I think that deep down Boll knows that he's a shit filmmaker, and he doesn't care. People still go to see his films - usually fans of the computer games he tends to make into films. He has somehow managed to coax some very good actors into his various films (whether by bribing them with Nazi gold or whether he has a dossier of dirt on them, who knows?).

Postal is largely a response to his critics - most likely the ones that didn't fight him in the boxing ring. He isn't taking anything seriously and uses it as a platform to piss people off more than he has ever done before. The "Postal" game series has been controversial enough without the film, but this is a "light the blue touch paper and fucking leg it".

During a gun battle towards the end of the film, he kills more kids by gunshot than the history of Hollywood. Seriously. Then there's the baby in the pram that you saw in the trailer.....
There's also Verne Troyer being raped by a 1000 monkeys and some obligatory German toilet "humour". And it doesn't let up in the offensiveness, the stereotypes and the fucked up scenes. It's relentless right through to the end.

And you know what, I kind of liked it. It appealed to my fucked up sense of humour- you know, like laughing at a man getting hit in the groin by a football. Not by any stretch of the imagination is it a good film, though it's probably Uwe Boll's best film....which is faint praise. It's also a goddamn fuck load better than "Gamer".

Overall: 5/10

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

2009-10-05T16:09:00.000-07:00

Directed by: Joe Lynch (no relation)
Starring: Henry Rollins, and some young teen meat
Premise: You're shitting me, right? Isn't the title enough? I'm surprised they actually bothered to put anything on the back of the DVD box.....they could have sold that space to Tom-Tom, Google Maps and Colgate.

I've not seen the first film. In fact, I'm only watching this because Henry Rollins is in it and I'm having a one man TV Party with a quarter of a bottle of Red Square vodka and some flat sugar free Sprite. No, I'm not a Liar. And I'll Rise Above any insults.

This is a sequel. One of those sequels that goes straight to DVD. And it shows. That said, it has production values that the makers of Shark in Venice would have been jealous of, and a budget slightly more than an Anne Summers party.

Seriously though, it's one big advert for getting a Sat-Nav. You'd never take a wrong turn with a Sat-Nav....well, unless the makers didn't consider that something bigger than a small car (like a big fucking coach or an articulated lorry) would go down a road made for a car no bigger than a tin of beans. Or that they'd been eaten by a bunch of West Virginian chemically altered redneck cannibal relations of John Denver.

By now, I'm sure the film has started.....somehow it thinks it's setting the scene as if it wants to be Southern Comfort, but you already know that Powers Boothe ain't gonna turn up and that the music is the seriously fucking disinterested bastard child of Ry Cooder's music.

Cue, Eddie Grant.....and a blonde in a sports car not really paying any attention. After displaying the dangers of not concentrating on the road and being told not to take a "Wrong turn" (well done for getting the title of the film in the script to make sure all of those that got the wrong film in the box know that they've got the wrong film....Wrong Film 2: I Wanted a Porno!!!)....which she does....she's blonde (like me.....though not like me, as this is peroxide). Yeah, she's driving to some reality TV show nearby, and she takes a wrong turn....knocks someone over....

And gets out of the car. Now, no one was about - she's a got a great opportunity to do a runner....instead, she manages to get her chin bitten off by the guy who is not dead and sliced in half head to toe by a second cannibalwith an axe....well, actually, not really toe....but, well, yeah....you can guess.....cue entrails and her corpse being dragged off. Good start.

Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie Rollins....and here he is! Yes...Grey Hair....looking distinguished. He's playing a retired Marine Colonel who is running some Apocalypse Survival Reality TV show that the woman sports car totally failed at - I mean, that's like starting a football match with 10 men because someone is scooping up their prolapsed innards in the dressing room, "Sorry guys, I'll be with you once I shove these back in".

To be honest, Rollins looks thoroughly pissed off. Like his fee was a Six Pack and he's suffering "Wrong Call 2: Why didn't I fire my agent after The Chase?" So, who have we got as the contestants?

1. Dead girl - she doesn't matter.
2. Army girl - a cliche or two waiting to happen
3. Surfer dude - he's a wanker
4. Football guy - the nice guy
5. Vegan girl - can you guess what she's going to end up doing?
6. "Hot" girl - 2/1 she'll get naked then die
7. Producer girl - takes the place of dead girl.....no call to the police? Oh right, phones don't work. Convenient...
8. Cameraman - Going out with producer girl
9. Editor guy - Next to die(??)

They shuffle together some idea for the reality TV show....in fact, the reality TV show sounds like it could be quite good. Some kind of Apocalypse Survival thing where they need to work together....yadda yadda. Let's get on with the cliches and the killin'.

Before we get going, Rollins gives us his best R Lee Ermey impression - "I lived around here and I never fucked a pig" ....woah.....Life of Pain!!!

Meanwhile, I'm learning to throw a stress ball at the TV left handed...LEFT-HANDED! That's not as easy as it sounds as it's two metres away and I'm not really done this before....but, I'm hitting the screen, if not the characters....

CLICHE ALERT 1: Editor guy goes for a piss in the woods.....I'm sure he must have had one in the caravan with all his equipment....nevertheless, whilst he's having a parabolic piss, you see him get his throat cut and get scalped over one of his cameras.....game on...

It's not long before Rollins gets captured - this guy was in the fucking army and he gets outwitted by two guys from Rednex!!! Fucking hell!! This is a really piss poor advert for the US Marines - join up, get promoted, quit and get caught by two guys that have to spit in each other's mouths to share the brain cell. Probably saying "DON'T LEAVE THE MARINES! YOU'LL BECOME SHIT AT STEALTH!"

CLICHE ALERT 2: Army girl is a lesbian. Didn't see that one coming, did you?
CLICHE ALERT 3: Surfer guy thinks this is hot....
CLICHE ALERT 4: Football guy can't play anymore due to injury....

At this point, you wonder how all the cameras, motion sensors etc. were set up without anyone getting eaten by.....shall we ignore this little plot hole?

CLICHE ALERT 5: "Hot" girl gets naked.....and after a convoluted scene where Football guy buggers off because it's a "family show", she gives Cameraman a blow job......quickly followed by....
CLICHE ALERT 6: Producer girl seeing all this.....and getting upset...and saying to vegan girl that she'll "deal with it her way".......

SAT NAV ALERT: Drive me off this picture!

So, Army Girl and Surfer dude find a BBQ - you're meant to think that this is Rollins.....but this thought is soon doused when it cuts to Rollins, The Swinging Man - tied feet first upside down. He gets stubbed a couple of times by one of Rednex.

Back to Producer and Vegan girl - producer girl wants to get out of here, so when they find a shack with NO FUCKING TELEPHONE WIRES GOING INTO IT WHAT-SO-FUCKING-EVER, they think it's a good idea to enter to USE THE FUCKING PHONE! Okay, when I'm out in the woods, I assume that every sinister looking property has a phone. And I just walk in too....

CLICHE ALERT 7: Yes, they get trapped inside....but they get out after witnessing a gross birth scene where one of Rednex gives birth to a Baby Davros.

And they run....only for Producer girl to get one seriously fucking amazingly well placed flying axe from 30 yards or so through trees land in her head.....but, she was running slower than Vegan girl, so fuck her, she got her dues. Vegan girl quickly hides....

CLICHE ALERT 8: Vegan girl is hiding and the member of rednex looking for her stops one step short of finding her......

Cut back to Cameraman who has clearly done more than get a BJ from "Hot" girl.....after he leaves the scene you know that her days are numbered in seconds.....a masturbating cannibal runs outof the trees and slashes her across the back, only after getting told off by his girlfriend/sister.......

Back to Rollins, who is opposite a guy being gutted until there is Nothing Left Inside....he manages to outwit his cannibal captor and gets free, finally starting the comeback by knocking off one of Rednex.....NOW IT'S FUCKING PERSONAL!

Over to cameraman guy, who is still oblivious to anything going on - he's back at the caravan, can't find his mates and gets trapped by a couple of the cannibals.....he's a cheating piece of shit, so you coudn't care less about him. He's not killed there and then, so something must be in store for him - it usually is for bad boys.....

*momentary distraction whilst writing due to an erectile dysfunction advert - seriously, the only guys watching Poker/Golf at 1.30am don't have problems with this...Andrex would be have been more appropriate*

So, Football guy, Army Girl and Surfer Dude are totally innocent to everything....Vegan girl turns up....Surfer dude doesn't believe her....until he realises that the "Pork" he's been eating is the blonde girl from the start....they run....I'm eating paper again....

Back to Rollins - he's gone all "Commando" now. The bad guys are far less sinister than Bennett though - they're wearing ill-fitting clothes rather than dubious chainmail. He stumbles upon an old man who can actually speak rather than converse in a series of "Hyucks".....

CLICHE ALERT 9: After spinning a yarn, it turns out that the old guy is the father of the oldest cannibals and a bit of a Family Man.

He attacks, but Rollins manages to attach some conveinetly placed dynamite to him, and light it, all in one nifty move...BOOM! SPLAT! No Deposit, No Return!

The Surviving Four stumble upon two of the cannibals having sex, and total fuck up their survival chances by totally botching the attack on them.....Vegan girl runs away and falls in a pit trap and....

CLICHE ALERT 10: The surviving three decide to fucking split up! Oh come on! STOP DOING THIS IN FILMS! Everyone knows that if they're ever in a murderous potential death at the hands of a bunch of maniacs (or maniac singular) situation that you have a better chance of surving in a group than you do on your own!

Luckily for Vegan girl, Football guy finds her before she's captured by the cannibals in their rickety old truck.....but just in time....they run...

CLICHE ALERT 11: They run....and are confronted with a cliff above water. Cliffs in films are always above water....handy, eh? So, they jump....

CLICHE ALERT 12: In a separate running incident, Surfer dude falls over....and then gets himself caught in a rope trap.....Army girl gets caught in an adjacent one trying to free him. Seriously, the guy was a jerk, you've just blown your ticket out of here by stopping!

Sure enough, Kid Cannibal is passed the bow and arrow by Old Pop in an Oak, and manages to fire the fucking shot of his short tormented life by taking them both out with one arrow through their heads. I can't wait to see the 2012 US Olympic Archery Team. It'll make great viewing....

Vegan girl and Football guy find a factory...same one that the old guy was mumbling about before Rollins blew the fucker up. They go in....and find loads of cars, and the caravan. Cameraman is still alive....but it's a trap! Vegan girl gets taken, and whilst Football guy is watching Cameraman get decapitated (not shown due to budgetary and technical competence constraints) he gets taken....

Rollins is lurking at this point....and at this point you're thinking "Will this be total Obliteration? Will anyone survive this shit?"

But, Vegan girl and Football guy are....and Rednex are ready for dinner.....which is some kind of brown vomit stew. Vegan girl is barbed wired to a chair and Football guy is tied up.....the slop is served, and yes, here comes a cliche....

CLICHE ALERT 13: Vegan girl is force fed some human stew. VOM. Clearly done for some cliche filling quota/shock gross out tactic....

Here comes Rollins to save the day.....but....

CLICHE ALERT 14: He makes a fucking noise on the way in! Marine? He must have been kicked out for being the guy that stood on the twigs in the jungle, or the guy that knocks over bins in a back alley......Two stealth scenes and he's been about as innocuous as an avalanche.

The cannibals are alerted and abandon their meal to hunt Rollins.....he manages to take out the two kids with another dynamite arrow, but totally buys it after rescuing Vegan girl from her barbed wire chair hell and the Football guy.....at least he's not used as a battering ram this time. Still, quite an inauspicious way to be Wound Up......[/Black Flag song titles]

To end this piece of shit, Vegan girl is outside and Football guy is about to be fed into some nasty grinding machine.....Vegan girl comes back in, knocks over Momma Cannibal, BITES A FUCKING CHUNK out of Poppa's neck, and manages to feed him into the grinder....where mom soon follows....

And that's it.....I've seen it, you don't need to. The gore is more gross than gory - the scenes are too short to have any effect, and there are plenty of opportunities for comedy lost. Rollins steals the scenes he's in.....and he probably wishes he'd managed to get away with them and hide them forever.

It is basically fucking rubbish, but at no point did I want to turn it off.....which is damning praise if nothing else.

Btw, there is a Wrong Turn 3......the Davros baby at the end is shown to be still alive (you knew this because you never saw it die....)....I will not be watching that. I've already had a nasty turn watching this, and I can imagine it's more of the same.

4/10

Feast (2005)

2009-09-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

Directed by: John Gulager (yes, who?)
Starring: Balthazar Getty and a bunch of others

Short Review: Totally Goresome! 8/1o

Longer Review:

It starts with a crash.....and moves swiftly to a remote Arizonan bar. This is where the scene is set - each character is introduced one by one with a fun little fact sheet: Name, Skill, Life Expectancy. You're basically getting a bunch of stereotypes and due to them being largely a bunch of no names, you know that when the eventual bloodletting starts, you have no idea what order they're going to perish in. There are no numbers painted on these foreheads - "He'll be first, she'll be second.....she's definitely going to survive".

And what, Jason Mewes & Henry Rollins! YES!

So, we've been introduced and all the while there are cut scenes to something approaching quickly. When it does arrived, it's a bloodied man...Fact Card pops up....HERO! But that doesn't last long - his last words are "I'm the guy that's going to save your ass" before people pulled out of the window and having his head bitten off.....splat. Then a woman turns up....Fact Card - HEROINE! The late hero's wife...

That's when all hell basically starts to break loose - something gets in the bar and starts causing all kicks of gory chaos - and Jason Mewes has his fucking face ripped off! One minute he's with face, next minute he's all "Face/Off" - and that's the end of him! Two minutes later, and we're watching the one person you thought would survive gvetting chomped - the kid! They broke the rule in spectacular fashion.....and then the monster vomits up over one of the survivors of the recent carnage - a horrible maggoty green pea soup puke.

And so it goes on with various inventive deaths and set pieces all the while trying to get the hell out of there - all the while providing plenty of laughs:

1. Rollins' motivation speeches
2. Monster sex!
3. Graphic eyeball extraction.....complete with stringy nerve
4. Rollins having his pants pulled off through the wall
5. Monster cock getting trapped in a door
6. Rollins used as a fucking battering ram by the monsters!!!

This is a film that loves blood and humour, clearly in the spirit of the likes of Brian Yuzna and Peter Jackson. It never takes itself seriously, which makes for great viewing - you can watch it with a big dumb smile on your face as each Fact Card comes up and marvel at all the invention in the death scenes.

And just when you think it can't get any gorier, the final scene tops it all - HEROINE 2 (the first one was a surprise death) has run out of bullets, so, with the handle of the gun, she pummels the monster until all it's teeth are out and then sticks her hand down it's goddamn throat and pulls out its innards.....Holy Shit!

This is how gory horror films should be made - tongue firmly in cheek, with two fingers raised at quasi-serious shit like "Mirrors" and a big grinning salute to gore-classics like "Re:animator" and "Braindead"....

It's just a shame that it set up what is probably a substandard sequel....but, as it is, it's just a great addition to the genre.

Gamer (2009)

2009-09-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

Directed by: A 40W Lightbulb
Starring: SPARTA!!!!, Dexter
Not About: Cider

Where to begin? What to think? Who to blame?
I blame the founders of Atari, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. When they created Computer Space in 1971 they unwittingly unleashed a sequence of events that would eventually lead to Gamer. Cause and effect. I could go back further, but that would be churlish. No, this falls squarely on Bushnell and Dabney. May God have mercy on their souls.

So, again, where to begin? Let's start with Genesis, Chapter 1, verses 1 to 3.

1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

Where's the Goddamn light? It's so murky that I feel like I'm drowning in the water from Shark in Venice. I can barely see SPARTA'S face.

Poor Lighting = -100pts
Crap HUD = -20pts

So, we start with a dark battle, which in these post-Saving Private Ryan days of visceral battle detail isn't actually that brutal at all.

Flying Grenade Man = 50pts
Save Point = 5pts
New High Score = AAA

No, we're in the game.....and Sparta has won a battle. And then we move on, out of the game to the brightly lit world outside. See what they did there? Darkness = Bad men killing each other. Light = Bad hair. Nothing is quite making sense yet.

It is here we meet Dexter, the creator of Society, some futuristic porno-real version of The Sims who also happened to create this murderous game that SPARTA!!! is trapped in, called Slayers. A hatchet job of the story pops in now in the guise of a cheesy chat show - men on death row play in Slayers and if they survive 30 battles, they're free.....except no one ever has.

Cheap ripoff of Running Man = -100pts
Nanocell in the brain controls the player = 20pts
Ludacris as a hacker!! = 100pts

This isn't even funny.....and then something really fucking mad happens. With The Bad Touch by The Bloodhound Gang playing we a treated to a strange segue to explain what happens in Society.....

Priest with balloons = 1000pts

Yes, a priest with balloons. Someone has literally shit this out after eating some funny cake. We know it's a game, but now we are introduced to the kid that "plays" SPARTA! - and once again he wins a battle, No. 28 - only two more until he's released - the world celebrates in unison like at the end of Independence Day.

No, seriously - Los Angeles, Baghdad, Bombay, Beijing......WHAT THE FUCK? Honestly, they're making you care less and less about what happens from now on in by not explaining anything resembling a story. You've been introduced to a bunch of characters so far with no motive whatsoever - and you don't even know who half of them are! So, you have to sit through more turgid and dimly lit shit whilst a resolution is convoluted out of nothing.

Turns out that they're trying to kill SPARTA.....Ludacris the hacker is on his side and helps the kid out that is controlling him by give him a mod to speak to him Battle 29, wins....are you still following this? GIVE ME A STORY!!! GIVE ME A REASON!!

Here we go! I think it's past halfway through now and they've realised they need to patch something together. Sparta's wife, who is a Society porn star that is controlled by a hideous fat man that we briefly saw earlier, is trying to get custody of their child back but fails spectacularly.

We don't care about this because it's not clear who the hell this woman is - the only time we've seen her she was wearing a wig, making out with a man with a fake pig's nose strapped to his face whilst she was being controlled by the hideous naked fat man whilst he touched himself and ate cake.

Lack of SPARTA! = -200pts

Back to Slayers - Ludacris wants the kid to give up control of Sparta for battle No. 30 and let him do it his own way.....so, reluctantly, he does....and what does Sparta do in preparation for his final battle? He necks a fucking bottle of vodka???? What the hell? So, he's drunk, falling all over the place like a concussed babboon and kind of goes off the grid of the game. He then VOMITS INTO THE PETROL TANK OF A CAR!!! And, after he's done vomiting into the petrol tank, HE FUCKING PISSES INTO IT TOO!! And it starts! Presumably because of the vodka and not because of some leftover fuel....

This is where I started eating paper = -200pts
Sparta Escapes = 50pts

Hooks up with Ludacris, rescues his wife from being anally violated by a nutjob in rubber whilst fat man rubs his nipples, gets loads of people killed and gets his wife's nanocell thing reversed so she's normal again....

AND HERE'S WHERE THE STORY KICKS IN!

Military Project = -250pts
He was framed = -500pts
Dexter adopted his kid = -1000pts

So, now he's after the rich bad guy that wants to rule the world by remote control drones to rescue his daughter from probably being groomed by a man with bad hair and halitosis. And here comes the showdown.....

....what the fuck just happened there? Did they really just have I've Got You Under My Skin lip-synched to a weird robo-dance whilst SPARTA went all 300 on a bunch of drones? Yes they fucking did. Oh. My. God.

After all that has gone before, the ending is actually disappointing. It's some kind of weird self-controlled Mexican stand-off on a basketball court with two men holding a knife whilst the world looks on and presumably whilst looting is taking place.

Dexter dies, Sparta tells some techy guy in black to turn off all the nanocells, and presumably millions of people are now out of a job and the world is going to fall into some global meltdown. It's all okay though, because Sparta can now play happy family whilst society crumbles and adapts to having to play an old Atari 2600 console because nothing else works.

John Carpenter-esque music kicks in = 100pts

GAMER OVER

Final Score = -1045
Enter Initials: WTF

Battlefield Earth (2000)

2009-09-26T11:02:00.000-07:00

Directed by: A Blind Monkey
Starring: Danny Zucco, The King of Norway and the ghost of L. Ron Hubbard

What was I thinking? Two minutes in, and I was already regretting it. Scenes that looked like they had been thrown out by Paul W.S Anderson after the mess of Soldier opened the film after a brief explanation about man being an endangered species, aliens, yadda, L. Ron Hubbard, Church of Scientology, kerching....

....no. A few more minutes in, and I couldn't believe I was still watching it, even ignoring a police siren outside, just waiting for something to happen. When something does happen, it sounds like the sound editor had left the boom mike in a large wicker basket - you can't hear anything properly. And its all been shot from funny angles and has really cack handed John Woo style repeat shots.

Kill me already.

I was about to switch off and erase it from the DVD, before Travolta turns up. Now, everyone else knew they were in a piece of turd and therefore were just not trying. Travolta comes on and hams it up with some odd method acting. The method being that there isn't one, he's just chewing the scenery so hard that later on a chimney falls down. Not to mention his hair extensions and stilts. For fucks sake, its like Halloween at a hairdresser's.

Have I said how shit it is yet?

The special effects look like they've been done with Crayola, and the script...what script? There isn't one! I'm sure this is just a really bad episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? and I'm expecting the fat faced no neck alien to reveal itself to be Clive Anderson if I ever get round to watching the final 70 minutes.

I'm not even going to bother with the story - its just turgid man vs profiteerring aliens bollocks.

8.

Out of 100.

Second Half

I just didn't bother. Why waste another 70 minutes of my already dwindling life. Whats that Mr. Travolta? You put your blood, sweat and tears into the project? Well fuck me, and fuck you. I had the chickens to feed.

Why bother? The first 50 minutes were so poor, that it was in danger of crashing into the train wreck that was Under Siege 2, and passing right through that into Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, which only scored a mark due to Claire Forlani's presence.

The words diabolical drek don't come easy, but in this case I was positively ejaculating them - something that everyone involved in this turgid pile of rancid whale jism is probably still doing right now. The fucknuggets. Just the thought of watching anymore of this extended advert for scientology had the appeal of licking the sweat from Geoff Capes' particulary sweaty bollocks at the end of a World's Strongest Man contest - so sweaty in fact, that it's turned into acid and burnt through the underpant lining in his unflattering shorts.

I couldn't bear to see Barry Pepper mong his way through his "ughs" and "mehs" anymore. I just didn't have the courage to see Forrest Whitaker "act" a billion times worse than he'd done as the world's dumbest psychic in "Species" (he was the one that when confronted with a grisly death scene who put his hand to his head and said "Something bad happened here". NO fucking SHIT SHERLOCK!).

I didn't want to see any more of Roger "I was second unit director on Star Wars: Phantom Menace AND I won an Oscar for Set Decoration on Star Wars: A New Hope" Christian's cack handed direction. Was he fucking drunk? Everything was at a funny angle. I felt ill, and not just because it was piss poor.

No, I'd had enough and pressed delete harder than ever before.

I just hope that Tom Cruise doesn't pick up the reins and make the second half of the book.....or the 10 volume Mission Earth crapfest.

Fuck You Michael Bay.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (2000)

2009-09-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

Directed by: It doesn't matter
Starring: Michael Keaton

Michael Keaton returns as Jack Frost to wreak havoc on the selfish bastard family that let him melt in Jack Frost.....oh, wait. I forgot about the snowman rule....Monobrow = Bad Snowman. Not that you see Jack until quite far into the film anyway, so you'd just have to guess up until then. Though you already knew that, unless you eat bricks.

So, after being foiled by a truckload of antifreeze at the end of the first film, Jack's melted antifrozen remains have been buried at a secret location. We know this due an "hilarious" opening scene where Sam the Sheriff (hero of the first film) is in a psychiatrists chair reciting his story....to much amusement from the psychiatrists and everyone listening on speakerphone.

Antifreeze gets dug up/scientists/clumsy cleaner knocks anitfreeze in water tank/tank exlodes/glass in cleaner's throat....JACK'S BACK! And back to what he does best - killin'!

To cut a long story short, all the soon to be dead people end up on a tropical island, along with some of the survivors from the first film......Jack kills several people and ends up being killed by a fucking banana, due to some contrived cross-DNA thing with Sam, who is allergic to them. Seriously.

And there's a fucking snow shower on a tropical island, courtesy of Jack. It's like adding ice cream to chilli.

Ultimately, it's all about the deaths - and there are plenty. No. 4 gets killed by a giant fucking ice anvil, for instance. Totally ACME. No. 7 eats a Jack infected icecube and has her head exploded. Most are just variations on snowballed to death, or icicles through eyes etc. and it's all heading towards another showdown with the antifreeze.....Jack falls in it, goes all melty "Urrrgh!"....but survives. He then voms up a snowball......

Or so we think......because these aren't just snowballs, they're just Jack's babies!!! OMFG! I am not making this up. As if it wasn't totally batshit mental already, this is where it just goes absolutely insanely surreal. There is even a snowball bar party scene straight out of Gremlins. I couldn't breathe from laughing at this point - they're so damn murderously cute.

"Seriously, do I look like I need a fucking caption?"

And then the bananas......a Banana Daquiri to be precise. Cue some loaded up waterpistols....

Oh fuck this....I can't stop laughing. Look, if you liked the first one, you'll love this. If you want to watch some comedy deaths, watch this. If you want to see Willem Dafoe's green goblin, then watch "Antichrist"....I mean, this is practically Dogme anyway....it's definitely got a lower budget, and was sponsored by Asahi.

FX: 0
Cheese: 10
Bananas: 150
Leagues: 20,000
Comedy: Yes
Baldwin: No

Overall: 5/10

Shark in Venice (2008)

2009-09-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

Sharks, Venice, a Baldwin brother.....what the shitting crikey could possibly go wrong?

Where do you even begin with a film like this? The beginning would be a good start, but it doesn't really begin. It kind of meanders from some wobbly "studio" graphics into some murky water, slow motion bubbles and some leftover music from "Gladiator". The first set of extras you see are staring straight at the camera! If indeed they were actors - this could be someone's home video for all we know.

Okay, so some divers are looking for some treasure underwater - God knows what at this stage, all we know is that their days are numbered due to the false tension. And the appearance of a young Colonel Gaddafi:

Wham never recovered from their makeover.

So the divers uncover a stone plaque - some Medici crap. And then out of fucking nowhere, a shark. But you guessed that anyway. One diver, two divers, three....they all fall down. Killed by stock footage of a shark. Gaddafi ain't happy.

It takes 8 minutes for (S) Baldwin to show up. Oh, he's a college lecturer. Turns out one of the divers is his father - this is important. VERY important. And they haven't found him - just two bodies of the other guys. They tell him it was a "propellor" accident. So, off he goes to Venice with his gobby fiancee to investigate and find his father.

At this point, you just want shark action.....you don't even get to see the mangled up bodies that he has to identify as "not" his father. Propellor? You ain't fooling Baldwin - he was in "Usual Suspects" after all. After meeting the police and being told of some strict rules, Baldwin is allowed to look for his Dad's body.

This is the clever bit. And by clever, I mean.....actually, scratch that. It's not clever. It's just a bit of history about the Medici and The Crusades cobbled together to give a backstory. So, it turns out that there is some hidden treasure under the city that Gaddafi wants. Great! Sharks. Buried Treasure! It gets better!

Now it's time for some treasure/corpse hunting. As we see Baldwin getting into a wetsuit, it becomes clear that Baldwin could do with borrowing Seagal's medicinal corset. He's positively Shatner-esque in stature. It is also at this point that we are given a fantastic excuse for the shockingly murky underwater camera work - pollution! Well thank you very much.

So, in he goes with someone you already know is going to be shark bait - Baldwin finds his father's watch....and sure enough, shark bait is wasted a minute later and then the shark attacks Baldwin - you see blood. Of course, our hero manages to escape and finds a mysterious hole that he climbs up....WITHOUT A FUCKING SCRATCH ON HIS WETSUIT!??? Did they only budget for one Baldwin-sized wetsuit?

This next bit is stolen from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade - only with a budget lower than The Crystal Maze. Traps, treasure.....and Baldwin steals a gem. The common thief. But, he's in pain because he's bleeding....so he jumps back in and you are treated to a total headfuck of a scene whereby you see Baldwin chopmed up.....before he wakes up in hospital two days later, minus the stolen gem.

Anyway, some of Gaddafi's men find Baldwin in the hospital and invite him to meet him. Off they go, and a tense verbal standoff ensues with a large cash offer. Gaddafi holds up the gem, Cue a flashback reminder of something that happened 5 minutes ago!!! Thanks!! I'd forgotten about that - I really had. I needed that reminder because I wasn't actually paying attention.

But, Baldwin refuses....would have been easier to say yes at this point - it's clear that these men ar the mafia, but Baldwin and his fiancee think it's better to say no. And off they go. The filmmakers then also show at this point that the shark doesn't just have a taste for men in wesuits by chomping a drunken couple.

You know what's coming next though - how do the Gaddafia make Baldwin play water guide? They kidnap his fiancee and take her to a warehouse. And leave him.....it would have made far more sense to take Baldwin at this point as 5 minutes later they're trying to kidnap him from his hotel room where he's being guarded. Before we get to that kidnap, a shark takes out a goddamn Gondola! In gloriously awful CGI....

After about 5 to 10 minutes of padding and a dreadful street chase, Baldwin is eventually caught and taken to Gaddafi. Find the treasure or your fiancee gets fed to the sharks, oh yeah, and it just so happens that Gaddafi introduced the sharks to Venice....not much choice, so off he goes.

Same formula - some shark bait sent with him that doesn't last long....treasure room/Baldwin crossed/kills guy - more shark fodder.....explosion....gunfight.....and the longest goddamn underwater fight scene ever. Gaddafi and Baldwin are fighting forever underwater as a pathetic gun battle rages around them.....Gaddafi naturally gets eaten by one of his sharks....police win, game over.

Now, remember how one of the first three divers was Baldwin's father? The one where they didn't find a body? No? You've forgotten?

So did the goddamn filmmakers!!!! I sat through that pile of crap to see Baldwin's goddamn father and they forgot about him. Even Baldwin forgot about him.....seems that finding his watch was enough for him. That's it....roll the credits....hang on, SHARK IN CREDITS.....they're obviously thinking sequel. Maybe Baldwin's missing father will turn up as a circusmaster in St Tropez....

FX: 1
Wetsuits: 4
Cliches: 9
Story: 5
Baldwin: S

Overall: 3/10

Jack Frost (1996)

2009-09-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

What can be said about Jack Frost that hasn't been said already? Nothing....but that would defeat the whole object of even watching the damn thing. And if you haven't already guessed, this is the Mutant Killer Snowman and not the family one with Michael Keaton.

Good Snowman - Cute Little Hat.

Bad Snowman - Monobrow

Every B-Movie Horror Comedy needs a wacky type of "killer" - something that shouldn't instill any form of dread whatsoever into any rational human being. "Critters" had furry footballs, "Leprechaun" had an, um, Leprechaun, and "Red Dragon" had Ralph Fiennes. "Jack Frost" has a mutant snowman. You knew that from the cover though....well, kind of, as the the snowman in the film is not nearly as "terrifying" as the one on the cover.

So, our icy killer basically comes about in that b-movie cliche - serial killer being transported to prison, the conditions are treacherous and the vehicle crashes into a convenient lorry carrying some genetic material. Kaboom....the great thing about this genetic material is that it allows him to fuse with the snow on the ground.

Awesome!

So, what next? Yes, Jack goes on to terrorise a small town where the Sheriff that caught him lives with a series of inventive kills augmented by terrible special effects. This is the basic currency of films like this - how to kill and how to make it look. Of course, not every film has someone like Tom Savini to help with the inventiveness and realism. Everything looks so, well, fake.

And that's the point. It's been done purely for laughs. And it gets them in bucketloads. It even breaks the "don't kill children" rule by decapitating a young boy. And it probably has the very first "womena gets raped by a snowman in the shower" scene ever in a film. And almost certainly the last. Go on, guess what the carrot is used for......

All the while the sheriff and some FBI fodder are trying to work out how to kill......okay, it's antifreeze.

OR IS IT? There's a sequel....

As a sad footnote to this, Christopher Allport (who plays the Sheriff) actually died in an avalanche last year....that's just cruel irony.

5/10 (all marks for fun)

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory

2009-09-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

After blowing all the budget on an overblown opening, set in, woah! Space! The makers were already over par. This was probably due to be some big star vehicle - Willis, Stallone, Schz...Arnie....but after that spacey intro, the makers decided that they couldn't afford the $20m fee for one of the big guns.

So, they called up the C-List Action Hero agency and got Steven Seagal - possibly in his last role without the medicinal corset. Add to that, they ruined production of the Penelope Pitstop live action adaptation by stealing the guy that was set to play The Hooded Claw and gave him an even camper role, and selected the rent-a-henchman during a game of darts.

"Tell me straight, do these curls suit me?"

It then moves onto Seagal saying "Hi" to his chef chums - just as a plot device for later, you see, before he heads on down to the train station to meet the daughter of his dead brother....meanwhile, Curly McBaddie and his crew are waiting to hijack the train further up the line with a plan to take over the mega laser thing you saw in that flash opening and destroy Washington DC - a scheme being bankrolled by some, ooo, controversial, Middle Eastern terrorists.

Space Laser? Washington DC? Wait a minute! Okay, so they've "borrowed" this bit from "Diamonds Are Forever"......Curly is no Blofeld though....and Seagal is no Bond....in any shape or Bondform.

What follows next is a mess. It seems that the original script must have been deleted and that it was reconstructed using the action movie cliché tombola.

Terrorists take over a train that just happens to contain the following:

1. Disposable scientists that hold the codes to some global destructo weapon.
2. An ex-Navy Seal, now a chef, from the school of MacGuyver.
3. Obligatory girl without brains.
4. Gung-ho cannon fodder.
5. Rent-a-sidekick
6. A blues band

And the terrorists just happen to have:

1. A leader presumed dead who happened to design the weapon.
2. Navy Seals gone bad
3. Obligatory bad girl
4. Badly trained henchmen.
5. Cardboard bullets
6. A mobile barbershop quartet

And so it goes....Seagal picks off the bad guys one by one like The Predator, cheats death twice, manages to use the chef plot device from earlier to send a message, actually leaves the train and catched up in a less than dramatic chase, manages to stop the bad guys scheme temporarily, before he eventually saves the day.

Its pony. It really is. The final scenes are surely taken from the 1994 Hornby Convention when disaster struck and someone dropped a match on a papier mâché hill. Even for 1995, the effects are poor. And Steven Seagal doesn't run, he kind of strides slowly. Which makes his survival at the end even less convincing.

Oh well, this train wreck of a movie spared us Under Siege 3: Cruise Control.

Um....

2/10