ReWatch: The Core

2003, Jon Amiel (Entrapment) -- Netflix

Wait, this movie isn't on The Shelf ? Really? Are you sure?

For some reason I assumed I had already written about this one during a previous ReWatch. Even within my fondness for silly disaster movies, this one stands out as silly for the sake of silly. Something has stopped the core of our planet from spinning, so our magnetosphere is dissipating, which will eventually destroy all life on the planet. It starts with birds going wacky and ends with them sending a team of scientists to the centre of the Earth in a special ship to blow up nuclear bombs, to restart the "engine of the planet". I was mildly disappointed they didn't discover a land of dinosaurs at the centre of the planet.

Now, most disaster movies hinge on silliness, asking us to believe outrageous things for the sake of the plot. This one jumps the shark. For one, there is the presence of Unobtanium, a fictional composite / alloy that not only can protect someone from heat in the thousands of degrees, but it can also transfer that heat energy into electrical energy. The term has been around since the 50s, but this was the first use in a movie. The metal is used to coat the shell of the train-worm-ship (named Virgil) the team uses to reach the core of the planet. There are more, but I will get to them.

So, as alluded, something is going awry with the core of our planet. Once people start noticing things going weird, they, being the US Govt, respond by kidnapping schlubby college professor Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart, Battle: Los Angeles) and asking him if someone is using a weapon on the US. They, being proposed terrorists, aren't but it does have him do a bit more digging, and then in a fit of panic, confront a renowned celebrity scientist, Dr. Zimsky (Stanley Tucci, Big Night), about his findings who then gets Keyes in front of the POTUS. I have seen this movie at least half a dozen times and I still don't recall what field Zimsky is actually an expert in -- not that it matters to the plot; he's a celebrity scientist. He's the opposite of schlubby and therefore more credible. 

Anywayz, The magnetic field around the Earth, that protects us from harmful cosmic radiation, is dissipating. If we don't get the planet's core spinning soon, we will all die, which he demonstrates by putting an orange on the end of a fork and flambéing it with an aerosol can + a light = FIRE BALL ! 

That leads them to Zimsky's one time scientist buddy, Dr. "Brazz" Brazzelton (Delroy Lindo, Get Shorty), a sort of mad scientist working in the desert on weird shit, like the Unobtanium and Virgil. He will build the vehicle that will take them to the core where they can blow up some nukes to kick start it again. Why exactly did the core stop spinning? Oh nobody knows, but we do get a few conspiratorial scenes between Zimsky and the US General (Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water) running the show. Add to the team a pair of space shuttle pilots, one who almost lost her job by landing a shuttle in those water run-off canals in LA, which was totally unfair cuz she landed after their navigation equipment failed, due to, you guessed it, the issue with the core and the magnetic field. And there is Serge (Tchéky Karyo, La Femme Nikita), the nuclear scientist, and best friend of Josh, who will help them set off the bombs properly. I mean, he will set timers, which totally requires a nuclear specialist. The final member is a hacker named Rat (DJ Qualls, The Man in the High Castle) who will hide them diverting the trillions of dollars required to build Virgil and train the team. He hacks, as all movie hackers do, via buzz words and hot pockets. He does not go into the train-worm-ship, but works in the control centre, with the General. I was never sure where the trillions were actually going, but again, doesn't matter.

Virgil is dropped into the Marianas Trench, and using some sort of sound-lazer ('z' is important) they will blast their way through the chocolate layers of the planet to the sugary centre. It basically is like flying, just more worm-like. Their guidance system shows a sub-par digital representation of .. stuff but also doesn't know what diamonds are, so they are black, and are very very big and best avoided. And empty space is static, which is scary, especially when they drop into the inside of a giant geode. They have to go outside to dislodge a piece of crystal, in soft style space suits that don't seem to be affected by pressure so I guess the Kevlar version of Unobtanium? That's where they lose their first crew members, astronaut Commander Bob Iverson (Bruce Greenwood, Exotica) and the other astronaut, Beck Childs (Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby) has to step up.

They eventually lose pretty much everyone. Serge is lost when the caboose of their train-worm-ship gets damaged and he jumps in to save the nuclear detonators. Josh loses it on Becks because he believes he could have saved Serge if an override was used. Based on how they drag the scene out, I think he could have as well. Serge is squashed in the quickly collapsing section of Virgil, which is then ejected. I wonder what else was supposed to be inside that section. Braz is lost when someone has to volunteer to disengage a safety switch, which is only accessible from outside which is really really hot, like melt his special space suits hot. Finally, Zimsky does not quite sacrifice himself but gets stuck in a section that has to be ejected so they can set off their nuclear payload in a timed succession. He dies narrating into his mini-recorder and smoking a cigarette. Classy. 

Though pretty much everyone is dead, and the nukes haven't been enough, they realize they have to use the nuclear engine that powers Virgil. But then how will they fly-worm-tunnel home? Remember the line about how Unobtanium can convert heat energy into electricity? Well, all it takes is attaching big cable wires from the hull to the system and buzz whir click, everything turns back on. But they still have to guide Virgil out of the area around the core and back to the surface, and since we remember how long it took them to get there it will... oh, don't bother... if they just ride the nuclear wave, it will push them faster towards some hereto unknown crevasse that leads to the ocean and bob's your uncle, saved!

Also, they have discovered that it was indeed a weapon that caused all this havoc, one devised by Zimsky and the General. Rat the Hacker uploads everything about this conspiracy to the Internet. And I guess the magnetosphere repairs itself like a living organism? 

Yah lots of silly, and yet, the movie still takes itself seriously, seriously enough that the emotional moments feel like real emotion. Zimsky is an ass, and Tucci plays him perfectly, terrible toupee and all. The deaths of likeable Braz and Serge are tragic. The "disaster" is rather minimal, with only the third act depiction of cosmic rays melting the Golden Gate Bridge -- the movie doesn't seek to overwhelm you with death -- as Serge says, they are not trying to save the entire world, just three people -- Serge's family. 

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): A Working Man

2025, David Ayer (The Beekeeper) -- download

I normally enter something into the post stub as I create it, because the gawds know my brain will soon dribble out any memory of a middling movie very quickly. And it has; its going to take some effort and some reading of other reviews to remember what I saw here.

That's not a good thing, no? At least movies that annoy you are memorable in that way.

I am not going to repeat my "oh yeah, I actually like David Ayer" but I will say I am surprised that he didn't end up doing a sequel to The Beekeeper, a movie that was entirely a setup for a franchise, but did end up following it with another rote Statham actioner. It's based on a novel by comic book writer Chuck Dixon, and done as a co-writing effort between Ayer and Sylvester Stallone. I have no comment on that collaboration beyond, "...huh." The Dixon novels are those pulp paperback "adventure" type novels (though calling them that is a reach) that someone's uncle would read, folding the covers back, tucking them into the glovebox of their pickup truck. They are short, unfettered, violent books about men being (stereotypically macho) men, meting out justice as it is needed. I would liken them to modern westerns. I am not adverse to the idea of them, in principal, but they all too often come with toxic masculinity and toxic politics in tow.

Of note, Dixon also slid from manly-man comic fiction into trollish alt-right rhetoric, which while the mindset lends itself to violent men fiction, it probably means I won't ponder reading these works.

The movie starts with unspoken exposition over the credits, explaining that our lead character was in the military, first the British and then collaborative actions with the US -- a specialist involved in counter-terrorism. And he has retired to the construction business, where he works with Joe Garcia and his family as a foreman. He is Levon Cade, a Good Man, a restrained man of violence as shown by an opening sequence where he deals with loan sharks hassling one of his crew. He is also struggling to have a relationship with his daughter because her grandfather, and legal guardian, blames Cade for the suicide death of his daughter. But the Garcias love Cade and he them.

Then Jenny Garcia, the smart, sassy teen daughter who helps her father run the company, goes out with her friends, fake IDs in hand, and gets kidnapped. Cade, with his particular set of skills, is asked by Joe to get her back. At first he says No, not wanting to return to a life of violence, but his best bud, the  blind gunnery sergeant hiding in the woods, convinces him that only Cade can do what is needed for the Garcia family.

Speeding things up -- its the Russian Mafia. More precisely, one of its high ranking members has a douche bag of a son who traffics girls to... elite clientele. Jenny was just in the wrong club on the wrong night. 

I have to think about why I like to start with detailed setups and then trail into... summaries and commentary. Maybe its because I like the potential of setups but the rest often becomes kill rinse repeat.

Like any of these movies, there is a certain thrill seeing a capable violent man deal with the Bad Guys. As we are still chasing after the next John Wick, there are going to be a lot of these middling movies, and many many more of the Straight To ones, the trash on the bottom shelf of the video store. Ayer tried to do something with style, but the style was ... odd. The Russian Bad Guys were outrageous and flashy, something that worked in The Tax Collector but here, seem clownish. There is a character in the background of The Fifth Element named Baby Ray, looking like he just stepped out of French Revolution movie. Add a bit more club-vibe to that and you get the douche-bag Russian mobster's look n feel, and that of his sycophants. 

When they get as far as actually rescuing Jenny, in a bizarre abandoned country mansion that the douche-bag Russian uses for his uber-illegal parties (no level of debauchery is denied), things become almost surreal. The house is in ruins for the most part, but parts of the interior are incredibly decked out in almost goth design choices. And there are trees on its lawn that can only be described as the real life sized  versions of the ones in front of the haunted house on a model train set -- think Beetlejuice. Why? Style? Effect? Its just so distantly peripheral to what is happening on screen, it makes no sense.  But the bigger point is that Jenny is strong and willful and capable, having already freed herself (but recaptured) once, and you get the idea there was an entire act where Cade and her work together to... do something to the Russian mobsters. But no, once they are away, the last of the Russian mobsters aware of Cade is told by his bosses that its done, its over, its been too expensive already. Any repercussions can be left for the sequel which will never happen -- again, this is most definitely not the next John Wick.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Cleaner

2025, Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) -- download

Die Hard but she's a window cleaner. I mean, really, its essentially that. She even has a person on the inside she has to protect and is in contact with a cop on the ground, and the cop has to deal with trigger-happy SWAT agents, and the Bad Guys say they are there for one thing, but are really there for another thing. No duct crawling though.

Joey's (Daisy Ridley, Murder on the Orient Express) the window cleaner in a big building in downtown London. I guess its possible that buildings owned by Musk-level moguls have permanent cleaning staff for their 75+ stories of windows? But none of that matters; all we care about is that she is doing the job, she's shit at the job (good a window cleaning, shit at working), and that she has a brother on the spectrum. There's a history there, wherein their father beat on him for being "a freak" while she just sat with her feet dangling out the window. So, now she's making up for it by taking care of him and being very very insolent with people.

The fact she pisses people off, including her supervisor, is why she is stuck outside the building when the Bad Guys, disguised as catering staff, infiltrate the party on the top floor. The CEO brothers are announcing one thing or another, about how their company cares and is not polluting everything. The Bad Guys are eco-activists, but not ones who have ever crossed a line (i.e. hurt people), but they have a point to make. Their leader wants to push the envelope, threaten the CEO Brothers (truly, they are the real Bad Guys here) into giving a confession to all their dirty little secrets, which will be broadcast by a hacker with a cool haircut. Exceeeept, some of their number are a bit more extreme and actually just want to blow the building up, to make a nihilistic point.

I wonder at my trend of late, to be pretty verbose in the setup of the movie and its characters, but.... I trail off in the rest, not presenting a proper "recap".

But Joey is not just a window washer, she's also an ex-military type who was booted from the army for being an insubordinate ass. And the angry people inside are ... well, eco-activists with guns. Its not surprising when she starts kicking their asses. What is surprising is when their leader Marcus Blake (Clive Owen, Gemini Man) is killed and sociopathic nutjob "antihumanist" Noah (Taz Skylar, One Piece) supplants him as leader of this little escapade. Noah also happens to have been Joey's coworker in window cleaning. Noah doesn't so much as want to expose the evils of the corporation as he wants to kill a lot of people. Meanwhile Joey has linked up with the negotiator on the ground, who has to deal with eager policemen with lots of guns, and ... well, you know how these movies go.

Interesting note: Joey's brother Michael is played by Matthew Tuck, an actually neurodivergent actor in his first role.

I fully admit, and I did in the first paragraph, this one was derivative to the max and if we were still in the video store era, it probably would have been a tier-2 or 3 shelf movie, something people would take if all the new release or "good movies" were gone. But I rather enjoyed its nonsense. I highly doubt they are trying to position Daisy as the next female action star but it at least gives her another in her cabinet of curiosities. Die Hard was also considered a B-lister, and really it still is, but it was embraced and while I don't expect this one to become a regular rewatch-er, it was decent enough.

Didn't you just bemoan the state of so many movies just being "all right" ? We do need another "John Wick" surprise or at least something so terrible it becomes a giggle fest.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Duchess

2023, Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers) -- download

I always find it odd when I have seen pretty much everything in a director's catalogue but I find myself almost entirely "meh" about them all. Like a lot of people, we loved  the fuck out of Dog Soldiers, an action-horror movie about British soldiers vs Werewolves, but admittedly I haven't seen it since. And many of his movies since have found some way to appeal to me in one way or another, but none of them would get fully favourable reviews. And yet here I am, writing about another one. 

I don't find it odd that the way you write a sentence may be explained by the amount of popular British Victorian literature you read as a kid. Long sentences long to be long.

Amateurish but with a lot of money? Sometimes a lot of money? Sometimes smacking of a sincere lack of budget? Obviously Marshall is not getting top dollar, but he has had success in the past working within the confines of his budget and genre. It wouldn't have been difficult to colour within the lines on this movie but he ... didn't?

OK, I get ahead of myself. Marshall comes to us with his run at a Guy Ritchie Film. That means UK gangsters with colourful accents, freeze frames, explainer dialogue and mega-violence. I mean, that style of action-crime-thriller has been around strongly since the 90s. Did it exist before Ritchie's take on it? Probably. Doesn't matter don't care; its labelled as its labelled now. 

Scarlett (Charlotte Kirk, The Lair) is an accomplished pick pocket who catches the eye of Rob (Philip Winchester, Crusoe), an American ex-military type now caught up in the diamond smuggling world. At first Scarlett resists his charms but eventually she falls for his white knighting, arse over tea kettle. She becomes his girl, his "Duchess".

But almost immediately Rob and his crew find themselves defending themselves against an unknown antagonist. Someone is trying to muscle in on his business just before Rob pulls off the most lucrative score of his career. Rob is cocky, so self-assured in his place in the world, and so enamoured & distracted by Duchess that he doesn't see the betrayers in his midst. His oldest and best friend takes the business from him and sends Rob and Duchess off to the desert to be killed. Except she doesn't get killed.

She comes back from the dead, finds Rob's two remaining loyal friends, a pair of pit bulls from his military days -- no, not literally, but Marshall staple Sean Pertwee (Gotham) as Danny, and Billy Baraka (Hoji Fortuna, Paixão). She teams up with them, makes a quick new crew and takes her most bloody revenge upon those that took Rob from them.

Its not that I dislike the movie, but you can see the seams. When building a scene about a diamond fence who works out of the art world, they could have done a glamorous party, full of posh people that Scarlett would embarrass, but they skirt past the five extras playing party patrons to a humdrum back room scene where Charlie the Fence (Stephanie Beacham, Coronation Street) shows how violent and ruthless she is by doing the whole Columbian necktie. Later, when Ron is visiting the place where he processes his stolen diamonds, one would think it would be filled the brim with armed goons, but the handful of guys in suits die quickly when Rob is betrayed. And speaking of gun fights, I had never seen more ineffective, bloodless gun fights since the A-Team TV show --- surely they could afford a few squibs to put holes in car doors or blow out wind screens? But nope, just bang bang bang bang bang bang duck duck duck, scene end. I mean, Rob's right and left hand are supposed to be seasoned mercenaries, but they can barely shoot better than storm troopers. And finally, for a movie that is supposed to be all about Scarlett becoming the Duchess, a self-made, self-reliant woman, there is not a single line of dialogue or action on her part that would pass the Bechtel Test, even if we don't trust that test to be real. I am not convinced that Marshall can do better, but .. I hoped?

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Atlas

2024, Brad Peyton (Rampage) -- Netflix

Kent commented on, in his writeup for The Fall Guy, that the movie-within-the-movie was depicted as an A-tier scifi blockbuster but looked like "B-movie action trash". I see that commonly when there is a movie being made in the movie -- I believe they cannot expend the same effort in the fake movie as they would with a real movie. BUT the key point is that the fictional effort they depict is supposed to be A-tier movie effort.

I think this movie is one where there was A-tier movie effort (well, as A as Netflix produced will ever get) but all we get is B-movie trash... maybe a few letters down. Its fun trash but I don't think its the blockbuster they think they were making, and some of the set pieces delivered, some of the lines said out loud, are almost as if they knew it was worth self-mockery. And yet, it just looks really really good.

In my headcanon (boom!) this movie is the sequel to the other Simu Liu "Evil AI" movie Simulant. This movie also wants to take the same plot space as The Creator but without being all high & mighty about the evil AIs. You are not meant to think during this movie.

So, yeah a few steps down in the depiction of AI from The Artifice Girl. 

Like The Creator this movie rushes through the advent of AI becoming a ubiquitous aspect of consumer culture and starts with some background on the AI Uprising (nanny bots kill their owners, etc.), led by a single AI named Harlan (Simu Liu, Simulant). If anything the depiction of mostly fragile household bots being taken out by combined international forces is realistic enough, and forces Harlan and his forces to feel into space. Its not mentioned, but apparently they have FTL capabilities making this setting interstellar but doesn't comment much about it.

Twenty-eight years later we have Atlas Sheppard (J Lo, The Mother), an analyst who hates AI (no, we don't know what she analyzes but one can only assume its just AI) cuz Harlan was mom's bot, and mom was his first victim. She is brought in to help them interrogate a Harlan operative who was uncovered hiding out on earth. Information she gathers leads them to Harlan's location on a distant (like, stars away distant), inhospitable world. She is assigned to assist the Space Rangers in their mech-suits to hunt down and kill Harlan.

But its all a ploy! Harlan was waiting for them! 😮 The Space Rangers are all but killed instantly and Atlas has to escape into a mech-suit. These suits are AI managed, and a bonding process is required for them to be used properly. But Atlas doesn't trust AI ! How will she survive on this dangerous world and find Harlan before he can enact the real plan for which he lured the Space Rangers to this planet ?!?! She will have to overcome her distrust, of course, and make friends with her mech-suit.

If anything, this is the exact kind of movie I love to look at, my usual fondness for tech interfaces and space gadgets and mech bots and space ships and the like. It has the budget to make all these things look spectacularly good. Alas, the writing is often more akin to something I would expect from a self-published scifi novel -- hammy and melodramatic without a hint of self-awareness (ironic considering the movie is about self-aware AI). Then again, that may be exactly what this movie was going for, as those self-published or fanfic novels garner pretty large and loyal followings. Just not sure if that demographic also crosses path with J Lo fans.

As for the AI depiction? Its the most cliché of the clichés. Household bots (individual AIs crammed inside a single human shell) are built and when a developer (Atlas's mom) creates an interface to allow her bot to share emotions (and full world wide network access) with her, it provides him a flash of everything humans can be, and you know what that means --- the only way to save the planet is to eliminate humans. I am pretty sure that the manufacturing process Harlan needs to make more bots would be just as destructive to the planet as human behaviour. No matter, people bad, bots good. Kill em all ! Or at least enough so Harlan can rule over what is left. Its not a half-bad action flick, with some pretty good visuals, but the AI depiction is just a vehicle for said action.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Road House

2024, Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) -- Amazon

I was not a huge fan of the first movie, but I have always liked the stoic man of skill & violence who wanders into town to make things right, ala your classic western. Good thing one of the supporting characters in this movie sees that connection, and also comments on it. So much of this remake of the 1989 Swayze movie is a nod & wink to the original. The original was not exactly Shakespeare so you cannot expect this to rise above its origins. But, it is a pretty good Friday night popcorn flick.

Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal, Source Code) is an ex-UFC fighter who makes money on the underground fighting circuit by scaring his opponents to forfeit. That impresses Frankie (Jessica Williams, Booksmart) enough to offer him a job as bouncer at her roadhouse on the Florida Keys. The original called Swayze's character a cooler, basically a head-bouncer often tasked with de-escalating. I don't think de-escalation is the point of this movie. We want to see Dalton beat up Bad Guys in Reacher style "you guys don't want to do this" ways. Again, stoic western lone wanderer. 

I was actually looking forward to this movie; not sure why, but that the work-related funk I am currently in is not letting me focus on better movies. I have half a dozen of them in half-watched states. I am tempted to abandon my attempts at watching "better movies" and embracing the suck, i.e. watching a bunch of B and Z grade movies to sate the consumption part of my brain, maybe a short run of Nick Cage's massive catalog of late? Even watching terrible movies allows for the brain to view and dissect and capture some of the "magic" of movie making.

Not sure why you are repeating what you said already in the comments here. I know you think there is an "audience" but. for real, you know the audience is Kent and Kent already responded about stepping off the yellow brick road can only lead to ruin.

Anywayz, Dalton gets off a bus in the "town" of Glass Key. Towns in these movies are never more than a few businesses and focal points. Like small towns on older roads of the Trans-Canada highway, they don't have "downtowns", residential neighbourhoods or even a centre or industry. But obviously Glass Key has enough money and residents to fuel The Road House's income, as well as the Bad Guy's plan to knock it all down to build a resort.

Dalton is a haunted man, constantly reliving his last official UFC fight, which gets teased out over the entire movie. Yeah yeah, we know you killed someone, but sure, string us along about the how. But that's alright cuz he wins the respect of his coworkers pretty quickly, and the local night shift nurse/doctor (not really sure) Ellie (Daniela Melchior, Fast X). And he quickly runs afoul of said Bad Guy (Billy Magnussen, No Time to Die), after he sends great numbers of his henchmen to visit Ellie.

That is until Conor McGregor is sent in.

At this point, I find myself stumbling back into the lack of anything concrete to say.

This is not a terribly constructed movie, in fact, I rather like the way Liman puts the movie together. But it entirely lacks any substance, anything which would stick the movie in my memory. Besides how terrible Conor McGregor was -- I am pretty sure they just put him on the set and let him over/under act his way through every scene. At least they had the other Bad Guys react to him in the exact same manner as we did. I suppose with each of these violent movies, I am hoping to bump into the next John Wick which, in genre and purpose strove to create a similar beast.

3 Short Paragraphs: We Summon the Darkness

2019, Marc Meyers (My Friend Dahmer) -- download

This just showed up on Netflix, which is where I would expect it would eventually show up, assuming its not already on Shudder, where horror movies for horror movie fans should be, and what this is. What does that mean? Well, some movies are made for general appeal, and some are only made for the fans of the genre. Whether its intent or quality or style, you can easily see they won't appeal to anyone outside the genre fans. Well, as generalizations go.

Alexandra Daddario's blue eyes (San Andreas) star as Alexis, one of a trio of heavy metal fans on attending heavy metal concerts, partying with other fans. The radio tells them of the continued spree killings by a Satanic Cult, and since this is a heavy metal movie, we put two and two together pretty quickly. Afterall, this is the 80s when heavy metal and Satanic Panic were at their height, so how are the girls and the killings going to connect?

One such post-show party leads back to Alexis's house where the twist turns the knife. If you didn't see it coming, Alexis and her friends ARE the killers!! (dramatic turn of events music!) Her father, a fiery radio/TV preacher, has orchestrated the whole thing to draw more to his flock, to further fill the mattress with money taken from those seeking protection from Satan(!). If "horror" can be light hearted without being straight comedy, this is the path this one takes. Written by the same guy (Alan Trezza) as Burying the Ex, it doesn't have the same amount of flair, and would have fit well into the era it is set, when you would swing by the video store, grab a handful of B-grade flicks and one New Release, a large bag of chips and a large bottle of pop, to shout and laugh at the screen with your friends.

31 Days of Halloween 2018: Mandy

2018, Panos Cosmatos (Beyond the Black Rainbow) -- download

Wow, just wow. Yes, the director precedes himself with quite the reputation, but wow, this movie.

Don't take me the wrong way, I am not wow-ing out of being impressed, but more by "wow, what an experience". This movie was incredible to watch, but I am not quite sure that made it good.

As I said, Cosmatos is already known for his previous movie (Beyond the Black Rainbow), some calling it comparable to Lynch and Cronenburg, or others less forgiving and saying it "has a doomy, dreamy, druggy, draggy feel that's impressively sustained - until it becomes oppressive, then pointless, then laughable." I haven't seen it, but if Mandy did anything, it makes me want to even more.

At its core, Mandy's story is a pretty straight forward revenge flick. Its 1983, Red (Nic Cage) and Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) live together in the woods. By day Nic is a lumberjack and Mandy works a convenience store. By night they make love in the woods, fish on the lake and frolic in the green. Mandy wears metal shirts, has a strange scar and reads 70s fantasy novels as if deep philosophy. And then the hippie cult shows up.

Jeremiah, the cult leader, wants Mandy for himself and summons four ATV riding demons to capture the couple. Yup, ATVs and motorcycles. Things don't go as the cultist planned and Mandy scoffs at his overtures. She is rewarded with death by fire, while Red watches on, bound in wire, but is left alive. That was a mistake.

This movie is all colour and sound, seen through the lense of mind altering substances. And rage. Red's vision is well ... red, of fury and blood. At one point he forges (literally) a massive battle axe straight from the covers of heavy metal albums and D&D games. Or vans. You could see this entire movie through the lense of an 80s metal head D&D player, kind of like Joe Manganiello's new business venture Death Saves. As long as said D&D player is deeply steeped in LSD.

I was rather disappointed that the demon bikers turned out to be basic LSD addicts, instead of true demons, but they were portrayed in a manner that out did Hellraiser or Silent Hill in horrific natures. Too bad, this is as far as the real horror of the movie went. The rest just degrades into bland death scenes, finally petering out with the (inevitable) craven death of Jeremiah.

I am still challenged about whether the trippy imagery and sound barrage actually contributes to the movie, or just pulls you from the centre of revenge. I think if Cosmatos had delved more deeply into the anguish and fury of Red, as he did when Red self-medicates with vodka. That imagery of Nic Cage dialed to 11 was what I wanted more of, and less of the animated Riseborough scenes. But, still... quite the experience.

3 Short Paragraphs: Stake Land 2

2016, Dan Berk, Robert Olsen (Body) -- download

I prefer the alternate title, The Stakelander but sequels name as sequels do. I loved Stake Land. But I didn't love this sequel, yet dislike is not quite the right choice either. As a followup to a wonderful first movie, it was a disappointment but as a B-grade, indie, post-ap movie, its a cut above the dross. Nick Damici's writing is there, the torment and pathos, but the directing is very bland. Part of me envisions a late night drunk session where they came up with the idea of doing an Aliens to Jim Mickle's Alien. More vamp-monsters! Bigger fights! Less slow!

When last we left our intrepid hero Martin, he had escaped to New Eden, i.e. Canada. For some unknown reasons, vampires avoid the border and the weak explanation of 'the cold' doesn't hold much water, unless you include some seasonal mythos of Spring to Fall raids from The Stake Lands. ANYWAYZ, the story begins with one such raid as a strange one eyed vampire lady (or was that just Viserys Targaryen?) leads a bunch of the vamp-monsters (berserkers) against New Eden. Martin loses his family. Revenge must be had; so, south into the Stake Lands he goes. To find Mister, the skilled vampire hunter from the first movie.

The opening travel bit is apropos of a vampire world. If they live by killing humans and are not exactly discriminate, eventually humans will become scarce. Martin travels through rural wastelands devoid of people; it is lovingly haunting. Once he finds Mister, in a cannibal compound that is more Walking Dead than any original inspiration, the movie basically devolves into a siege story inside a 'lockup' or protected settlement. Lady vamp was looking to kill Mister, and had used Martin's tragedy to dig up the missing hunter. There is a single scene of why with a baby vamp, and no explanation. And there are feeble attempts to dredge up some emotion, but Berk & Olsen do a terrible job at pacing and editing, leaving me looking more at my phone than at the screen.

31 Days of Halloween 2016: In the Mouth of Madness

1994, John Carpenter (The Thing) -- download

OK, let's finish this thing off. The season was not entirely filled, a few days here and there missed and some TV entries added in to fill it out. But the last few days were derailed by bad downloads, a lack of Netflix and life. Still, we got this one in, one of our few ReWatch entries.

This movie is very Stephen King / Dean R Koontz meta as a very popular horror writer gets so sucked into the worlds he is creating, he may actually end up summoning Cthulhu. But the movie is not about the writer, but about John Trent, an insurance investigator for the publisher. The movie begins with Trent in dragged into an asylum after which he later recounts the story to the interviewing psychologist. He alludes to something happening out there.  It sounds rather apocalyptic.

Sutter Cane, the author in question, has gone missing... with the only manuscript to his latest book. Trent's a good investigator, and the Publisher, who has some connection to Trent's company, wants him to find Cane. Not sure why an insurance investigator would do such things, but sure, let's go along. Along with Trent, they send Cane's editor because, that makes sense.

Cane's book are a phenomena. They are said to actually drive the readers bonkers. In fact, there is a spate of madness going on right now, as his fans attack others and even one went after Trent with an axe. And Trent discovers that arranging the book covers creates a map to Cane's supposed fictional New England town, Hobb's End. At this point, I would have talked to the art department but they just decide to drive there.

And they drive into the not fictional at all little picturesque town that already starts up with some oooooo spooky encounters. From there, things get worse and weirder. Cane is there. So is his book. And its words are a summoning ritual which will summon Cthuluhian Dark Ones from The Void. For things to really take off, Trent must return with the manuscript, have it published and then all the spooky stuff will come true. Not sure why it took all the investigating and bizarre choices, but I suspect it was because Cane was a terrible writer and was plotting out all these occurrences from habit.

This is pure Carpenter, deeply seated in B movie land, fun to watch but oh so very dated. The late 80s / early 90s are so very prevalent in this movie, from  the fashion choices to the kinds of scares but somehow it all still works. You could almost make a tie to nostalgia contributing to the madness inducing plot. I think the movie is due for a post-apocalyptic sequel.

31 Days of Halloween 2016: Mulberry St

OK, the Internet is back and has been stable for more than 24 hours. Going with out the Internet was astoundingly life interrupting. It has become a utility so much more than TV was, when I cut the cable. Not only couldn't we continue with our downloading of the last few flicks, but we had to cut 'I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House'. Via my phone I gave myself minimal Net access to update FB and the photoblog, but long form like this blog had to be left to the wayside.

P.S. Fuck Bell.

2006, Jim Mickle (Stake Land) -- download

I think this movie was in the leftover pile from Halloween seasons past. We just started watching media via Plex, which gives you posters/covers & synopses, while via the folder-based PS3 Media Centre, I found myself often asking, "Which one is that again?" And often there was no answer except IMDB. I saw Nick Damici's name and said, "Oh that one, let's watch it !"

I loved Jim's Stake Land which was seriously indie but incredibly sincere. That is my catch word for indie movies, that despite limited budgets and maybe a limited sense of experience (entire crew all around) make a well rounded movie. Too much of the indie crowd is lazy, making just enough of a movie to satisfy the film festival circuit and the genre movie blogs. I blame Asylum, who made doing good enough movies a sought after endeavour. Even there, bad movie as intent is fine; bad movie as laziness is unforgivable. And of course, some indie directors just don't know how bad they are. It's like student  & fan films, kids who are so enamoured with the process of making a movie, they cannot see how bad they are at it. But Mickle has skill and lots of fervour.

Mulberry St is also a sincere indie movie. Mickle spends a good amount of time building the world in which this movie is set. An apartment complex on Mulberry St in NYC, a falling down structure is filled with old tenants and a community of those who protect each other. Nick Damici is back (well, not back as this was done before Stake Land), as Clutch, unemployed ex-boxer. His daughter is returning from overseas war, her best friend is a transitioning young man with a crush on Clutch, the immigrant woman upstairs sees Clutch as a good catch. And so on. The building is a loose family.

And then the weird, indie, low budget horror movie emerges -- rat people infection. Yep, rat virus as an analog for zombies. In fact, they do the whole break down of NYC and quarantine of the city while our small group of people just trying to survive the night beat down as many rat people as they can. Its funny but its also deadly serious. But its also so very very low budget, which unfortunately takes something away from it all. I applauded his attempt, but couldn't buy into it entirely. Those rat people were just... goofy.

31 Days of Halloween 2016: Hollows Grove & Detention

Some movies are not even worth watching all the way through. And some are just those so straight forward, I just get up and do other stuff while it is going on. Until I lose all interest. We had to watch two just to feel like we were getting something.

Hollows Grove, 2014, Craig Efros -- download

OK, the premise caught me. I have already said how much I hate the actual ghost hunting TV shows (are they still on the air?) but Marmy likes them, so we have seen a few movies with them as the centre. But each movie version has always been from the point of view that they are legit, that they consider themselves real ghost hunters and are still seeking true evidence. But this one took a tact I liked, that they were just a TV show and were just at another location with a rep, building enough material from which to fake the episode with. And a friend is making a short doc on their show, so he is the camera watching the camera folk. That he would catch them faking their show seems against their best interest seems beside the point, but whatever, small budget movie -- script editing is last.

Mundane. Some good scares, some decent effects but mundane yawn boring. Ghosts, possessions, poltergeisting, etc. And the dumbest wrapper I have seen in years, with some droll FBI agent going on about how his team found the footage. Can't do a found footage movie without explaining how the footage was found. And they have other evidence, which is just an excuse for a final jump scare.

NEXT !

Detention, 2011, Joseph Kahn (Torque) -- Netflix

W... T... F... is this movie? Its like one giant gimmick gone awry. Its a slasher movie, its a teen comedy, its a gonzo scifi movie, its a .... forget it, I am going to bed.

Detention is that movie on Netflix with the weird Deathnote-ish poster which stars John Hutcherson, the "popular" love interest for the main character, you know, the guy known only for his role as Katniss's other love interest. His name is Clapton Davis, which should have been my first cue to turn this trash off. But it has a time travelling magnetic stuffed bear connected to aliens. And it also has a time travelling body-swap between a girl and her mother, in the 90s. Yes, the 90s are now the distant past. I am so old. And it has a stylistic opening credit sequence that gets boring after credit entry three. And it has a movie based slasher killer who is trying to kill the high school kids. Either this movie is actually actually (two intended) popular with the "Twitter generation" or it is an old man's (Kahn's only 44) idea of what would be popular with today's low attention span, multi media, mashup culture. I don't know, too old went to bed.

Rewatch: They Live

1988, John Carpenter (Vampires) -- Netflix

We are not on a John Carpenter binge but in June we re-watched The Thing. And not long after we re-watched this.  THIS is one of those post-high school movies for me, when catch lines were still a thing. "I am here to chew bubble gum and kick ass; and I am all out of bubble gum," Rowdy Roddy Piper says as he walks into a bank with a loaded shotgun, knowing full well the bank will be full of the aliens that have quietly invaded earth. Roddy is not a good actor, but he really falls into the role. Seriously, he is not an actor at all, but he genuinely does a decent job of playing an out of work guy just looking for honest pay when he stumbles across an alien invasion conspiracy -- one that has been on the go for quite a while.

I remember loving this movie when I first saw it, thinking it was a cut above what else was out there. But really, no it is just a classic John Carpenter flick -- not very good but done with a lot of oomph. And it is quite the man's man movie. It dedicates an inordinate amount of time to a fight scene between Roddy and Keith David. I know I know, the guy was a wrestler and his fans are in the audience, but these guys keep on going at it again and again. And in the end they are friends, because that is how manly men make friends? Dunno; was never one of the club.

The movie is set in a divisive period, that could be the late 80s, but could be now. The wealthy are wealthy and employed; the poor are poor and living in shanty towns. Do shanty town still exist? Tent towns? Or have we knocked them all down and forced the indigent into shelters and group homes... and prison? Its not likely we have reduced the number of homeless. So, the movie bases itself out of a small one on some edge of LA. But really, it exists only to be knocked down once the aliens realize residents are involved in the resistance.

I love the whole core of the alien invasion, so Twilight Zone or Outer Limits influenced. When Rowdy puts on the sunglasses, the Arnie inspired glasses, he sees the current world as it really is -- a massive black & white pastiche of subliminal messages and drab 50s style. The aliens have come with their skeletal, bug eyed look and adapted entirely to the 1% lifestyle on Earth. Quietly they live the privileged life while most Earthlings barely scrape by. And broadcast world-wide is a signal that makes us susceptible to the messages everywhere -- on billboards, on TV, in every magazine, on every poster, etc. Obey, marry and reproduce, conform, submit, consume, etc. All those familiar messages that even now the freaky left accuses the Authority of actually transmitting into our brain. But this movie was pre-Internet, so can you imagine how this would have been done in the age of Facebook, blogs, smart phones and the Kardashians ?  Scares the hell out of me.

I wonder how Carpenter will feel that this movie will be relegated to re-run theatres and late night movie stations.  movie that is so inspired by old 50s movie and serial TV shows, is now the old, retro horror movie. It is the B Schlock flick that will be looked upon with amusement by the kids of today, sort of like we looked at the Atomic Age movies.

Fuck it, I am using the fan art posters from Dr. Monster. I actually stole it from someone else's blog post about alternate Carpenter posters.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching (Pt. A)

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Graig or David attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.

In February I ended off a 6-parter (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) of what I had been watching over the last year. In the cyclical nature that is current TV viewing, it's about time I did another round.

Stranger Things, 2016, The Duffer Bros (Hidden) -- Netflix

Might as well start at the end.

This is easily the best thing on TV at the moment. Of the moment, is probably a better term, as per the new Netflix paradigm you can watch an entire season in one shot, should you wish to. We don't, as I like to pace out my joy. No point in losing it so quickly. And yes, The Best.

The show is a throwback to 80s style, not any one particular genre or director or movie or TV series, more a collection of nostalgic memories. Think Close Encounters, think E.T., think D&D in your parent's basement, think alternative pop music from mixtapes, BMX bikes and John Carpenter movie. The series does a painfully familiar mid-80s, which is weird considering these guys would have hit the 90s during their formative years.

A group of pre-adolescent boys finish an epic D&D campaign and head home, Will via the scary road through what they call Mirkwood. A monster startles him and gives chase. And catches him. The entire town gets mixed up in the disappearance of the boy, but it centres on the three remaining boys, and the strange girl who emerges from that mysterious facility on the edge of  town. You know the one, from a dozen X-Files episodes, where the monster also emerged.

This show isn't about hiding the juicy bits from you. The cards are tossed on the table amidst the D&D figures. The girl Eleven, has powers. The monster comes from The UpsideDown, your classic dark & scary alternate dimension. Both are dangerous and the facility wants them back. They are Bad Guys. Will's mom (an INCREDIBLE Wynona Ryder) believes he's alive. So does Sheriff Hopper. But the best parts of this show come through the eyes of the kids themselves.

Go watch it; now. It is not all nostalgia, but uses enough of it to make people my age smile regularly. As for the rest, it is just incredibly well constructed.

Ash vs Evil Dead, 2015, Starz -- download

On the bedroom wall of one of the kids in Stranger Things is a movie poster for The Evil Dead. Despite the fact it hadn't reached its popularity at the time of its release, it's a nice reference. By way of the intent of the show, it establishes exactly how much nostalgia is around that Sam Raimi movie. But really, the movie didn't reach cult status until much later. And now, 35 years later the cult status is still strong. Strong enough to generate a new TV series from Starz.

The core idea of an Evil Dead series has been talked about for years, always from the point of view of picking up after the third movie, with Ashley back working in the S-Mart. And 30 odd years later, that kind of makes even more sense. He was always kind of a loser.

Ash begins the series as the 40+ guy working at a ValueStop among similarly go-nowhere 20sumthins. Cringe. And when he tries to resurrect some infamy in his life by reading from that book, the one he cannot seem to get rid of, well he just ends up calling Deadites back into the world. And while he doesn't want to be that guy anymore, he really doesn't have a choice as they start killing his customers, neighbours, etc. So, on the road he goes with two of his coworkers, to find someone who can undo the new curse he has unleashed.

It is a fun, dumb show. Shot in New Zealand pretending to be the American North-East, it has a weird vibe to it. Locales definitely contribute to a show's character and, as this is a road show, it feels left of centre already. But it works in the show's favour.

As expected, Bruce Campbell lords over the show with his aged, convinced he has wisdom Ash. The dynamic he has with his protegee Pablo is great, and who wouldn't dump dead-end retail life to hunt down Deadites. And of course, the show is as gross as hell, owing a lot to Peter Jackson's original splatterfest movies. Down there, they just know how to have fun with the gore, right down to the "perfectly clean in the next scene" trope.

Season Two will have an extended mythos including an immortal Lucy Lawless as a Deadite hunter.

11.22.63, 2016, Hulu -- download

Not dumb at all, but still a lot of tense fun, is the time travel show based on the Stephen King novel. James Franko plays Jake, a school teacher who gets dragged into a time travel plot to undo the assassination of Kennedy in 1963. If Kennedy had not been shot, America would just be better right? Without any reason, explanation or time travel pseudo science inserted, there is a portal to October 21st, 1960 in the closet of his favourite diner. Al, the owner of the diner, convinces Jake to take up the mantle of rewriting history for the sake of America, before he dies of cancer. And prepared with all of Al's notes, back Jake goes.

There are only two quirks of time travel inserted into the story, the first being the reset. If Jake comes back from the past, sees the stepped-on-butterfly changes and then goes back again through the portal, everything is reset. He always goes back to the same date, thus having another chance to make things go the way he wants to. But he continues to age along his own timeline, which is why Al just got older and older and eventually succumbed to cancer.

The second is more metaphysical. Time pushes back on any major changes Jake tries to make. Any key differences in the timeline cause a mystical, mysterious reaction from the universe. Power flickers, people act weird and things become a little more dangerous. The bigger of the impact of the change he is making, the stronger the push back. Is it a living force getting angry? Is it metaphysics trying to stabilize? Who knows, who cares. We are not given anymore explanation then Jake gets.

So, Jake has three years or so to further investigate Lee Harvey Oswald and whether the common theory fits, that he was the shooter. Or do any of the other conspiracy theories hold water? Jake has to insert himself into a world with a fake identity, gather enough information to find out what really happened and ... stop it.

The problem is that Jake falls in love. He becomes attached to a lovely (startlingly beautiful Torontonian Sarah Gadon) schoolteacher named Sadie. Does he carry through with the investigation or does he leave it alone and live happily with her? He carries on, even though the pushback leads to worse and worse consequences, for him and for their relationship. As he gets closer and closer to the day, there are more questions that when he started and then.... he stops the assassination.

I won't spoil the show's ending.

Zombie^5

I watch a lot of zombie movies. I didn't realize how many till five queued up in my To Be Written list. Some are good, most are bad. Very very few are great. The genre is mostly played out but it will always linger in the back of the horror genre, at least until The Walking Dead finishes its run. Until then, media will continue to milk its inky black blood.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, 2016, Burr Steers (17 Again) -- download

P&P&Z tackles something most zombie fiction doesn't even attempt to -- what were the creatures before they died / changed and how much of them is left over when they become such? Oddly enough, it is often the comedies that explore this aspect. The serious ones always stick to the unsettling aspects of the horde.

The movie, one that Marmy hates in concept but will never see, comes from the book which is a tongue in cheek retooling of the Jane Austen novel.  It was literally developed title down -- here's the title, write a book for it! Insert zombies & ninjas into the Austen milieux! While definitely full on rotting tongue in decaying cheek, it is a serious movie; not comedy.

Like in World War Z, the apocalypse begins in China. And spreads quickly, on trade ships, around the world. Post war, England has to be ever watchful of another rising and has trained its youth in the art of combat. Wealthy go to Japan, while the middle class only get Chinese training. The poor get eaten.

The movie intertwines the core Austen story with an uglier plot, one where someone wants the rise of the undead to succeed. As I mentioned, the zombies retain their memories and intelligence; they just are overwhelmed by a desire to eat your face and yes, they rot. Some worse than others. Some people believe the undead can be redeemed, through religion or reason. Others believe they are the next step in mankind, and are leading the dead to organize. Thus we get an OK action movie, to foil the evil plot, mixed up with a love story.

Pandemic, 2016, John Suits (The Scribbler) -- download

Meanwhile this gives us just another tired concept zombie flick. The concept at play? The video game motif -- we see everything through helmet cams, all the action at the end of a FPS gun. There's never been a good use of this. I will tell you how well Hardcore Henry does it when I finish watching that movie.

The sub-genre is infection with defined stages. Stage one is common cold-like symptoms; the final stage has a raving eating machine awakening from a death-like coma. There are no walking dead, just people with a disease. This is the most tragic of the zombie sub-genres, as so many have to die just so uninfected humans can stay alive.

This is a terrible movie that badly mixes personal drama (i just want to get back to my daughter!) with... wait, that's not this movie that is the last bad zombie flick I watched, Re-Kill, which also had a tired concept at the core of its plot.  So, this movie IS about personal drama and that's pretty much all. Dr. Lauren, who is really not a doctor at all but someone who stole the credentials of one to join a team, to hunt down her family, sacrifices all of said team (including Alfie Allen, redeemed villain is his schtick now) to reunite with her daughter. Considering she pretty much destroys the protective detail of the place she wants to get her daughter into, there is not very much hope in the end.

I was never sure why the movie spent so much time on the prologue scenes, setting up the stages of infection and some mystery around the final stage. Sure, we get some [REC] style night-vision camera shots of a monstrous final form that sniffs us out, but it's not really at the core of the movie. Other than the title, the pandemic is barely explored. This is the issue of low budget Straight To movies, in that there are ideas but nobody has the money nor the inclination to explore.

And gawds, I hate when the posters have nothing to do with the movie.

[REC] 3: Génesis, 2012, Paco Plaza ([REC]) -- Netflix

Speaking of [REC], I did [REC] 2 back during this blog's first run of 31 Days of Horror.  Paco, co-director along with Jaume Balagueró, did all three movies. The third is considered the "origin" movie, thus the tag Génesis. As in, the genesis of the infection, not biblical reference to Genesis, despite what the character in the movie says. Really, this is more a Revelations thing.

The last movie ended revealing demonic influence on the evil zombie virus thing. It's rather unique in current zombie fiction but was the primary source back in the 80s/90s proto-zombie movies.  At a wedding, inside a walled compound, the infection, or demonic influence, slowly takes over the uncle of bride Clara until the dancing is in full swing. Then he bites another and BOOM, raving, biting, killing monsters in bad wedding attire. There is a mix of the sub-genre -- are they dead or merely infected? Well they are getting their throats torn out, before they turn, so a little of column A and a little of column B ? The fun thing is when you look in the mirror and see demonic, cadaverous creatures!

Yeah, this movie is fun. It tosses the tense, paranoid aspects of the first two movies on its head for a butt-kicking zombie-killing romp, including gearing-up scenes. Clara only wants to be reunited with her new husband Koldo. And no bloody scary wedding attendee will stop her! Chainsaws, swords and guns are picked up and dropped as the two wedded ones, and their tag-along crew of survivors, attempt to reunite. Meanwhile, a priest has discovered if you read prayers over the loud speakers it disables the zombies. Not that it really helps people much, but it does move the plot along and expand on the core conceit of the sub-genre. And, alas, it does not help the two lovers after they find each other.

Cell, 2016, Tod Williams (Paranormal Activity 2) -- download

This one was based on the only real zombie fiction that Stephen King did, but it approaches the genre in much the same way Guillermo del Toro did vampires -- through the use of a unique viral infection. The virus in question is passed through the cellular network and leaves behind only violent, mindless creatures. King wrote this over ten years ago, just before the era of touch-screen smartphones, but after the full assimilation of cell phones in general. It's not a comment of the overabundance of cellular communication, but a blatant exploitation of the paranoia around it.

The movie follows a handful of survivors, people who were not using their phones at the time the infection was transmitted. Clay Riddell, played by Straight To king John Cusack only wants to get back to his wife & son. We get a typical road story with not so typical infection background material. We also get a muddled ending without any closure.

It's a terrible terrible movie. Cusack and Samuel L Jackson *ahem* phone in their acting and the convoluted & mysterious conspiracy plot by Stephen King is inserted between incredibly boring scenes of people walking in silence or babbling on about stuff we are supposed to care about, but really don't -- character development!  The director almost seemed to think he was directing The Road, but without the great weight of the source material. But are we surprised? There is already a track record of terrible material being spawned from Stephen King books. For every five that are rotten, we get one that is OK and even rarely, a great one.

P.S. What is up with the movie posters? They are all uniformly terrible. And why attack choppers?

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Christopher Landon (Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones) -- Netflix

Pulling a night of video store movie flipping on Netflix led us to this one, which is weirdly called Scouts vs Zombies on their titling. I guess the actual title is too much of a mouthful? Anywayz, this is mid-budget comedy hinged on the idea that if they are always prepared, are they prepared for the zombie apocalypse? Short answer -- no. They require a butt kicking cocktail waitress in a pushup bra to encourage them.

This is a movie meant for teenage boys. Along with the core idea of long term friendships, there are tons and tons of immature references -- some funny, some cringe worthy but most just *yawn* on the level of fart jokes. The cocktail waitress is supposed to be some sort of empowerment of women comment, but the actress can barely run in her boots and once her shotgun runs out, she depends again on the teen boys. Really, she was just an excuse to look at cleavage. And a pseudo older woman fantasy?

The zombies in question? Boring, run of the mill fast moving, eating machines. Like most of the low grade examples of the genre, they really don't matter, as the are only antagonist fodder around the jokes and action scenes. But the idea that a bunch of teenage boys would have no issues destroying the entire class of bullies gone zombies is worth a smirk or two. At least they do attempt to rescue some of their classmates.

It makes you wonder why I am watching these movies, when I am pretty assured most will be terrible. I guess, even at their worst, I am comfortable enough and familiar with the beats and tropes of the genre. I know the rise of the tension well, and even at their worst, they touch on it. At my core, I am terribly frightened by the horde but aside from The Walking Dead few examples of the genre touch on this horror for me.

Am I looking for jewels in the trough? Or do I just like what I like...

3 Short Paragraphs: Gods of Egypt

2016, Alex Proyas (The Crow) -- download

I already started the conversation of this movie when I rewatched Clash of the Titans. Gods of Egypt was pretty much the product of safe, studio executive machinations --- if the former made a good amount of money, based on Greek myths, then this one should as well. But it didn't. Not only did the whitewash controversy taint the release of the movie, but it also did terribly at the box office. Proyas should be a solid choice for a mythological, CGI spectacle, but it didn't help this time. Even being a fan of his, I am not sure what I entirely think of it -- it has hints of Proyas, but somehow seems outside his usual realm. Entirely too much studio oversight is what I once again blame.

We are given the lands of Egypt during the reign of the Gods. The opening sequence and monologue almost had me feeling this was another planet, or alternate dimension, where Egypt is the centre of the world. Perhaps this is the equivalent realm for cosmic gods, like Asgard was for Thor and the gang from the Marvel movies? The Gods rule, benevolently but firmly. They are 10' tall creatures of magic with blood of gold. They are not all powerful, but piddly little humans do not stand a chance against them. Gerard Butler, playing Set the warmonger, murders King Osiris (Bryan Brown; holey crap where has he been?) during the coronation of Horus (Jaime Lannister) his playboy son. Mixed into the intrigue are humans, street thief Bex and his love Zaya (last seen as Cheetoh, ahem Cheedo the Fragile, in Mad Max: Fury Road).  Bex sets out to convince the maimed Horus (Set takes his eyes; which become magical artifacts upon extraction) to stand up to his brother and save Egypt.

I didn't dislike this movie. It heavily, and intentionally, smacks of my other swords & sandals movies from The Shelf in light tone with comedic notes. It looks incredible, the transforming Gods becoming grand magical creatures with starting powers. It is most definitely not our planet. In fact, father god Ra rides his boat on the river of the cosmos above a disk shaped world. All in all, awe striking and fantastical but it lacked a certain, Proyas something. Perhaps it was too light? Perhaps it was too bright? Horus is the main character but not relatable, and Bex as the token human is so bland he's forgettable. Another viewing will be required before it joins The Shelf.

ReWatch: Conan the Barbarian

1982, John Milius (Red Dawn) -- Netflix

I was introduced to Conan (barbarian, not talk show host -- i ain't that young) when I was a kid, by family friend / cousin by marriage. He and his brother knew I was into The Lord of the Rings and presented something more primordially sword & sorcery to me. I engulfed them hungrily. These pulp fantasy stories, that I already knew existed as comic books, were so raw & meaty, I loved them. And then a movie was coming out, one that needed adult accompaniment. Oh shit, mom & dad hated anything fantasy and would never indulge me. So I went through the list of Cool Uncles and Ray said yes. He didn't seem to mind he knew nothing about the subject matter, but was happy to be dragged to the cinema by a bunch of adolescent boys.

Boy was I embarrassed when there were boobs.

In these days, any movie with swords was fodder for our D&D games. Not long after seeing this, the swords of epitome in any D&D game became the one forged by his father and the one found with the King under the hill. Everyone loved the helmets and multiple attempts at Snakes to Arrows were made; even officially, if I do recall. Everyone had to fight a giant snake.

It's not a very good movie, but it spoke to a generation, not only of Conan fans but of pulp adventure fans of eras past. And adolescent D&D players. The acting is terrible, the script rather pedestrian and some of the props look plastic. But it connected with people, not just adolescents. It spawned a sequel and even a TV series.

These days I can only look upon it with nostalgic fondness. Arnie has long since been tainted by all his other iconic roles, but in this one he got to punch a camel. He had the size and muscles of a Conan but I was always disappointed by his lack of coal black hair. Arnie also had a certain lack of melancholy and none of the rapier intelligence the character had. Still, he was better than Ralf Möller in the 90s TV show adaptation of the movies.

I Saw This!! Two Pair, Two Pair

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our all-too regular feature wherein Graig or David attempt to write about a bunch of movies they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. Downloads come, downloads go. They slip in and fade out. How about a pair of "kids movies" and a pair of movies in bunkers?

Inside Out, 2015, Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen (Monsters, Inc.) -- download
Goosebumps, 2015, Rob Letterman (Monsters vs Aliens) -- download
Air, 2015, Christian Cantamessa (writer of video game Red Dead Redemption) -- download
400 Days, Matt Osterman -- download

There used to be a world where we knew anything from Pixar would be great, at least in comparison to anything from Dreamworks Animation, which might be OK. As of late, I have been finding Dreamworks as often a notch above Pixar, almost a tag team event. How to Train Your Dragon and Megamind were incredible for the former, but does anyone even remember Home came out? Up and Brave seem forever ago and the rest, by the latter, were sequels. I hoped that Inside Out would be the return of Pixar, but in all honesty, found it very meh. Charming but meh.

The elevator pitch is great. You have four people inside your head, at a control room console, representing your primary emotional states: anger, sadness, fear and joy. Oh, and disgust. Is disgust even an emotional state? And no, Eddie Murphy is not one of the characters inside Riley's head.

Riley is the adolescent main (human) character who is uprooted from her mid-western home to San Francisco; Dad's new job. Puberty is coming and the emotions are having a tough time coping. There's been upgrades to the equipment and Joy does not have as much control as she once did. Then Joy screws something up and has to go on a quest to save Riley's delicate psyche.

Is this movie a metaphor for a terrible mental health care establishment?

Kent loved this movie but I never connected. For one, I couldn't sidestep my annoyance with there only being five emotions representing everything for everyone. I was hoping they might show some people who have five different primary emotions, or at least a couple of competing ones. The world building, inside her head, is quite good but since I had not connected to the main story, I wasn't as awed as I should have been.

Again, a great elevator pitch: Goosebumps is a movie about the writer of the famous children's horror book series. Yes, a movie about the writer but the twist is that he wrote the books to contain the horrors within. Annoying teen boy comes along, releases said horrors and hijinx abound.

Jack Black plays the author RL Stine, who is hiding in plain sight in Delaware. Nobody really knows what he looks like so he gets away with being weird and cranky. Until horny teenage boy Zach meets his housebound daughter and becomes enamoured. Zach thinks dad is not just weird but abusive and breaks into the house to release Hannah, but instead releases a yeti from a book. The ink is magic and contains the monsters that RL Stine wrote into existence. Then another monsters is released, and then.... them all.

It could have been a great movie if it either contained itself to a few monsters being released or had really accepted that ALL of them had been released. We only ever get to see a few, even though a horde of varied monsters is literally rampaging all over town. For some reason, there are very few casualties. I know I know, kids movie.

The movie is very forgettable, almost to the point that I have no idea how the re-contain the monsters went about. It wants to be the Gremlins of our age but really just feels like an overblown Scooby Doo episode. The best bit of the entire movie is music teacher Jack, played by the real RL Stine, walking by in the background.

Speaking of forgettable, I am the audience for those genre blog posts that promote the new Straight To movies and want their audience to be as excited as they are, but really are probably just paid-for promotional posts. Sometimes, and just sometimes, a really good underground indie genre movie only ever finds its way out via the Straight To market. But most often, it's just a very meh movie. Air and and  400 Days are two such very meh examples. Yes, word of the month. Been a long but not very committed winter.

Air is a bunker movie staring Norman Reedus, still looking and acting exactly like Daryl minus the biker vest and crossbow, and Djimon Hounsou. Holy shit, I spelled his name correctly without seeing it spelled out 5 minutes before. They are two guys doing the maintenance run in a longrun cryo bunker. Something happened to the world and everyone important is underground in cryo stasis. Every 6 months the maintenance guys wake up, check in with everyone else (via 1980s bad terminal computers), make sure everything is working as it should be and then go back to sleep themselves.  When the air up top finally cleans up, they will wake up the sleepers and repopulate the planet.

This time they fuck up. One of their own sleep tanks is burned in an accidental fire. This is the climax of some paranoid tension between the two guys and leads them to violent odds against each other. As a bunker movie, the key stress should be about what it is like up above. But this movie wants it to be between them.

A well done movie with a great script would have us on edge, dialling into the frustration and impotence these two men feel. Conversations would be tense, tight and have us choosing one side or the other. An average movie has us disliking both of them and not really care what is going on. Hounsou shows some potential but Reedus has slipped into the type casting of his most famous character, which leads me to believe he knows this, and will be be meeting Lucille very soon. If you don't watch The Walking Dead, you won't know what that means.

400 Days is just another wonky bunker movie that is weird for weird's sake. Seriously, the premise is pretty decent, as a crew is locked up under the idea of testing long term isolation for a future spaceflight by some Space X style venture. Brandon Routh, Caty Lotz, Ben Feldman and Dane Cook are the crew.  What? Dane Cook? Yes, a serious tense movie starring Dane Cook. They should have stuck to casting people from Arrow and The Flash.

Initially its all well setup, well played out. The bunker doesn't look much like a spaceship but they play it out like they are in one. They are supposed to ignore all outside interaction, but for delayed communications, as if they were really on a 400 day deep space journey. There is the usual tension, sexual and otherwise, as there is only one woman. Testosterone, loneliness and duty to the mission are the key elements of tension. Expected. Well done.

And the someone bangs on the hatch.  And then they have to go outside. That is when it just goes wackadoodle, which would have been fine if they had hinted at some sort of explanation to the strange situation into which the crew is thrust. Present ideas, ask questions, formulate conclusions. But nope, just more wackadoodle on top of more oddness with no explanation or resolution. Its like they just gave up on the story and went with weirdness. Totally pissed me off as it contributed nothing. Still makes me grumpy.

Rewatch: Clash of the Titans

2010, Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk) -- bluray

Another one from The Shelf. I needed some swords & sandals. I needed some mythology.

So, it is the story of half-god Perseus told through the eyes of a remake of a classic stop motion animation movie from the 80s. The original is a D&D standard, encouraging people to fight skeletons and appending robot owls to every wizard's arm. I believe it was the last of the swords & sandals staples of the late 70s, ala the Sinbad or Biblical stories. I am not surprised they remade it. I am surprised there was less discussion on the casting back then.

I get it, the ubiquitous Internet lends itself to louder outrage. And the smallest of voices can be loud if shared in the right venue. But when you compare the roars against Gods of Egypt to the relative quiet around this movie that was only six years ago, it's kind of odd. I suspect a weird aspect of white privilege is that we only really notice something as being wrong, if it's obviously wrong. We see Greeks, and Mediterraneans in general, as white, so it's OK if the mains in the movie are played by Australians (Sam Worthington), Irish (Liam Neeson), and English (Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton). Alex Davalos sounds like she has a Greek name, but she isn't. No Greeks in the cast. I would love to see reviews of the movie from Greece. I have a feeling they have been rolling their eyes for decades of movies.

Meanwhile Egyptians are most definitively brown, at least in our eyes. There are probably plenty of light skinned Egyptians out there, but when you have their gods represented by Gerard Butler and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, it stands out as silly and offensive. To us. Us in North America. To me. It's just glaringly wrong. Again, I wonder what Egyptians have to say. How do they feel about the movie and how do they feel about the white west being offended on their behalf? I am going to see the movie, as it is Alex Proyas, and I do suspect that they separate the gods (white, golden hued, really tall) from their people in the movie but that has its own level of offensiveness.

But for now, this movie.

It's a fun movie! Perseus loses his family to the squabbles between the Gods and the humans who are deciding they don't want to be forced to worship anymore. And then he is dragged into the squabble after Hades reveals to all that Perseus is half-god himself. First he knew of it and now he's wandering off with a bunch of bitter soldiers to ask the Stygian Witches how to kill the Kraken. You see, if Argos doesn't sacrifice their princess to Hades, he will unleash (ahem, release) the Kraken on the city. If the humans won't worship the gods, they will at least fear them. Meanwhile, Hades has his own machinations going on, as he is pissed at his older brother Zeus.

The Adventuring Party wanders off through forests and deserts, with enough low level red armours (yah, mixing my pop culture metaphors) to be killed by wandering monsters, leaving the main characters (including Mads Mikkelsen and Liam Cunningham) and their immortal NPC guide (Gemma Arterton) to defeat the Gorgon, i.e. Medusa. With head in hand, Perseus flies on Pegasus back to Argos to defeat the Kraken and win the love of his dad and the people. As I said, D&D standard.

The core of the plot of this movie is that the gods need the humans, the humans don't need the gods. Without prayers, the power of the gods diminishes. Perseus and his family were just collateral damage but the reveal of his own godhood has made him petulant and bitter. Seriously dude, you are a tougher fishermen than all those veteran soldiers. It's in your blood. Accept the help of Zeus, who feels a little forced into this action by the goading of his brother, and use the magic sword. Do  the deed, impress the locals and then move on. It won't make you as power drunk as the gods, just give you an edge up on the monsters. But it takes until the end of the movie, and the death of EVERYONE in the party, for him to realize this and defeat the bad guy.

After that he has no issue accepting help, especially when it's the return of the girl of his dreams. And for once, the movie is NOT about him getting the princess.