Written by: Jarv

PCN Rating:

If I had to pick one genre that Britain traditionally excels in, then I’d go for misery porn. If I had to pick a second, however, then I’d firmly nail my colours to Horror’s mast. Dating all the way back to the early days of Hammer, we’ve got exceptional form for producing effective and occasionally brilliant horror movies. Even in the 21st Century we’ve produced some of the best released with Neil Marshall’s The Descent and Ben Wheatley’s Kill List standing head and shoulders above almost all the competition. As such, I’m always interested in a horror movie from these isles, and so was naturally curious about new offering from Mum and Dad director Steven Sheil: Dead Mine.

This is a simple film. Borrowing heavily from survival horror, we’re introduced to a group of archaeologists investigating an undefined Indonesian island for World War 2 bunkers. A surprise attack forces our group to take refuge inside one, where it’s revealed that the real reason for the expedition is to recover the Legendary Yamashita’s Gold- a myth that’s lured countless treasure hunters to death and madness. Unfortunately for our intrepid group, they’ve accidentally blundered into a Japanese human research lab and no sooner than you can say “Sayonara” they’re under attack from a horde of undead Japanese soldiers/ samurai zombies. Will our heroes survive?

 Dead Mine isn’t a bad film. The setting in the early scenes reeks of atmosphere; the jungle feels like it’s watching them, and once in the bunker it borrows heavily from The Descent (and why not?). There’s a decent amount of tension to the early stages of the film, and the more chaotic second section at least holds the interest- in no small part to the novelty of the zombies themselves.

The writing is a touch ropey, with characters being ill-defined and interchangeable. The leader of the group, for example, Stanley seems to almost pull a 180 on his character as soon as the gold is mentioned, becoming quite unreasonably greedy. This isn’t unexpected, but he’s introduced as a man of science; a serious and thoughtful archaeologist. It’s jarring for him to then turn round and almost say “Aha! I lied! It’s all about the gold! Mwahahahahahaha!.” The gung-ho guide Price has a similar problem, and gets comfortably the worst line of the film “I liked it”, which, incidentally, is almost word for word from Ang Lee’s Hulk. It’s incongruous that a capable ex-soldier jungle guide would be scared of his own dark side, and furthermore, it adds nothing to the plot. It’s a piece of needless characterisation that simply over-eggs the pudding.

The acting for the most part is passable. Sam Hazeldine is fine, but the plaudits must surely go to The Raid’s Joe Taslim. Les Loveday has the thankless role as Price, and struggles manfully against the crap character work and over-egged dialogue he’s given. The various supporting cast are all serviceable, although the female cast are utter interchangeable and totally wasted, and there is an air of menace to the undead Japanese that litter the place.

However, there are significant problems here. The most serious is that this owes an incredibly heavy debt to Outpost. It’s almost exactly the same premise, but more unforgivably seems to borrow much of the aesthetic from the Ray Stevenson film. That’s fine, because I’m on board with fighting undead Axis power scumbags, but it did leave me with more than a touch of the feeling that I’d already seen the film. If there’s one word I’d use to describe Dead Mine, then that word is “derivative”, not that this is necessarily bad.

Overall, Dead Mine isn’t a bad film, but it will never set the world alight. A decent and reasonably entertaining time, there’s a good amount of polish here, and if you alter (note, not lower) expectations then this could be a blast. The Asian zombies work nicely as a twist on the most hackneyed monster out there, and the cast are all reasonably game. As a beer and pizza film, there are far worse out there, and Dead Mine is certainly stylish and amusing enough for me to want to look up the other work from the director, even if it is never going to set the world alight.

Dead Mine is out now on DVD in the UK.

So you’ve spent a decent amount of money to go see this movie and you are looking forward to the enjoyment. You step into the theater, letting the nice cool AC hit your face as you find your seat, while you wait for the previews to start. You notice out of the corner of your eye that someone is texting away, even after the reminder to turn their cell phones off has finished.

Part of the enjoyment of the movies is to let yourself go; to be entertained and for a few hours go into a movie. Nothing can be as annoying than when someone causes you to be pulled out of the film for some reason that should have never happened in the first place. You’ve paid to see the movie, not watch someone else’s drama unfold before you. If you want that, Jerry Springer reruns are still on tv every day.

Here are a few recommendations to ensure that you don’t ruin the film for those who paid to watch the film.

If you are going to see an R rated film (and especially a horror film) do not bring your newborn baby or toddlers into the theater. It is not the audience’s fault that you couldn’t find a babysitter. Recently while going to see ‘Evil Dead’ a couple had what looked like 3 ten year olds and a newborn in the theater. The baby cried a few times as they sat there shoveling popcorn into their gaping maws.

I want to make this clear: I do not blame the baby or the children for being loud. This is just plain stupid parenting to bring your children to an R rated film knowing full well they probably aren’t going to sit still for a whole movie, and one as violent as ‘Evil Dead’. The parents are the ones at fault. I expect kids to get a little worked up during kids films, that is just the nature of children, but this is obviously a film made for adults and you are not only being rude to your children but to the rest of the audience that paid to see this movie without this interruption.

Put your cell phone AWAY.  This is not a new idea that you are supposed to not use a cell phone during a movie. By now everyone knows that it is rude to use your cell phone during a movie. If you can’t disconnect from your technology for two hours then you can at least have the courtesy of going out to the lobby to check your Facebook status. We can all see the glow of your phone and in a dark room it is like a flame to a moth. So give it a break for 120 minutes, you won’t die if you can’t see your twitter feed.

Just shut up. Seriously. No one wants to listen to your personal conversation.  You see the big screen with things happening on it? That’s what people came for, not to listen to you drone on about your goiter. A whisper here and there isn’t the end of the world, but if you wanted to have a conversation you could have gone to a diner. Sometimes when a movie is bad it is funny for people to yell things out or get a little loud. But this doesn’t give you carte blanch to be a dickhead in every single film.

Leave your laser pointer at home. What is this? 1997? Better yet, if you own a laser pointer, just stare into it until you can’t see, you don’t deserve to watch movies if you still own and use a laser pointer.

Clean up after yourself. Yes, we all know that someone gets paid to clean up the theater between each showing of a film, but that doesn’t mean that you get to treat the theater like your own personal garbage dump. Act like a human being, take the extra three seconds and throw your trash in the garbage can. No one should have to pry your gum off the floor because you were too lazy to throw it out.

If someone is breaking these rules, don’t be afraid to say something. You paid good money to enjoy yourself and not have a jerk waste your time. If you say something to them and they continue doing it, don’t be afraid to talk to the management.  They theater owners need to be more active in following up with their own rules as well.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

PCN Rating:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”  If you are Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby, those striving vessels are then tossed to and fro in a pop-culture riptide culminating in a computer generated whirlpool of dizzy extravagance. This is the gift that the indulgent Aussie bestows upon F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quintessential tale of American ambition and excess, and while it certainly impresses on a sensory level, there’s not much of the poetry that accompanied the author’s evocative prose. Think of this is as Great Gatsby: The Comics Illustrated version.

Of course, that’s always what it was going to be in the hands of Luhrman, and there’s no question that reconfiguring a tale of empty splendor and grand façade to embrace all of the qualities its author admonished is a rather bold proposition. To that end, Baz’s Gatsby momentarily delivers and it mixes the stunning production design, energetic cast and anachronistic soundtrack (spearheaded by Jay-Z) with a faithful adaptation that leans heavily on the foundations of Fitzgerald’s dialogue. This is a sumptuous, giddy and often entertaining movie but what holds its back is an actual lack of boldness; whatever chances are taken with the packaging, there’s no ambition applied in translating the meat of the book so it retains its mystery and romantic notions. All of the problems that Robert Redford and Jack Clayton had with their timid, reverent take are here too, in almost the same capacity.

It’s easy to see the pitfalls but harder to avoid them. One one hand, the wealth of metaphorical and visceral imagery in Gatsby screams for cinematic interpretation, but on the other, bringing these phantasmal icons to the screen requires they be flattened and momentarily made corporeal. Luhrman is a stylist, but not a distinctive enough artist to accomplish anything more. When he runs into walls here, he and the cast—with DiCaprio giving a solid if unimpressive showing as Gatsby—retreat to the spectacle, which is indeed fine. Sometimes this works, like Baz’s staging of those incredibly elaborate parties at West Egg, scored to Rhapsody in Blue and choreographed like its Champagne Night in Valhalla. Others, like the fateful nighttime tragedy in front of the eyes of J.T. Eckleberg or the philandering romps of Daisy’s hubby, Tom lack insight and come off as slight, distracting vignettes.

The story retains the broad strokes but gets lost in the woods of Luhrman’s garish over-reaching.  Impressionable young Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) comes to West Egg, NY to find his future and is caught in the orbit of his mysterious, affluent neighbor Jay Gatsby. When Jay reaches out to Nick, through golf ingénue Jordan Baker (a lovely and effervescent Elizabeth Debicki), he’s really trying to get at Nick’s cousin, Daisy Buchanan, who once found love with Gatsby but is now married to the brutish, son of old money, Tom Buchanan. Maguire is a flimsy presence as Nick, and an attempt by Luhrman and the screenwriters to add some weight to his narration falls flat. If Maguire makes less impression than the table settings, then Joel Edgerton as Tom and Debicki as Jordan grab the film and shake out what dramatic substance they can. Both understand their characters and do what they can to make them believable, nuanced people. Carey Mulligan is a terrific actress, and her work is commendable, but it’s just not right for Daisy, who remains an enigma here despite Fitzgerald giving us her number early on in the book.

They all more or less orbit DiCaprio who instinctively nails the outward mask of Gatsby, but fumbles the inner virtues that Nick himself thinks he sees. This is less a fault of the actor and more a fundamental problem with the entire production; like the characters themselves, there’s very little beyond what you see on the outside. That makes this Gatsby almost worthy, as it reflects to us now, as it surely must have done in other ways upon its print release, the enticing beckon of frivolous decadence and the spiritual price paid for fastening one’s fate to it.

I assume that Aftershock came into fruition as a result of a coke-addled writing binge Eli Roth went on with his friend Nicolas Lopez.They spent a night high, yelling what sounded like brilliant ideas at one another. Lets make a scary movie about something that happened! Lets show how many people die! Lets borrow the tourist element from Hostel! Lets borrow from real life! Oooh!

Aftershock stars Eli Roth, his character nicknamed Gringo by Ariel (Ariel Levy) and Pollo (Nicolás Martínez), his Chilean buddies. Gringo is an uncool middle-aged divorced dad vacationing in Chile, going to parties and nightclubs, and just trying to have a good time. He and his friends pick up a few girls — Russian model Irina (Natasha Yarovenko), party girl Kylie (Lorenza Izzo) and her sister Monica (Andrea Osvárt) — and coax the girls into accompanying them on a trip to the coastal city of Valparaíso. Unfortunately, once they arrive, the coast is shaken by a massive earthquake: destroying buildings, injuring countless people, and driving the remaining population of Valparaíso to madness in a struggle for survival.

Eli Roth isn’t exactly a good actor. But, Eli Roth is good-looking. He’s made some good films, some good friends in Hollywood, and he’s proven himself as loyal to the horror genre. He’s not a bad filmmaker. In fact, the concept of Aftershock is legitimately good. It has the potential to be made into a good film. This is just nowhere near that film. Noooooooooo-where.

The first half of the film is devoted to watching these absolutely abhorrent people fraternize and flirt in posh dance clubs. Often, something I hear complained about in regards to horror films is a lack of character development. It’s all just hack and slash; you meet a group of young good-looking people, and then they get slaughtered. Recently filmmakers have been trying to correct this by making you spend 45 minutes with a bunch of idiots who have a single character trait they are constantly announcing to the world around them. “I am a recently divorced single father!” “Well, I had an abortion once and now I’m irritable and sad!” I would like to take a vacation to this reality. I would walk around screaming: “I am a college drop-out who can’t make any money and watches too many movies! Where is the tourist club with the booze and the sex?!”

Oh yeah, there is also a cameo by Selena Gomez in this film. It is as long and as captivating as this paragraph.

When the action finally starts, we’ve spent too much time with these awful people, and the movie makes the extraordinarily incorrect assumption that this means we now care about them. And, ohh boy, now all I want is to watch them get picked off. But when one does, you have to watch the characters mope and dote on it for ten boring minutes. Ten minutes of these people crying about the 30 second gore-splosion that you smiled and laughed at. It’s like a punishment. It’s like reverse rubberneck traffic. You look at that car that flopped over, and then you have to sit in traffic for half an hour.

But the real misstep here is that Aftershock is attempting to do something extremely difficult and failing at it. This is the case with most films that attempt to do this, because it’s a near impossible task, which is to make a splatter film upsetting. There is a disconnect in the viewer upon watching ridiculously over the top gore. Generally it’s not sadness or empathy they experience, it’s usually fun. That’s what splatter films are: fun. Splatter is a niche genre, and a film crafting a scene out of a dramatic splash of blood, torn limbs and mutilated bodies is normally one that is going to inspire glee in a viewer. Not misery. Splatter fans revel in this stuff, it’s a strange, perverse, enjoyable art. And much of the reason for that is in the fabrication. No one’s really getting hurt. So there’s no accountability, no sympathy, no reason to be sad. But when a film functions as a splatter film and also asks you to be sad, that’s a bit much.

A film like Hostel doesn’t request sadness, it asks for a visceral sympathy. It asks for your body to hurt when you imagine being tortured. Aftershock asks you to feel bad. And I don’t. I want to watch that nice lady get crushed by a giant piece of building and laugh like a maniac, like I did.

I will also inform you that this film features a rape scene, which is addressed as terribly as everything else Aftershock attempts to address. This scene is insulting, mostly because of the misogynistic tones of the rest of the stupid movie. I’m not one to object to a film simply for featuring a rape sequence, especially a horror film. It’s embedded in the genre, metaphorically and literally, and you know what, rape is a terrifying concept. But this movie does it wrong, punishing its female characters merely for being female. Although the film doesn’t sexualize its female characters as blatantly as many others do, they are depicted as weak, helpless people. Eli Roth trapped under a rock is treated as a stronger character than any of the girls, as he manages to give advice and even throw things.

And seriously, in this film, tattoos mean that you are an evil escaped rapist from a Chilean prison. This is an essential plot point of the film. This is the year 2013. Everyone has tattoos.

I was interested in seeing this only because of Roth’s involvement. I was a fan of yours Mr. Roth. But after only making it through two episodes of Hemlock Grove and now this, you are changing my mind.

“After an alien race called the Formics attacks Earth, the International Fleet prepare for the next invasion by training the best young children to find the future leader to lead the International Military. Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), a shy but strategically brilliant boy, is pulled out of his school to join International Fleet and attend the legendary Battle School. After easily mastering the increasingly difficult war games, distinguishing himself and winning respect among his peers, Ender is soon ordained by Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) as the military’s next great hope, resulting in his promotion to Command School. Once there, he’s trained by Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley) himself to lead the military into a war that will determine the future of Earth and the human race.”

Looks like there is some pretty bonkers stuff going on in this one. I am a huge fan of the other two films and I really look forward to seeing what these guys can do with this type of film. Also, I was happy to see Pegg having problems with a fence once again.  Check out  the trailer below and let us know what you think.

In theaters August 23 2013,  “20 years after attempting an epic pub crawl, five childhood friends reunite when one of them becomes hell bent on trying the drinking marathon again. They are convinced to stage an encore by mate Gary King, a 40-year old man trapped at the cigarette end of his teens, who drags his reluctant pals to their home town and once again attempts to reach the fabled pub, The World’s End. As they attempt to reconcile the past and present, they realize the real struggle is for the future, not just theirs but humankind’s. Reaching The World’s End is the least of their worries.“

Rules for this song:

Must grow a beard

Don’t shower for a few days

Grab the stoutest beer you can find

Start a fire

‘The Climb’

In highlands big and forests old

Westoros is filled with brave and bold

Tywin and Olenna are making plans

To marry Loras and the ‘Sans’

Loras is interested in draperies

While Sansa only wants to flee

But when she thinks this plan is done

In her chamber walks Tyrion

Osha and Meera start to bicker

Over whose rabbit cleaning skills are quicker

When all the sudden while at leisure

Jojen’s visions cause a seizure

Bran asks him of his findings

He’s seen Jon Snow with the band of Wildings

Taking cues from Eli Roth

Theon’s finger gets cut off

Leaving viewers wondering when

All this torture will just end

Yes we know he was a jerk

But move your plot to make it work

Now that he has been cut loose

Jamie meets with good Lord Roose

He is shocked to learn it though

That with Brienne he cannot go

He’s keeping her for a made up reason

Something something something treason!

Robb Stark forms an alliance

And apologizes for his defiance

Someone is betrothed to be

I missed that part, got up to pee

On the wall The Wildings climb

On this they focus too much time

Jon and Ygritte almost fall

But eventually make it up the wall

The hug and watch as the sun goes down

The credits roll ‘It’s over now?’

The episode was far too weak

With not much happening so to speak

Hopefully next week; a dragon or two

More of this just will not do

To say more would be astute

I forgot that Joffrey shot a prostitute.

PCN Rating:

‘Nothing’s been the same since New York.’  That’s Tony Stark on the events that closed out last summer’s The Avengers, but he might as well be expressing the exasperation of everyone and anyone who had to deal with making an Iron Man 3 in the wake of that record-smashing crossover juggernaut.

How do you follow-up, as Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony puts it, ‘gods, aliens, other dimensions’? The answer as far as Marvel was concerned was to hire director and writer Shane Black and pull Iron Man’s most popular and least politically correct villain, The Mandarin, from the vaults, adding great actors like Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce and Rebecca Hall to an already potent stable. All of that talent is onscreen in Iron Man 3, and Black, whose last directing credit was the sarcastic cult fave Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, sells us a Tony Stark adventure that has been streamlined and scaled down to offer up Downey Jr. and his supporting cast as the main attraction.

Opening in Switzerland on New Year’s Eve 1999 and then moving forward to Malibu for Christmas 2013, Iron Man 3 plots a course of ambition and idealism corrupted over time, drawing all of the characters, old and new, into a story that orbits Tony’s own suspicions that his super-hero daydreams can no longer support the dangerous reality he’s living in. Delivering a nuclear warhead into a wormhole he didn’t expect to survive indeed has taken its toll on Stark and he’s suffering panic attacks, insomnia and nervous bouts of suit building. Pepper Pots (Gwyneth Paltrow) has moved in and she’s running Stark Industries now with Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan serving as antsy head of security.

When she’s not fending off the professional advances of Aldritch Killian (Guy Pearce), who wants her to invest in the gene therapy known as Extremis, Pepper is trying to crack Tony’s nervy shell of insecurities.  James ‘Rhody’ Rhodes (Don Cheadle) is off working for the president (William Sadler) as the re-branded ‘Iron Patriot’, helping to track down a terrorist sect run by an enigmatic mouthpiece known as The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley). Stark is obsessed over protecting the things he can’t live without, namely Pepper and his friends, but it’s not long before he’s openly declaring war on the Mandarin and things are exploding with predictable big budget panache. Along for the ride are Hall as that ‘botanist’ Tony met in Switzerland and Paul Bettany’s Jarvis, the weary, British voice of Tony’s computer.

Black is a good fit for the film, and his trademark sense of humor is the biggest selling point for Iron Man 3, which finds its best, concussive moments not in giant set pieces like the assault on Stark’s home or a legion of flying suits facing off against super-powered soldiers but in on-point line deliveries and clever narrative leaps that poke fun at the fickle state of current comic-book filmmaking. Downey Jr. gets to relax a bit more here even when his character is climbing the walls, and this more textured turn as Stark is his most nuanced of the series to date. Another refreshing element is the way Black draws Cheadle, Paltrow and  Favreau further into Tony’s circle and forms a huddle where they all get more to do than in previous features. Cheadle is playing Murtaugh to Downey’s Riggs and has lots of funny doing it, while Paltrow gets to try out some of her own action aerobatics and Favreau, well, he gets the Downton Abbey jokes, but somebody had to.

Like most Marvel movies, the villains have a rougher road of it, and while Kingsely gives a terrifically entertaining turn as The Mandarin, his highlight scenes are not what you expect. Pearce gets more face-time with Stark and more space to chew the scenery, which would work better if Killian’s motives weren’t so inexplicable. The Extremis project and its resulting army of human fire-bombs strain the bounds of even this universe’s logic. There’s seemingly no consistency to what they can or can’t do, what does or doesn’t kill them, and what it is they actually hope to achieve through their actions. By the time the fireworks are going in that big, special-effects heavy final third it’s quite possible most audience members will have ceased to care about the story at large.

This is problematic, but Black seems to have expected it, moving past the necessarily tragic repercussions to get down to what he’s been aiming at all movie long; the head and heart of Tony Stark. If it’s the world at large or Pepper, how can he make that choice and is he willing to give up the machine if he can retain the man he never expected to be?   Regardless of what we go through here, Black doesn’t have the same freedom that Nolan did when creating his contained Batman franchise. No matter how seemingly risky the hoops jumped through are, there’s only so much change that come to these characters without knocking the Marvel movie world off its carefully constructed foundations.

Funny and fun to watch, Iron Man 3 should satisfy the fans of the series just fine, with Black’s sense of humor rendering it almost a full-blown comedy. As the lynchpin of the series the trailers promised, it can’t quite cut it and we are never offered an arc as substantive as the redemption and subsequent transformation that rooted the original Iron Man. This one is a more modest chunk of Friday night entertainment, casting its heroes and villains as lost babes in the woods, wondering how it is they wandered so far from the path.

 PCN Rating:

Who will save us from our machines?

For the past fifteen years or so, this is has been the overarching theme of most modern science fiction. Arguably, the tension between humanity and technology had been pulsing through the genre long before that–tracing back to Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein to be honest—but there’s no denying it has achieved a particular resonance in our current culture. When digitally concocted realms of sensory experience like Joseph Kosinski’s sci-fi thriller Oblivion can find the time to pine for the days of analog, vinyl, and a remote cabin in the woods, it’s safe to say we have arrived at a curious disconnect.

Oblivion takes on the familiar trappings of classic science fiction to tell the story of a man stranded on a burned out Earth with all the comforts of home but lacking something crucial he can’t quite put his finger on. This man is Jack, and he’s partnered (in every possible way it seems) with Victoria, both forming a team that have been left behind to manage massive machines that turn Earth’s water into energy. In the sky is the image of a ruptured Moon, decimated by an alien invasion that saw nuclear war render Earth uninhabitable; the converted energy is being used to terraform Titan, where all of humanity is migrating.

The way-station between our planet and Titan is the Tet, a large structure seen looming in atmosphere. Jack and Victoria get their marching orders from the Tet, and are planning for their own recall to Titan in a few weeks. In the meantime, Jack spends his days flying over the desolation, monitoring the machines and doing maintenance on any downed sentinel drones, while occasionally fighting off  the ‘Scavs’, left-over alien forces still kicking about. Even though he and Victoria have carved out a reasonable domestic existence in their condo in the clouds—complete with translucent indoor pool looking down upon the world below–Jack can’t help but question his place, and yearns for the ability to stay and reclaim a civilization whose relics intrigue him. He’s also having strange dreams involving a mysterious girl (Olga Kurylenko) and a world he can’t possibly remember, pre-invasion Earth.

This is the set-up for Oblvion, based off an unpublished graphic novel by Kosinski, and borrowing heavily from the old sci-fi masters, in particular Robert Heinlein. To discuss the plot further would be a disservice, except to say that it goes places all good pulpy genre work does, engaging our senses and our brains, although the latter eventually cedes to the former for a big, whiz-bang conclusion. Tom Cruise is Jack, and while he’s only playing another variation on Tom Cruise, he’s become accustomed to doing it very well. Cruise even manages to overcome his own eccentric real-world image, wrestling that personality to the ground in favor of Jack’s curious everyman.

Andrea Riseborough is Victoria, and she handles a tricky role, demonstrating the human vulnerabilities and questions she has about what she’s doing, while the character ultimately re-routes to mission protocols. The opening hour of the  film is dependent entirely upon she and Cruise and the quite excellent production design that imagines this post-apocalyptic Earth, and the airborne station above it, as a strangely serene and beautiful pastoral. Kurylenko, who has grown into a screen presence of real versatility, shows up in the second half and does what she can with a character who amounts to walking plot point. Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo, and Headhunters’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau appear as the story expands to include a few more faces and ideas. All of the acting is strong, and helps give the film a very human, emotional identity that carries it through a gradually unfolding mystery that features one too many references to well-loved sci-fi mainstays like Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Moon.

If it seems I’m reluctantly withholding something, this would be accurate. Oblivion is difficult to discuss because of the way it holds its identity close to its chest. Instead of relying upon a single redefining twist or spilling the secrets mid-movie so he can hurry on to action scenes, Kosinski establishes a weighted trajectory for the story that gives us information as the characters themselves learn it. This honestly helps a lot of the more well-worn narrative elements go down easy. By the time we realize we’ve been witnessing a cut-and-paste of the greatest hits, Oblivion has earned a degree of individual personality and stands on its own digital feet well enough. It’s a fun and rousing adventure story that has confidence in its audience to appreciate the slower, more meditative moments as much as the human pinball games that make up a good chunk of the last act.

Much of Oblivion’s appeal and entertainment value comes from Kosinski, who took all of the visual grandeur he heaped onto Tron: Legacy and translated it here to bring a fully realized universe to life. The streamlined, modern styles of the spacecraft, the hulking majesty of the juggernaut converters and the simple but inviting allure of a hidden wilderness retreat make Oblivion a joy to behold, especially in the IMAX format. The computer-generated imagery and the vast, lonesome feel of the cinematography are complemented by M83’s electronic, pulsing score that recalls Daft Punk and Hans Zimmer but gives the movie an atmosphere that trumps the sometimes brittle storytelling. Sure, Oblivion doesn’t do anything new, but what it accomplishes is still worthy; it melds big-budget popcorn thrills with the pleasures of reading a ripping short story, the kind that keeps you intrigued to the last page.

]]> http://popcultureninja.com/2013/04/19/oblivion-review/feed/ 1 http://popcultureninja.com/2013/04/17/5-television-worlds-it-would-suck-to-live-in/ http://popcultureninja.com/2013/04/17/5-television-worlds-it-would-suck-to-live-in/#comments Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:17:57 +0000 Seth Dombach http://popcultureninja.com/?p=10230  

Week after week, millions of people immerse themselves in the lives and world of their favorite characters. As viewers, we place ourselves in the shoes of these characters, but would it really be so great to be in these fictional universes?

Game of Thrones

A world of dragons, magic, sweeping landscapes, and a quest for power may seem inviting, but regardless of where you are life in the Game of Thrones universe would surely suck. Sure, you could reach the iron throne and hold sway over Westoros, but would you really want that? You would constantly be looking over your shoulder waiting for someone to kill your ass.

Bloodlines run deep in GoT, and those waters go to the murky place where loving your cousin (or sibling for that matter) takes on a more literal meaning. You are apparently going to have at least 1-15 illegitimate children who will hate you for the rest of your days.

When you die, it will not be pleasant. Not a lot of people go quietly into the good night, more like through torture and dismemberment. Let us not forget how bad this world would smell. Everyone in GoT is either having copious amounts of sex or caked in filth, or both at the same time. I think walking into any town in that world would smell like the equivalent of stepping into a Men’s Room at halftime at the Super Bowl.

Worst yet would be the constant reminder that ‘Winter is Coming’. You cannot even say hello to your fellow man without being told this sentiment. After 2 months you would be begging for winter to just get here already.

Girls

One of the positives of being a twenty-something with some money in New York would be that you can kind of do and be whoever you want to be without much consequence. Life hasn’t yet got you to the point of being an adult and you are mostly pretending to play ‘grown ups’. The world is your oyster and I say shuck it! (Pun intended)

The downside is that you need a degree in psychology just to be able to handle your friends. Not one character in ‘Girls’ male or female is in anyway a normal human being. You will enjoy the highs and lows of the bi-polar nation of people in their mid-twenties. Nothing will make sense to you and most likely you would end up with some mental disorder as a proxy of just being in that world. Any of your sexual encounters will most likely be uncomfortable and leave you depressed and disgusted.

The best part of your mid-twenties is that it eventually comes to an end and you realize you are not the center of the universe anymore, and who wants to be in a perpetual loop of that?

Mad Men

A lot is made of how cool Don Draper is. How awesome would it be to go to work, get plastered, and take a nap in your office? Besides the obvious faults of living in a time period that was extremely unjust time for anyone who wasn’t a rich white man, the world of ‘Mad Men’ has other problems.

You would never be happy with anything in your life ever. Regardless of what happens in the ‘Mad Men’ universe it will only end up causing you to fall into a drunken depression. Don Draper ostensibly has it all. The beautiful wife and home, 3 kids, lots of money, a great job, but Don Draper is possibly the unhappiest character that has ever been on TV. His life is filled with doubt and disdain for everything and everyone around him. No matter how good he has it, he is always empty.

Also- all that scotch and cigarettes are going to make you look like a dried up raisin by the time you hit 40.

The Walking Dead

Living in a zombie apocalypse really isn’t all that Twitter has made it to be. You would always be under the threat of being eaten. The really bad part would be (again the smell too) being surrounded by incompetent fools. The survivors of the Walking Dead seem to have as much cognitive function as the zombies they shoot or stab on a regular basis. They make stupid decisions all the time, waste a lot of time doing nothing, and how they survived the initial attack is a miracle.

If they don’t end up getting you killed they will at least drive you to the brink of insanity. Unless they are Daryl.

The Big Bang Theory

You would be surrounded by a bunch of people that network executives think that nerds are like. Also you would constantly surrounded by references to things that happened in the 80’s and geek culture and everything would be one large pop-culture joke. Oh no.

YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! GOD DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

Warner Bros. has been taunting the fans with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel for some time now, and we finally have a trailer that amounts to more than a teaser. The viral marketing was out in force for this over the past week, culminating in a message from Michael Shannon’s General Zod that threatened both Superman and Earth.

All that was leading up to this, and this paving the way for the film itself. Can any movie live up to such constant hype, let alone the legacy of Superman himself? None of the other films bearing the big red S have managed to, but Snyder’s certainly looks set to give it a try.

Overall,  Man of Steel seems to have divorced itself at a certain level from Snyder’s more hyper-real work like Watchmen, 300 and Sucker Punch. The images of Kyrpton exploding, the Fortress of Solitude, and Zod’s reign over Metropolis look snatched right from the panels of Action Comics, but grounded with a weight of detail and realism.

Cavill looks just fine in the suit and Crowe and Costner as Supes’ two dads appear to be delivering everything they were hired for. Hard to tell about Adams or Shannon, but both are terrific actors so I’m hoping for big things.

A few of the slam-bang flying effects look rough, but that could very well be down to the pinball level editing happening towards the trailer’s end.

I’m up for this new update of the character. What do you think?

Man of Steel arrives in theaters on June 14th.

Written by Nathan Bartlebaugh

In honor of the recent surge in 80′s remakes, Pop Culture Ninja brings you the Top 15 movies from the 1980s that would be perfect for a video game resurrection. And yes, back then many of these had their own Nintendo iterations but that barely counts. What we are talking here is a full-fledged, narrative driven game taking the elements we love and marrying them to an original bit of gameplay. Most of these are just wishful thinking, a few little more than jokes, but there are some here that could really amount to something special; one more chance to wander the playground of the cheesetastic 80s. Which ones would you most like to see?

15.  Teen Wolf (1985)- OK, so even back in the 80s this was seen as a bomb by most and little more than a guilty pleasure for everyone else. But, if you get beyond the dopey movie and concentrate on the too-cool premise of a werewolf that plays high school basketball you’ve got the perfect concept for a sports-oriented console game. In fact why stop with just the teen wolf, why not trot out some other well-known fiends and make this the classic monsters version of one of those NBA games with Fox’s wolf heading out from the high school to the big time. Get M.J. to do the voicework and it’s golden.

14. The Blues Brothers- What could be more epic or more perfectly suited for a video game than a mission from God? Seriously, the Blues Brothers are great enough characters, and the basic scenario behind the original film diverse enough that you could have a veritable potpourri of different game styles. Wanna drive through the mall? check. Want to play concerts via Guitar Hero style interactions? Perfect. Akroyd’s already done the voicework gig on Ghostbusters, so Im sure he’d come back. Sans Belushi, do they bring back Goodman’s character from the sequel or grab Jim to stand-in for his bro?

 13. The Last Star Fighter – The ultimate meta-game right? An alien race recruits a kid to fight into an interstellar war by way of an arcade game strategically placed in a trailer park. I loved this movie as a kid, but narratively it was always a bit weak.  Personally, I’d prefer a return to the classic sidescrollers of yesteryear with some updated movement and gameplay. Y’know, something like Gradius or R-Type? Bringing Last Starfighter full circle from game within a movie, to movie within a game feels exactly like something the 8os would be proud of.

12. Fright Night – It doesnt have the same recognizability of something like Lost Boys but  Fright Night was not only the better movie, it was the one with more pure imagination. This 80s horror take on Rear Window followed the adventures of a monster-nerd and a late night schlock host who battle a vampire together. Though the late Roddy McDowall obviously won’t be available for the voice of Peter Vincent, the ‘Fearless Vampire Killer’  I suggest that any future incarnation consider replacing him with Chris Sarandon, who was the vampire in the original and provided the speaking voice of Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas.  The groovy Richard Edlund critters provide a great jumping off point for artists and animators  and the fact vampires are hot again would help make this one relevant so long after its (minor) heyday.

11. Rambo -Seeing as how Stallone just made this work in live action format, I think it’s the proper time for a full-on game epic that takes us through all of John Rambo’s adventures including some new ones. With the success of the Metal Gear series this will require a little distinguishment, but maybe the key is to throw John into some more relevant real-world scenarios(he went down to Bhurma last time). Or, is that just too touchy? Either way, Rambo deserves an adaptation that does the series justice after its abomination of an NES game, possibly one of the worst things available for that console.

10.  The Never Ending Story – Taking a classic children’s book adapted into a film about the dwindling power of imagination and then turning it into a video game might seem just a bit wrong-headed but the world of ‘Story’ is so rich that there could be a truly engaging, interactive dynamic created here.Note to any potential developers, ignore the last two movies and draw directly from the novel. The first Story is literally only the first half or so of the book.  More than anything, I just want a chance to pilot Falcor around the edge of The Nothing. Extra points if the game operates on a perpetual loop, rendering it a truly never-ending story.

9. Poltergeist- Haunted house games are still big and more than a few of them have clearly lifted some of their best bits from films like Poltergeist. Lets be done though with the herky jerky, strobe-light camera simulations and sadistic storylines with extra gore puddles. Transforming Poltergeist into a video game could be great fun; capturing the Spielbergian nature of the haunting, telling a brand new story and maybe, just maybe, bringing back Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina(yes, Im pretending Poltergeist 3 never happened). I welcome any game that might appropriately capture the bug-nuttiness of the film’s final half hour or just about anything that happened in Poltergeist 2; demonic tequila worm anyone?

8. The Goonies- Another victim of crappy NES adaptation, Goonies is perfectly suited to become a video game. It has atmospheric settings, the ability to generate any number of further adventures, characters that most players would gladly follow and it can pick right back up with their youth and take place in the 80s. No need for all the current nonsense about a grown-up Goonies movie. Move beyond the Fratellis and the pirate ship and start brainstorming a bigger adventure. The best part of this is the opportunity to switch control between the various goonies, and maybe Sloth too. In fact, how about a Wii add-on where players can recreate the Chunk dance?

7. Mad Max: The Road Warrior -No need to rehash the others in this series. Lets see something new. The apocalyptic world presented in Miller’s wonderful action films is primed and ready for a video game. If this was done right, Grand Theft Auto eat your heart out! And why stop at excellent vehicular devestation; expand the story and throw in some Thunderdome. Two men enter, one man leaves! It might even be fun to have Mad Mel growling on the soundtrack as long as he doesn’t want to also direct.

6. Labyrinth - This could not only cash-in on the considerable nostalgia surrounding the original but it would create another opportunity for fans to get lost in the world of Jim Henson. Sell it as a puzzle game and get Brian Froud back for the designs of the creatures. This has serious potential to be an amazing game and it would cure the problem the film had of seeming  more like a collection of challenges than a movie. Intriguing stuff like the knight and knave riddle sequences and eclectic set pieces like The Bog of Eternal Stench would work pretty darn well in a game.  Lets get some more original Bowie songs while we are at!

5. Back to the Future - Michael J. Fox again. Back to the Future seems like it would render endless possibilities for a game. Whether walking through humorous recreations of the past, or taking the plot threads of the original trilogy and beginning a new set of stories within the BTTF universe, a new adventure with Marty and the Doc is potentially more alluring and profitable than Ghostbusters. Afterall, the Ghostbusters don’t get to travel through time. Fox would probably do this too, and Lloyd–well, what else would Lloyd be doing?

4. Time Bandits – Time travel again, but this time with a film that doesn’t seem like it would lend itself to a video game format, let alone be profitable as one. But with games becoming more cinematic all the time and the flexibility that creators have growing, I’d love to see how Terry Gilliam would fare in such an environment. Might he find video games easier to navigate than film? Also, with the template of stealing objects out of time, the game could have some serious fun with the historical representations, much like the film did. We got Napoleon last time, how about someone skewer Atilla in the next verson? I love Gilliam’swork, and if Terry were ever to revisit this world, I think a video game approach is the perfect way to do it.

3. The Abyss – James Cameron is such a techno-nut that I bet he could be talked into this one. And why not? With all of his other franchises smoldering, and a big new epic on the way, why not expand and explore on the world of the Abyss and the movie’s open ending where the aliens have brought their ships to the surface. One could only hope that a project like this would include a strong sci-fi story and plenty of underwater sub simulations. By centering the game play on aquatic environs designers could make the gameplay singularly strong and then navigate their way through the more intricate science fiction bits that Cameron left lying around at the end of the first. Visually, the alien civilization could be great fun to explore and understand. They did almost wipe out the human race afterall, and apparently have elemental control of water.  The film, a terrific hard sci-fi story, ended just as it was suggesting to us the nature of its extra-terrestrials. There’s more to tell and an interactive format is the perfect place to tell it.

2. Big Trouble in Little China – This could be huge. Really. Huge. Call in John Carpenter and get Kurt Russell ( it would have to be Kurt) and quicker than you can say “Yes sir, the check is in the mail” a new gaming franchise is born. You wouldn’t even need to make this Chinatown centric, just bring back Jack. But, for my money, there are enough thrilling adventures and potentially cool stories to be told within that setting and mythology that it would be a shame to waste it. Get some writers who can inject humor and wit and give us a parade of great beasties and super-powered warriors and then give us a chance to prove just what we would do “when when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake.” Yea, we can take it.

1. Blade Runner – A no brainer really. Whether creating an adaptation of the original film, or taking Ridley’s world and adding more of the details from Dick’s book( the entire Mercerism plot would be fertile and ironic ground for a video game) there is enormous potential here to continue building that bridge between art and gaming. Consider how influential the film has been, and then look at how rich it is as a story and a universe and then build something that draws on it and adds to it. You’ll need a talented team, but if there is ever going to be another compelling Blade Runner product, it’s probably going to be in the video game department. If Harrison Ford did this, it would be out of this world. And the production designers, not reigned in by the limits of a budget could truly give us “things you people couldn’t believe.” The big question: Narration or no narration?

 Giant monsters. Has-been acting and singing sensations coming back for one more pop culture groping. Plots so hole-ridden they might as well be a donut factory. ‘Science’ that would make a grade-schooler blush. And scads of ropey CGI that looks like it was banged out on an 1983 Texas Instruments computer.

These are the hallmarks of the SYFY Originals, that infamous crop of low-budget films–usually fantasy and horror and rarely actual science fiction–that make up the Saturday night 9 p.m. slot on a network whose slogan is ‘Imagine Greater’. Perhaps a better one would be ‘Screw Imagination. Steal Cheaper.’

Truth be told, I, like most other fans, have a love/hate relationship with the SYFY Originals, or SFOs if you will. When I happen to be around the tube I love to settle in for one of their schlocky creature features and yet almost always I’m disappointed. SYFY, which should be out chasing actual science fiction related programming, seems to waste alot of marketing on these jokey one-off B-movies. Movies like MegaShark VS Crocosaurs and Mega Python VS Gateroid are worth a laugh, but are also running things into the ground.

For all of that, SFOs hold a certain dubious place in pop culture. They have made the love of trash cinema an event for the whole family. So, without further ado, I’ve created a 15 film countdown in honor of SYFY and its overwrought genre leftovers.

I give you…

THE TOP 15 SYFY ORIGINAL MOVIES

15. Sabretooth (2002)

Getting lost in the woods has never been quite so eventful as it is in Sabretooth. The forests are sprawling but the numerous characters and titular beastie keep stumbling over one another like it’s the local park. One of the earlier offerings that helped SYFY establish the Saturday night schlock spot, this mangy tale of a CGI enhanced smilodon loosed into the great outdoors is better than it has any right to be. Dopey as hell, but with a fun cast that includes a smirking Vanessa Angel, a portly John Rhys Davies, and an early appearance by Josh Holloway, Lost’s Sawyer. The best turn, though, is by David Keith as a big game hunter who takes on the fanged cat.

14. Wyvern (2008)

Wyvern gets on this list by sheer moronic audacity. At its heart it’s a monster movie about an ancient dragon terrorizing one of those small backwaters that would make Twin Peaks proud. It’s also got some welcome character development, from the resident big hunter (TP’s own Don S. Davis) down to the emotionally damaged ice-road trucker, everyone has definition. True, these attempts at drama are as ludicrous as the giant flying beast, but the two go together to make Wyvern a pleasing bit of weekend silliness. Extra points for the scene where Davis comes wandering in forlornly, wondering who or what launched a severed moosehead into his yard.

13. George and the Dragon (2006)

An utterly perplexing throwback to medieval fantasy adventures of the early 80s, George and the Dragon has one of the oddest casts of any SYFY flick. It stars James Purefoy, Piper Perabo, Simon Callow, Patrick Swayze, Bill Oddie, Michael Clarke Duncan and, in an uncredited cameo as the Black Knight, Val Kilmer. Yes, Kilmer, all the more shocking because this was before he started funding his Hot Pocket binges with DTV garbage. Due mainly to the cast, this is an enjoyable romp. Completely daffy and filled with shifting tones and hammy dialogue, George owes its entertainment factor to its ineptitude as much as it does its positive traits. Swayze playing the knight like he’s still the Point Break character and the terribly dodgy dragon effects add to the cut-rate adventure feel and the unintentional comedy.

12. Sharktopus (2o1o)

Roger Corman knows how to make schlock. Not everything he’s touched is gold–in fact, most of it isn’t–but he understands what makes good camp. And Sharktopus, from the top of his dorsal fin to the bottom of his pink little suckers, is a terrifically campy idea. The movie is mostly just a string of scenes that poke fun at SYFY Originals in general. Eric Roberts gets to bellow lines like ‘We must kill Sharktopus! But first, bring me an enormous Scotch!’ Sharktopus even has his own gnarly theme song that sounds like Gidget on acid. Best of all, the monster itself looks pretty good. Yes, it’s cgi, but there’s no better use for it than making a shark walk on land via his long octopi tentacles.

11. Eyeborgs (2009)

One of the biggest complaints leveled at SYFY is also a perfectly reasonable one; there’s very little ‘science fiction’ on the network outside of Stargate or BSG. So it’s refreshing to see that Eyeborgs has an ambitious and interesting sci-fi idea at its heart. An integrated security network called ODIN has installed sentient robotic cams all over the nation to crack down on terrorism. Now the robots are developing their own mandates and are outfitted with weapons that make for some pretty slick murders. Adrian Paul and a cast of ijits, along with the always welcome Danny Trejo, fight against the robots in a pretty clunky feature. What helps Eyeborgs is the third act, which actually shows some thought and ambition and ends up making the story it’s telling worthwhile. With a little more work, this could have transcended the list altogether.

10. Dinocroc (2oo4)

Dinocroc is exactly the kind of movie that I hope for everytime I sit down for one of these things. A simple but enjoyable monster flick that doesn’t take itself too seriously and spends 80 to 90 brief minutes trying to entertain me. Another Corman production, Dino Croc does what it was designed to do; give you something to watch while having beer and pizza with friends. The monster is a great mash-up that sends-up the American Godzilla in its design and spends the film mauling and eating anything and anyone not nailed down. If you see the uncut version of this you will be surprised to find it breaks a sacred genre taboo; Dinocroc bites a kid’s head off–like, right off. Also, extra points for the plan that involves loads of puppies used as bait to lure the reptilian menace in.

9. High Plains Invaders (2009)

Surprisingly enjoyable for one of the serious-minded SFO efforts. With a plot oddly similar to this year’s upcoming Cowboys and Aliens, HPI pits an Old West soldier with blood on his hands against an H.G.Wellsian invasion of  insectoid mutants. It helps that James Marsters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame and Cindy Sampson (Lisa from Supernatural) are in the lead roles and bring some welcome character depth to their parts. With the exception of a few anachronistic weapons, the film  looks reasonably authentic for a period piece, although  perhaps a little stark set wise.  The alien critters themselves are well rendered and imaginatively designed. The rest plays as you would expect but Marster’s outlaw and a better than average script carry the day.

8. Frankenfish (2002)

Wacky as hell and yet surprisingly slick and well-produced by the standards of the network. Frankenfish’s greatest strength is the way it emulates the monster movies of the 50′s and 60′s. There’s lots of goofy exposition, pseudo-serious scientists, backwater hicks and intrepid heroes. The difference is that Frankenfish understands completely what kind of movie it wants to be. This one set the template in place (after robbing it) for most future SFO’s. It’s like the esteemed grandpa of the brand and is still one of the most consistently funny entries. Director Mark Dippe has worked in the FX industry for quite awhile, which might explain why Frankenfish has some of the best special effects featured in an SFO. If you do watch, stay through the credits for the Frankenfish rap, surely one of the dippiest theme songs ever written.

7. Mansquito (2006)

How can you go wrong with a movie called Mansquito? Well, honestly, you can’t, unless you are looking for the next arthouse hit. With Mansquito, you get what you would expect, with a little extra; a grungy little creature feature that riffs on man-bug movies like The Fly but never takes itself very seriously. The extra is that it’s more engrossing than your average SFO.  Corin Nemec leads the cast on this raid and director Tibor Takacs, of The Gate and I, Madman, momentarily pulls himself out his schlocky tailspin to deliver a juicy little B movie. There are even a few good thrills to be had here. The best part about Mansquito? No CGI, just a pretty neat costume that summons the icky with old-school charm. This might well be one of the SFO’s best beasties. Just take a gander at that proboscis. Yick!

6. Splinter (2008)

This is the part of the list where the tide turns from watchable trash to pretty good genre efforts. Once you have skimmed off the dreck, there are some effective and ambitious movies lurking around on SYFY. The trick is that most of them weren’t ever made with the intention of making the channel their home. Indie efforts like Splinter are a good example. This is a wily and creepy monster mash about a trio of characters (one criminal and a waylaid couple) battling it out at a roadside gas station with a beast that operates like a land-based sea urchin. Pieces of it fall off and regenerate and with its fearsome nettles it can incorporate the bodies of those it kills into its physiology. Part The Thing and part Rest Stop, the movie shows its budgetary constraints in its limited view of the monster. Still, there’s some darn fine writing and acting on this, and the result is a fast-paced flick that goes down easy and actually satisfies its ambition.

5. 100 Feet (2008)

A woman kills her husband in self defense after years of abuse and now spends her days on home arrest in the same house where it happened.Now she’s trapped within the confines of the building with the angry rage-filled spirit of the man who tormented her. Now, isn’t that heavy for an SFO? Yes, indeed but also more intrinsically interesting than the usual giant snake fiasco. Directed by the demented Eric Red (The Hitcher), whose personal history echoes this story just a tad too closely, 100 Feet is a damn fine little movie, marred a bit by a less than stellar ending. Famke Janssen is the one who sells the slight but compelling concept, and her performance is the best one SYFY has ever seen in their Saturday night slot. Not quite the sum of its parts, but as a portrait of a woman fighting back against abuse, both physical and spiritual, it’s quite effective.

4. Mammoth (2006)

The best lame-brained creature feature the network has yet offered. This is lampooning SYFY’s onslaught of absurd beasts as much as its telling any story. The best baddie ever, meet the titular monster; a shaggy, flea-bitten dethawed mammoth carcass, posessed by an alien parasite from space, that now runs amok through town using its trunk as a soul hoover to remove the lifeforce of unlucky humans. Beat that Asylum! And then, add in a geeky-as-hell cast of Vincent Ventresca (The Invisible Man), Summer Glau (Firefly) and Tom Skerrit (Alien) as a family of nerds hell-bent on stopping the mammoth. Skerrit is surprisingly touching in his role and has good chemistry with Glau. Who cares though when you have the hilarious scenes of a full-size rotting elephant sneaking up behind people in broad daylight as if it were Jason Vorhees. Kudos to the special effects guys who managed to get an Emmy nomination for their work.

3. Abominable (2006)

Sasquatch movies were a sad and yet comforting staple of the SFO brand back in the early aughts. WhenRyan Schifrin’s version of the myth hit SYFY back in summer 06, it straight-up surprised me. This is a fun and involving B-movie version of Rear Window gone wacky. Matt McCoy is good as the wheelchair bound protagonist who witnesses a big hary beast dispatching members of the bachelorette party one cabin over. Filled with some great cameos by Dee Wallace, Paul Gleason, Jeffrey Combs and Sasquatch alum Lance Henrickson, Abominable alternates between silly and scary. Great composer Lalo Schifrin, Ryan’s dad, adds a suitably bombastic horror score. When the bigfoot finally shows it’s one of the goofiest looking things I’ve ever laid eyes on, and again, this is completely intentional. This is Saturday schlock done right.

2. Infestation (2009)

By the standards of SFOs, Kyle Rankin’s Infestation is positively epic. A slacker cubicle jockey working a boring job to satisfy his domineering dad wakes up to find himself cocooned to his desk after a freak blackout. Turns out the rest of the city is in similar troubles, and he assembles a small band of survivors to venture out into a world overrun by giant insects and zombie hybrids. Infestation is a comedy horror in the vein of Shaun of the Dead but it’s more modest in its schlocky intentions. Ray Wise comes in midway as the hero’s gruff dad and he, along with some very creative creatures (spider pup FTW!), helps make Infestation one of the best and brightest movies to ever bear the SFO moniker.

1. Dog Soldiers (2002)

Okay, before you cry ‘Cheater!’, hear me out. Yes, this is Neil Marshall’s lively, balls-to-the-wall survival horror about a rag-tag squad of Brit soldiers fending off an onslaught by werewolves. Yes, it’s not remotely a film that belongs in the SFO catalog, but it does represent what the enterprise aspires to be. How does it come to be here? Because although it got a cinema release across the pond and a pretty quiet DVD release, no one over here was really aware of Dog Soldiers until SYFY grabbed up the airing rights and in return, branded it an SFO (check the official SYFY site if you don’t believe me).

Point being, Dog Soldiers represents whats great about the SFO Saturday night concept in the same way that Asylum’s trash highlights whats wrong with it. This is a slot that begs for good genre films, and when SYFY is out acquiring high-quality stuff like this, it’s doing a service to everyone involved. When it’s trying to hype the latest washed-up celeb vs. giant mundane animal opus, it’s courting self-parody. So, yes, SYFY,we know you didn’t make or produce Dog Soldiers but you had the sense to acquire it and present to tons of people who probably wouldn’t have seen it otherwise. These films comprise the spirit of SFO as much as the bottom barrell CGI fests you churn out do. Get out there and get us some more.

The opening of The Place Beyond the Pines asserts itself as the work of a director striving to be noticed.  The audience is introduced to a peroxided Ryan Gosling as he makes his way across a fairground in a tracking shot featuring callbacks to Kubrick and De Palma and culminating in a clever transfer from actor to stuntman when Gosling’s Luke goes to work, riding a motorcycle inside of a giant spinning ball with two other guys. This is a confident calling card for a first scene and it sets us up for an intriguing and daring picture.

Derek Cianfrance is indeed a gifted filmmaker. He would like you to believe with Pines that he has become a great one, but here his ambitious reach exceeds his grasp. In some ways its ironic that a movie about the ways in which a man’s masculine pride can hinder his path and affect his children would ultimately suffer for the over-confidence of  its creator. There are really three movies here, one that’s instantly absorbing and dramatically intriguing, one that tows the line and is moderately engrossing, and one that feels at odds with itself, both contrived and formless at the same time.

Gosling gives a strong and sympathetic performance as a man who has had the deck stacked against him from childhood but now wants to make good for a son he didn’t know he had. His ex, Romina (Eva Mendes), tells Luke about his boy, Jason, but by the time she’s done this, there’s already another guy in the picture, Kofi, who seems like a fine man except he’s not Luke, and for the latter that won’t do. He tries legit full-time work as a mechanic but takes up robbing banks with partner Robin (Ben Mendehlson) when the pay isn’t cutting it. As Romina and Jason seem to be drifting from him, he redoubles his efforts, growing reckless in the process.

By this point, Cianfrance has us under his cinematic spell, even when certain elements flirt with melodrama. He’s depending on his actors and in between building some aesthetically exciting scenes like the bank robberies, which unfold  with an adrenalized rush that cements the danger. Luke is the kind of well-worn character that would have been familiar even in the 1940’s; an under-priveleged guy who has been hiding behind macho pretense for so long that he confuses it for an asset when he must rise to responsibility. Still, Gosling is suprisingly adept at making him feel vulnerable and plausible. We care about him and what he’s trying to do, even when he’s clearly making every kind of wrong decision.

What works less well is the introduction of another character, destined to cross paths with Luke, changing both of their lives (and by extension, the lives of their sons) in the process. This is Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), a young policeman who’s new to the job when he finds himelf hunting down Luke after a botched robbery. Cooper is better than we’ve seen him before—offering a more textured and authentic turn than his nomiated Silver Linings work—but Avery, an honest man fighting against a corrupt police force, just isn’t as interesting as Luke. When the second third turns its gaze completely upon him, Pines loses much of its immediacy. If Luke’s story was ‘been there, done that’ at a narrative level, then Avery’s creaking tale of the upright cop amidst wolves goes one step further and buys the t-shirt. Mendes and Mendehlson, who were fine support, are replaced by a static Rose Byrne and a gleefully imposing Ray Liotta, neither as believable or as essential to the drama.

Cianfrance has something to say about the ways in which men, particularly, can be socially goaded into actions built upon a sensible moral foundation, then twisted by hubris and false confidence to betray that path. He’s playing Luke and Avery as two sides of a very similar coin, but the focus is wavering because we must observe them mostly caught-up in their own microcosms, an isolating technique intended to make the film feel more chambered and multi-layered. It isn’t enough  for Cianfrance to tell a story about a man and his son, or both of these men and their sons. Instead his ultimate goal, glimpsed on the far shore of that perplexing last third, is to spin a multi-generational treatise about Fathers and Sons, with all the pomp and circumstance that entails.

The conclusion of the picture isn’t focused on Luke or Avery, instead honing in on teenage versions of their sons. Dane DeHaan is Jason, every bit the somber, bitter young man that Luke yearned to prevent while Avery’s boy has become a mumbling Brando wannabe with yuppie white-kid angst, made more irritating by actor Emory Cohen’s inexplicable and tonally wrong performance. DeHaan may be the only thing that prevents the last act from collapsing altogether, playing a character several years younger and carrying the waning embers of Cianfrance’s initial inspiration over the finish line while the big themes run rampant, battering the movie into submission.

The Place Beyond the Pines ends up being as fascinating as early critics have raved, but for much different reasons than previously cited. What’s really interesting is how divisive it is, straining at times to tear itself apart from within. There’s some great acting here and some that’s downright embarrasing, great sequences and scenes that strained my ability to watch without smirking, some thematic elements are captivating and true and still others are rotting on the vine. Watching the whole thing stumble along, grasping and coming back with air, sometimes immediately after absolutely nailing an emotion or moment that seemed impossible, is honestly frustrating.

In the end, I can’t quite recommend the movie as a reasonable sum, but many of you will appreciate and even adore the valuable parts. Fans of Gosling and Cooper will want to see this because its some of their very best work. Ultimately, though, this is a disappointment, not least because it began with such strong promise, deciding inevitably upon that fated path through the woods because it was convinced that’s what a man—or in this case, an edgy arthouse drama– has got to do.

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The flesh is indeed weak, but no one involved in Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead has a problem with ripping and shredding it in the name of entertainment.

The goo and the guts fly more freely than the ideas in this remake of Sam Raimi’s cult classic original. Skillfully crafted and visually slick, the new film sets its sights relatively low, pouring its creativity and craft into the one area it could honestly hope to best its predecessor; the gore effects. This may well be the bloodiest mainstream film since Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ,  its level of realism valued by prospective medical students or future butchers. Of course, some audiences are going to devour this like a Deadite on a fresh soul.

The plot retains the relative simplicity of its inspiration; five friends go up to a remote cabin in the woods and whilst there stir a demonic presence via passages read aloud from the Nauturon Demoto, aka the Book of the Dead. From there it’s an average dead teenager flick crossed with survival horror, as bodies are beaten, mangled, hacked apart and pierced by every available item on hand.

The new wrinkle in Alvarez’s version include the fact two of these kids, David (Shiloh Fernandez) and Mia (Jane), are siblings trying to rekindle relationship in the face of her drug addiction and his abandonment when their mother lost her mind. This is more development than anyone, including Bruce Campbell’s Ash, received in the first go-round. It doesn’t matter much though, because outside of using it as a device to explain why no one runs away at the first sign of creepiness (the group interprets possession as withdrawal), Mia’s drug issues are a throwaway plot thread.

If there’s any particular virtue of this latest incarnation, it’s the fact it only increases one’s appreciation of what Raimi and his crew (including friend and star Bruce Campbell) accomplished back in 1981. Both movies feature demented happenings, an exquisitely designed spooky cabin, and characters who are stupendously dumb by even horror movie standards. The difference is that there’s a kind of deranged humor lurking in the original and Raimi got a lot of mileage out of Campbell’s outsized portrayal of Ash, particularly in the film’s last half. The new movie wallows in the supernatural misery of its characters and no one immediately emerges as a likely survivor, all of them taking on some attribute of the previous series’ hero.

Raimi injected his picture with a sardonic glee, which gave way to full-on prankster antics in the superior Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn. Randy trees, cellar dwelling hags and ancient tomes ‘etched in blood and bound in human skin’ appear in this iteration but they lack the ingenuity inspired by Raimi’s shoe-string budget. Alvarez’s Evil Dead may rely on practical work and old school make-up for its beasts, but it just doesn’t possess the same charm. It’s never scary or unsettling and gets by mostly on its willingness to go for broke in the gross-out sequences.

The grisly, often self-inflicted attacks of the demons are obviously the draw of the film and will please fans of special effects and gore. If it is possible to solely recommend a movie based on its technical skill in bringing bloody visions to life, than Evil Dead is worth the admission price. The splatter is the substance, and as damaged and dopey characters get what’s coming to them in the horror universe, the physical destruction grows more unpleasant. The last third detaches from the routine structure to give us something wildly extravagant and unrelentingly brutal. This round’s surviving character wins the less-than-exceptional prize of using that iconic chainsaw to butterfly a victim in much the same way a sushi chef would prepare a shrimp.

Kudos to many of the performers including actress Jane Levy ,who plays a good junkie and an even better foul-mouthed, masochistic demon witch, and Lou Taylor Pucci as the terminally moronic Eric who summons the evil and spends the rest of the movie being a pin cushion for every kind of sharp utensil the filmmakers can think of. Shiloh Fernandez registers too as Mia’s concerned brother, and he adds the only hints of emotional urgency to the death on display.

Movies like this inevitably leave one’s critical faculties reeling, hand held out like Ash’s possessed appendage, wiggling your fingers like an upside down spider and trying to find a way to convey the appeal without fully approving it. It is well made, and yes, at times it’s quite bloody. At others, it’s also plenty entertaining. What it never manages to be is bloody entertaining, meeting our meager expectations but not giving us any inspiration to really root for what’s happening onscreen. The most damning audience reaction to Alvarez’s film? The group sitting down the aisle from me never made a peep in regards to the jump scenes, but would clap in a reserved and mannered way after ever single decapitation or dismemberment, as if they were at the symphony.  When a horror film can only evoke aesthetic reverence it has failed its primary purpose in a big way.

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