Oculus

  It's really hard in this day and age to find a horror movie capable of actually scaring you. The craft of scaring an audience has been worked down to a formula and it's become a blueprint for clones. Horror movie clones that seem to play off the exact same tropes the one before it did. Yet, every so often you have one that either rises above the tropes to do something different altogether, or you have one that uses the tropes in it's favor to create a new experience. Oculus is the former. For that alone, I must give it applause.

  Oculus isn't something I was dying to see, but a friend of mine who's movie-watching judgment I trust said it was good. So after watching a few other movies, I decided to give it a go. I can see how people would really really like this movie. A fresh and unique story, great acting, unconventional plotting. All around, it's quite an experience. One that is keen on thinking outside of the box, and making you question what other horror movies would have you take for granted. So, I'm saying this right now... Oculus is worth a look. It deserves the time of day because it goes to great lengths to be an effective horror movie without relying on age old tropes that even movies like Insidious and The Conjuring relied on.

   Having said that... I don't think Oculus is a good movie. No sir. Oculus is a movie that is smart. Yet I firmly believe it runs out of steam about halfway through. The movie has lots of flashbacks, and I feel like everything it had to say in these flashbacks could've been told in a single flashback in the beginning of the movie. As it is, it starts to feel like padding because they don't know what else to do with their concept. The concept is actually quite creative. It's a haunted mirror that destroys people's lives. Yet, it's very different than you would expect. The mirror itself is... halfway given a personality all it's own. It wants to feed on misery and victims- yet on the other hand, in a massive effort to avoid tropes and pitfalls, the filmmakers chose not to make the mirror a character itself so to speak.

  This haunted mirror is simply that. A haunted mirror. We don't know why it kills, or if it has any ultimate motivation. That ambiguous approach doesn't work here. We're teased with backstory and character, but it's all dead ends. As a result, I feel like the movie is rather inert. We spend so much time with our main characters focusing on the mirror, yet it's a vicious circle that instead of suspenseful, quickly becomes nothing except exhausting. I feel like this one flaw exposes another, and another. For one, as I mentioned in passing earlier, the filmmakers really seemed to run out of things to do about halfway through.

  They pad out the suspense and use the same tricks they'd been using for the past hour on us, just kinda backwards or upside down. Yet unfortunately, I was actually wondering if they were building to some sort of twist or something, and they weren't. The ending tries to be something it can't. It tried to complete a character loop that just wasn't there. It's abrupt, and cheap, and doesn't evoke the proper response it wanted. Mind you, I have seen many endings that I wasn't a fan of, but for the most part I can understand those endings and respect them. By nature, I dig happy endings. Yet sometimes an unhappy ending is just... necessary. I'm not saying whether or not this had a happy ending, I'm just saying whether or not it did has no bearing on the fact I didn't like the ending. (mild spoilers ahead)

  The plot revolves around two siblings, a boy and a girl, whose lives were turned upside down when this mirror in their house began to mess with their parents' heads. It comes to a violent and tragic end with both parents dying and the boy being institutionalized.  Fast forward eleven years, and the boy is released from the institution with a clean bill of mental health. He finds out that his sister has tracked down the mirror, rigged it up in their old house, and has an elaborate system of checks and traps to not only break the mirror, but prove to everyone that the phenomenon is real.

  Okay, so. The mirror begins to gradually mess with the siblings. Show them things that aren't really there, immerse them in old memories, make them think they're in one room when they're actually in another. This leads to a series of wake-up moments, where the characters realize they're in a delusion and they snap out of it. They're always an inch away from accidentally killing themselves somehow when they snap out of it. This whole setup actually is pretty effective for the most part. As a viewer you're constantly on the edge of seat, wondering if what's going on is actually happening the way you see it happening.

  Yet, these wake-up moments begin to get tedious. Even a little redundant. The "shock" ending is another one of these wake-up moments. It's not shocking. It's a little frustrating, and it left me waiting for another wake-up moment. Alas, one that never comes. You know what does come though? The end credits.

  Oculus also shows us a very narrow story, one full of conflict and struggles too. The sister spends all of her free time researching the mirror- yet most, if not all of this research happens off screen. I love research scenes in horror movies. Where the heroine has to go to a dusty old library and dig through some historical records or something. The Conjuring dutifully had a few scenes like that. I enjoyed it. Oculus skips over things like that. More than that, the brother and the sister are not a united front against this evil threat.
Which may seem like a silly gripe, but it honestly just makes for long uncomfortable conversations that quickly get old. See, the brother has been convinced by endless psychiatrists that he made up the whole 'evil mirror' story to block out what really happened. The sister knows it wasn't made up, and she tirelessly tries to convince him it was all real.

  Now imagine for a second if he had always believed it was real and was dying to get out of the hospital so he could track down the mirror and destroy it. What do we really lose? Padding. Unnecessary padding. The tense dynamic between the two of them does nothing but waste time and detract from the events at hand. Subsequently, the mirror is never properly vilified. The movie spends so much time making you wonder if it's actually evil or if it's all made up that by the time you realize it's real it's too late to give character to the mirror. There was a brief scene, maybe a couple seconds, where the camera focuses on a part of the mirror that could look like eye sockets almost. It gave it a sinister scowl. An inert piece of furniture suddenly became scary... and then they never played to that tone again. The mirror itself was sidelined in the last act whereas I think it should've been center stage.

  In the end, I think the filmmaker's effort to be different was a double edged sword. Yes, they produced some genuine and unexpected scares, but they also sacrificed so much by tried to be different in every possible manner. The ending of the movie is the perfect example. The mirror is not destroyed. You could say it 'won', but there's no ominous vibe. In fact, there's no creepy victorious shot of the mirror to visually show us that it'll "live on" so to speak. The movie just ends. The mirror itself never gets an ending. The movie just kinda wraps up around it and doesn't even mention it when all is said and done. All of this because they wanted to stay away from even a vaguely stereotypical ending. So many loose ends, so many unresolved plot threads... the last act is a mess, albeit a scary and suspenseful mess. So, do I recommend Oculus? Yes. It it innovative and scary. Something which is rare in this day and age. Do I think it's a good movie though...? Not really.

  Some filmmakers should realize that employing certain tried and true tropes in your film won't hurt it, so long as you don't make your film entirely rely on those tropes. That's the lesson to be learned here. If you were hoping to learn how to destroy an evil haunted mirror... you're shit out of luck.

Shakedown

  Shakedown is part courtroom drama, and then... part arcade game. I say that with sincere affection. I also avoid the term 'video game' because, video games in this day and age are synonymous with choice and non-linear gameplay. As I pair the term 'arcade game' to the action/adventure element of the movie, I do not infer choice and in fact, I infer something very very linear. These car chases, and shootouts, and stunts, all remind me of those batshit crazy sidescroller action games in the arcade where you played the blue cop, and your buddy played the red cop, and you blasted your way through level after level of baddies, provided your pockets were deep enough...

  Pockets just so happen to run very deep in Shakedown, because (spoiler?) the climax includes a speeding Porsche, a runway shootout, and Sam Elliot clinging to the landing gear of a plane in-flight. Yep. Rewind to the beginning and watch the whole thing, and you'll find a surprisingly well thought out courtroom drama interspersed between these ballsy action scenes. The characters in Shakedown are fun. They're fun, because they're well acted, and well written. Which is more than I can say for most 50 cent movies I buy from the local goodwill on VHS, because also surprisingly... Shakedown was one of the them. Peter Weller plays a fed-up, overworked attorney, and Sam Elliot plays a rough-around-the-edges cop who ends up helping him out with a case.

  Weller is working a case about a drug dealer who's convicted of murdering a cop. Weller has to prove that it was merely self defense and said cop is a crooked cop who tried to steal the drug dealer's money. If that doesn't sound like an uphill battle, I don't know what does. Anyways, all roads lead to shootouts and drug lords, so naturally Weller, a mere lawyer, isn't going to go it alone- he has his cop buddy, (Sam Elliot) help him out with the shooting and stuff. It's an effective little duo, and one that made for a hell of a 90-something minute ride.

  The big problem with this movie is that there's no development between Weller and Elliot, unless I nodded off or got distracted for huge chunks of the movie (unfortunately, it's very likely) but as far as I remember... they already knew each other, and just sorta kinda started working together. They have great chemistry, but no real connection. Weller is the main character, and he gets the lion's share of the screentime. Most of which is devoted to his personal relationship problems and an old flame coming back into his life. While this is all well written, I didn't really care. I mean, it kept my attention pretty damn well, but I didn't care. There was another buddy cop movie with James Woods and Michael J. Fox called The Hard Way which pulled it off much better.

  Again, I may have just... spectacularly forgotten stuff, cause it feels that way, but Sam Elliot's character is painfully peripheral here. He shows up when Weller needs him, and that's that. He has NO personal storyline that needs to be resolved in the end. He barely has a minute of speaking time. He probably fires more bullets than he speaks words. Not that he needs to. He's Sam fuckin' Elliot. The dude's stare alone is badass, and usually you get all of him when he's in a movie. They should name a gun after this dude. Anyways, his dynamic with Weller boils down to who drives, and who shoots. It's so much fun.

   They have great chemistry, and the action scenes definitely rely on that. This movie feels like half a Lethal Weapon, more action and less courtroom- and it'd be a whole Lethal Weapon-esque buddy cop movie. Alas, what we have is unique enough to warrant a viewing. I enjoyed myself, I'm glad I bought it, and I'll see it again sometime. It's nothing amazingly special, but it's fun and well made. What more can you ask for?

Brainscan

  I recently saw The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and you know, more or less... it's exactly what I expected. So my review of it would be a rundown of a checklist of things it did right and wrong. Don't get me wrong, I really liked it. However, it's not something I feel like reviewing right now, god forbid I try to be relevant. So! With that in mind, I'd like to introduce you to a 90's sci-fi horror flick called Brainscan. Starring Edward Furlong, fresh off the heels of Terminator 2, and sharing top billing with him, is Frank Langella.

  Brainscan introduces us to our protagonist, Michael Brower, played by Edward Furlong. This character is into super violent movies, hardcore music, anything horror themed, computers and video games. Sounds like my kinda guy to be honest. Anyways, his buddy calls him up to tell him about a new video game being touted as the "ultimate experience in terror". So like a proper 'I've seen it all' skeptic (like me) Michael says, "yeah right..." but one thing leads to another, and he ends up trying out the game. Obviously, things get crazy- crazy bloody, and Michael starts freaking out. The game itself seems hellbent on turning Michael into a full blown real life serial killer.

  The strength of this movie isn't in the plot, or the acting, or the special effect- though to be clear, all of those elements are perfectly serviceable. The strength of this movie is in how it approaches it's material. Michael's Principal at school interrupts him and his friends watching a gory horror movie early on in the flick, and asks him "Tell me Michael, why do you watch these films?" and instead of a typical "You don't understand my generation..." eyeroll, Michael takes a stab at actually explaining it to him. Which actually kinda impressed me. "Well, it's kind of an escape..." I won't spoil the scene, but there's some wonderfully snappy dialog in that part which makes the movie worth watching by itself. However, to the point, the movie raises some serious questions about violence as entertainment, and moreover... why do we find it entertaining?

  I can't say it actually attempts to answer these questions, but kudos for raising them. At one point in the movie, Michael finds out that someone who he thought died in the video game, died for real. The antagonist muses something to the effect of 'unreal... real, what's the difference?'. Michael quickly retorts, "There's a difference! There's a big fucking difference!"  Michael is being faced with some heavy stuff. Real death being treated as a game, and the whole thing is placed on his shoulders. He's just a high school kid who's being prodded to analyze why violence is entertaining. Why he enjoys horror movies. Why blood and gore and depravity make for an escape.

  Michael can't answer these questions. He's not prepared to. He can only retort, that there is indeed a difference between fantasy and reality. He's appalled by real violence, yet attracted to it if he's sure it's not real. Why is that? Why are we like that as a people? Michael never really finds an answer, or even attempts to. He just knows what he knows. I feel like Michael is an easy character to relate to from the audience's standpoint, precisely because of this. Which is part of why the movie is so watchable. He's being forced to think about why blood and violence can be an escape, and here we are as an audience watching a bloody and violent movie. I don't think the movie is aware that it's that meta, but it adds a nice depth to it. Something to think about. The movie doesn't dwell on these ideas much longer than the plot necessitates, and the plot tends to override it's concepts and message in the third act.

  Yet, the cast is solid for the most part. Actors play their role, and well. Except for Frank Langella. He does nothing but brood and say "Go home, kid."

  ...It comes to mind, that I don't think I've ever seen Frank Langella in a legitimately all around good movie. Brainscan being a borderline exception. Lets see, Masters of the Universe, The Box, Superman Returns, Robot and Frank, and uh... I think those are the movies I've seen him in. Am I missing some epic movie or something? Granted, he voiced Archer in Small Soldiers, but there's a loophole there if you see what I'm talking about. My point is, I feel like this guy is a major league actor. He lends gravitas and an inherent sense of importance to any role he plays. So by god lets get him some good ones. He's entirely wasted in this movie as a brooding detective that has less screentime than Edward Furlong's painfully 90's interactive computer.

  Furlong is completely serviceable as this sort of character. You either want to see more of angst ridden John Connor, or you don't. Personally, I like it. It worked for the movie and he made the character fun pretty much. However, beyond all the 'serviceable' elements of the movie- you'll probably feel like you've seen a hundred movies just like this. There's nothing really about it to make it stand out. It's decent, but not exactly a hidden gem of the 90's. It's alright. I liked it. It was worth the 50 cents I paid, and I had a good time watching it. There's no reason to avoid it, and I even recommend it. If not as a horror movie (in which it works just fine) then as a piece of 90's nostalgia. People in this movie go apeshit for 'fully interactive CD-ROMs'. Rad.

RoboCop

  The original RoboCop is a favorite movie of mine, easily in my top ten of all time. It was a defining moment for me personally, when I first saw it. Of course I was too young. We all saw it when we were too young to see it. It's part of the impact. A movie that still has teeth and gravitas among the sea of family friendly PG-13 action movies flooding the market nowadays. A movie like the original 1987 RoboCop is almost a dirty little secret. There are licensed comic books, toys, video games, and I even saw children's body soap with the iconic cyborg cop on the bottle once. You'd think it's a safe movie for kids. Au contraire. It's a gritty, violent, bloody movie that borders on profane and wears it's R rating with pride. It will be remembered.

  I know guys who talk about seeing RoboCop for the first time like it was a rite of passage. You knew it was some next level stuff when you were a kid. It's something you might've found in a bargain bin, or rented without mom knowing, or maybe a cousin showed you when the grown ups weren't around. Whatever the story was, it had an impact. This new RoboCop movie could never be like that. It's destined to fade into a catalog of movies people eventually won't care about. Even if they liked it. It will never have impact. It won't hold the same kind of memories with people. It doesn't have teeth. There's ultimately very little that is special about this movie.

  I'll cut to the chase though. It's a good movie. I'm eating my words right now people. I hope you all recognize that. I'm eating my words. It is a good movie. Is it better than the original? Hell no. Is it on par with the original? Not a chance. But- it's good. I enjoyed it- for what it's worth. First and foremost, it's devoid of the sharp wit and humor of the original. The extent of it's humor is restricted to a few in-jokes that only fans of the original could possibly get. Being one of those fans, I felt bad for chuckling at some of those jokes. They're not funny. Secondly, the pacing is all wrong. The movie feels insanely short and it's almost a full 2 hours long. This is because the movie takes a whole hour just to get RoboCop on his feet so to speak.

  I understand that the makers wanted to tell a more human story and explore Alex Murphy's transition from man into machine. And I've seen people complain about this because "it's not like the original", but that's not why I'm saying it doesn't work. I'm saying it doesn't work because in a way it robs the character of the tragedy that made him work so well in the original. The original movie is sad. It's a tragedy. Alex Murphy for all intents and purposes was a dead man in a robot shell who had the chance to solve his own murder. There's a hauntingly sad scene in the original where after becoming RoboCop, he goes back to his old house only to find it empty, and for sale. It's such an emotional scene. One far more powerful than anything this movie cooked up.

  Murphy in this movie is a man with a family. (semi-spoilers ahead) A family that he gets to hold onto throughout the movie. Sure, some of these scenes are genuine and heartfelt, and provide some real emotions to this movie. Yet, they also upset a perfect balance. The movie isn't a tragedy anymore. Somehow, despite being mostly machine, he can still have this ideal family. His wife still hugs him, and we hear the sound of her hugging a metallic bulk. He's not human anymore but despite lots of talking about it, we never address that directly. Either that or it's just so poorly handled I missed it somehow. He's not a broken man searching for his humanity. Apparently he still has it. He's always had it. I'm not even sure if he officially dies in this movie before they turn him into RoboCop.

  Thus, the proceedings don't have the same weight as they did in the original. In the original Alex Murphy died. Was declared dead. Lost his family. Was turned into RoboCop. Avenges his death. Accepts his situation. Finds his humanity. Great character arc. In this one, he gets mortally wounded. His wife signs release forms. He's turned into RoboCop. Kinda still deals with his family here and there, stops some bad guys... and then avenges his death. It's a weird character arc. I'm not fond of it. There's no guts to it. Despite adding lots of emotions and family to the movie, it backfires and robs the movie of certain feelings essential to RoboCop. In the original, when he shoots the main villain at the end, and someone asks him "What's your name?", he spins his gun, holsters it, and replies "Murphy." The music flairs up, the credits roll, and you have to resist the urge to cheer. Not only did he get the bad guy, he's himself again. Despite being buried inside a machine, he's still human. There's no moment like that in this movie. There's no moment that makes you want to cheer because the movie didn't lay the ground work properly.

  A movie renowned for it's violence, the original's strength is actually not in blood and gore, but in it's plot structure, and it's emotion. This new one tries to approach the emotional content from a different angle, but it's not as effective. And if it was, by god it would've been amazing. The movie takes a full hour to generate sympathy for our hero, and it does, but in a safe way. The action scenes are impressive, in a way, exciting at least. The story is more or less the same. On the whole, it could've been horrible. As it is, it's a good but flawed movie. It's not a carbon copy of the original. It doesn't need to be. All the things I was worried about, weren't even issues here. More or less.

  The lack of uber-violence and gore is an issue. This movie feels too safe, too clean. Of all the criminals RoboCop busts... he takes down a street corner drug pusher in five seconds, and then speeds away to take down an entire drug lab, which he does... in about 20 seconds, and I don't think he even got off his motorcycle. What happened to mass murderers? Rapists? Thieves? Hostage takers? RoboCop's window of actual crime fighting is so small, you could blink and miss it pretty much. That's part of why it was a mistake to take so long getting him on the streets. Secondly, we're told throughout the movie how detroit is one of America's worst cities when it comes to crime. Yet... it looks nicer in this movie than I'm sure it does in real life. The crimes seem petty. There seems to hardly be a need for a robot cop. Let alone fleets of robotic cops.

  The action and CGI aren't overkill. Although the whole feel of the movie feels like a video game of sorts. The fast paced, kinetic, intense approach to it. It feels like a video game, and there's not really a better way to say it. RoboCop himself is no longer a panzer tank. He's like a Ducati motorcycle. Sleek, agile, built for speed. I can't say I mind it too much, since that was an obvious change they were going to make but alas...

  The movie is harmless fun. Despite all it's flaws, it could have been worse. It's middle-of-the-road stuff. It does just enough to warrant a viewing but not enough to make it great. Which is sad since I think it had all the right ingredients. I actually recommend it. It'd make a decent Saturday matinee. The acting is great, and all the characters sell their roles 110%. I loved a lot of this movie. It was fun. I'll defend this movie, it's had it's day in court. I say it had it's moments. It's quite inferior to the original, but it's still good. It exists and I'm okay with that.

The Punisher

  I am a pretty big fan of The Punisher. He can be anything that he needs to be in the heat of the moment. I'm not referring to the character himself, Frank Castle, I'm referring to the concept of The Punisher. His origins, his story. What he stands for, what he represents. He can be very 2 dimensional 80's action hero who just shoots everything that moves, or he can be a darker character. One even fit to bear social commentary on things like war, crime, the economy, et cetera... Yet this movie focuses more on the character than the concept. He's flesh and blood here, it's an origin story. We see him as a happy man, a family man. Yet, of course, to become The Punisher, that can't possibly last past the half hour mark.

  Thomas Jane playing Frank Castle, embodies what we need as The Punisher these days. An action hero, but a tormented one. Far more emotional depth than you could find in any stone-faced, square-jawed, Steven Seagal wannabe. He's an FBI agent in this one, and something goes horribly wrong, and instead of retiring to a happily ever after with his family- his family is instead murdered out of revenge. His entire family. The bad guys massacre everyone at the Castle family reunion. Any fan of the source material can tell you how far this take departs from it. Castle was a returning soldier in the comics, his family gunned down by random criminals in New York, whereas this movie doesn't set foot in New York. Everything is just... different. Yet... we got the basics. Right?

  In point of fact, I think this take works exceptionally well. It crafts a very personal revenge story out of his origin tale. The problem with The Punisher lies not in how they tweak the story (although a New York setting would've been aces compared to Florida). The real issue with The Punisher is the villain. If you can even call him that. Howard Saint is a multimillionaire guy who also runs some sort of mob family? If so, he's the fuckin' stupidest mob boss ever. Hell, not even just mob boss, lets broaden that insult- he's the least threatening organized criminal ever seen on film. His Pulp Fiction persona was scarier than Howard Saint. Who for all intents and purposes whines his way through the movie, being paranoid that his wife is cheating, and in general angry that Frank Castle is screwing with his business ventures.

  He's so bad, I'm devoting a second paragraph just to continue ranting about him. Because he's a huge freaking problem with this movie. Frank himself is such a well written and equally well acted character that he deserves a villain to match his intensity. Howard Saint is little more than a target painted on a wall in this movie. After the Castle family massacre, it is beyond a foregone conclusion that Howard Saint will die. That's not even a spoiler. You just know it. This is so difficult for me though. To have a villain who poses no threat at all to the main character? He sends assassins after Castle, which provide some of the movie's best action scenes for sure, but... all Howard Saint can even do, is run away from The Punisher. He's such a pathetic villain that I almost feel compelled to fast forward through his scenes. John Travolta, who's proven himself to be a powerful actor (from time to time) does absolutely nothing memorable with the role except provide this otherwise solid movie with a villain who's about as scary as a teenager throwing a tantrum.

  Mind you, I did say that otherwise... this is a very solid movie. Most of the screentime is devoted to Castle's journey, and rightly so. The filmmakers may have... misunderstoodd a bit exactly how The Punisher does things. In the movie, we see Castle plotting and scheming these elaborate traps to turn the villains against each other and... while it's well executed (no pun intended) it doesn't feel like this guy at all. Sure, the character of Frank Castle is smart as all get-out. He can strategize like nobody's business. But, lets face it... at the end of the day, he'd rather just solve all these problems with guns. We'd have gotten a slightly less dramatic revenge story, but a far more faithful Punisher film, and a more standout action movie to boot.
That's not to say it's not entertaining though. The only true weak point of this movie is Travolta in my opinion. The rest is well crafted entertainment.

  Frank Castle, The Punisher, is a force of nature here, he's engaging and even fun to watch as so many revenge heroes are. The action scenes are great. Stuff blows up real well and lots of bad guys get shot, stabbed, ran over, impaled, and burnt alive. What more could you ask for? Well... the subpar follow up Punisher: War Zone seemed to think that more gore would solve the problem. Nope. In fact, it left us with an even worse movie in which The Punisher is played with the emotional depth of a... stone-faced, square-jawed, Steven Seagal wannabe. Not to mention the villain in that movie is just as bad. So for my money, this is where it's at. It may not be the brutal blood-fest that comic fans wanted, and it may not have a villain worthy of the title character, but it's still a dark and brooding story that's true to the tone of the concept. It's true... to the idea of the Punisher. Which is more than you can say for most of the superhero movies that were coming out at the time. In my opinion, The Punisher is more faithful to it's comic book roots than any of the X-Men movies. It's better than Ang Lee's Hulk, both Ghost Rider movies, it's own follow up, Daredevil, and a whole host of other comic book based movies.

  Having said all that though, it's still a mixed bag for me. Yet, it's a mixed bag I thoroughly enjoy from time to time. I love Thomas Jane as Frank Castle/The Punisher, and I'll always like this movie because he did such a great damn job with it. I recommend The Punisher wholeheartedly. For the uninitiated, it's still a slam-bang action movie with a dark streak, and a heart. For comic fans... you'll have gripes, but I think it's still enjoyable nonetheless. Sign me up for more with Tom Jane! As for right now... we have this fantastic fan-made follow up, starring Thomas Jane himself, reprising the skull-donning role with more gusto and badassery than ever. Enjoy.

The Raid 2: Berandal

   If anyone wanted to know my thoughts on the first movie, I shall put links to both of my glowing reviews here and here. I absolutely loved the first movie. It was brutal, bloody, and simply... insane. If anything can be said for Berandal, right off the bat, it's way more brutal, way more bloody, and way more insane. As far as successors go, this is everything a sequel can aspire to in order to trump the original. It is essentially a love letter to action movies in general. It takes a page from Hong Kong crime thrillers, John Woo shoot-em-ups, and of course... martial arts movies. It is essentially all of this, and at the same time... it's also something more.

   90% of this review will probably be me trying to find ways to describe how amazing it was simply to convince you to see it. If you're not the kind that would need five more paragraphs in order to get your ass in the theaters to see something you're already sure you wanna see- stop now, buy a ticket, and go see it. Now. If you wanna read anyways- well go ahead. I can't stop you. I'm not the internet police or anything. I'm just writing this thing.

  Anyways... let me get the negatives out of the way. I guess this is semi-spoileristic? You've been warned. Okay. First off, somehow they brought back the actor who played Mad Dog in the first movie. Bad move, in my opinion at least. Even though he's playing a different character, it still feels weird. Like... they try to make him look different, but it doesn't work. My first reaction was "How the hell did he survive getting his throat gashed wide open and losing 90% of the blood in his body?" then I realize it's not the same character. It's jarring... and weird... and just unnecessary. You mean to tell me, there is NO other actor that could've played the role? Tch. Not likely.

   Secondly, Mike Shinoda doesn't do any music for the movie. While the return of Joseph Trapanese is fantastic, Mike Shinoda's "Razors Out" was a fantastic theme for the first movie. It capped the movie with gusto and was stuck in my head for weeks. I was looking forward to a new theme from him for this one, but alas... Moving on though, since that's not a major complaint at all or anything. Just a minor grumble. The plot actually kinda bugged me. It takes cues from big gangster flicks, specifically HK organized crime films. And just like most of them, it gets crazy convoluted. I mean, since practically 99% of all the humans even in this movie are villains I don't really see why it had to get so complicated.

  The plot is ambitious in how it tries to be a major crime syndicate movie thing, but it just felt confusing at times. Granted, I've barely had any sleep in the past couple days, and the action in this movie is physically exhausting, so I just may have not had the attention span for it. However, I stand by my assessment. I think the plot was cumbersome. There were so many names thrown at us... Koso, Bangun, Topan, Goto, Eka, Bejo, Bunawar, Uco, and more- that it's hard to keep track. I kept thinking- "Who are they talking about? Did I miss someone?" Then I realized, some people don't get but seconds of screentime despite having a major impact on the plot. It's slightly confusing. Not enough to completely baffle me, I could follow it, but it took more effort than I expected. Again, could be just me and my self induced insomnia getting in the way, but... I doubt it.

   As for the positives... where do I even begin? Editor, writer, and director... Gareth Evans.
The man is clearly an action genius. As if the first movie didn't convince us of that, there's this uber-violent sequel to hammer the point home. He takes fighting, shooting, and bloodshed in general and elevates it to a veritable art form. Never has a movie so gritty and unrelentingly bloody, looked so damn good. And I say that as an artist myself. I love movies with visual flair, and Evans has the knack. This movie is shot beautifully. He knows all the right moments to use slow motion, or jolt the camera. Not to mention his use of colors. Fantastic cinematography all the way around. This guy... action movies are going to quickly run out of ways to keep up with Gareth Evans.

   Iko Uwais has all the fire and gusto of your average Hollywood action star in his prime- and the martial arts skills to put 'em all to shame. He is a veritable force of nature as per usual. Maybe even more. He's also a damn fine actor regardless. He lends gravitas to his role, which... lets face it, could've been played by a totally bland actor and so long as he could pull off the necessary physicality, complaints about his acting would've been footnotes among the praise if anything. Yet, Uwais brings palpable emotions to the table. When he's tired, you're tired. When he hurts, you hurt for him. When he misses his family, it's heartbreaking. Of course, like I said, this would be moot if he couldn't believably punch, kick, shoot, and slice his way through hordes of enemies. Which... he can. Amazingly well too. He's as close to a super-man as any human actor could possibly get in a role like this and still maintain a modicum of realism.

  Speaking of hordes though, that's something that struck me funny this time around. How every bad guy has hordes of thugs at his disposal ready willing and able to throw their lives away at their boss' whim. This is what teetered on unbelievable to me. Only two men in the entire movie seem to have the common sense to run the fuck away from the guys trying to kill them. Who are clearly able to murder you in seconds flat. By this point, any number of said thugs have seen at least 10 to 20 of their fellow thugs murdered in the most gruesome manners imaginable. I would back the hell up and run away. These guys must ALL be dense. I dunno, it's the Stormtrooper trope, yet the first movie was able to justify it better.

   Alas...

   Back to the cast. Everyone here sells their roles admirably. From sinister mob bosses, to double-crossing gang lords, to undercover cops and insane martial arts assassins. These characters are rich, interesting, and very well acted. The movie doesn't lose an ounce of the villainy we came to love in the first. The bad guys here are ruthless, psychotic, and some are even... dare I say, honorable? Everything comes to it's own crazy climax though, and with so many sub-plots I'm surprised that the movie was able to cap them all satisfyingly. Which it did a great job of doing.

  Finally, I must talk about the #1 star of the movie. The violence. It actually sells it short to call it "action" here. That is a neatly packaged word that is too tame and nice for the content of this movie. The fighting in this movie is straight up violence. Movies like Mission: Impossible or The Avengers have action. Movies like The Raid 2, and trust me... there aren't many, have violence. There is so much blood spilled, bones snapped, guts sliced open, and faces just... generally obliterated that there is no mistaking why you came to see this movie. You came to see mayhem and carnage. Choreographed carnage. It's gorgeous. It's brutal, gritty and gorgeous. It belongs to a whole other level of "action" movies.  It satisfies some carnal need for more, and more. More fighting, more kicking, more punching, more realistic, more blood, more stabbing, more shooting, more violence. The thing that makes The Raid 2 so powerful is that it gives you more than even you know you want. Just when you think you've had enough... it firmly says "Nope, hold on... we got even more for you."

  Like many have already said, The Raid 2 knows that too much, in this case, is the perfect amount. I can't even disagree. A reviewer on iMDB said about the 2008 Rambo film that it was "Pornography of violence" and he wasn't saying that as a compliment. However, I think that phrase is rather brilliant and before I eagerly tack it onto The Raid 2, lets look closer at it for a second. Pornography does what precisely? It takes the act of sex and boils it down to an exploitative machination of the reproductive organs.  People often say, "You don't watch porn for the story..." or acting, or plot, or what have you. Why do you watch it? Because of the sex. There's no mistaking that. If you're watching porn, you know you're watching it for the sex. Raw, uncensored, graphic... sex. And it better be good sex, or it's bad porn. So essentially, there's a craft to it. Yeah? Same with violence in action movies. Nobody is fooling themselves when they go to see a movie like this. They want to see the violence. Raw, uncensored, graphic... violence. So to call The Raid 2 "Pornography of violence" is dead-on.

  You all know why you want to see this movie, and I'm telling you right now, it delivers. Gareth Evans has the knack for this craft. I could extend this into a debate about how healthy it is to subject oneself to two and a half hours of violence like that- but like porn, it's an escape. See Don Jon for more details on that. However, it is fantasy nonetheless. An adrenaline fueled testosterone fantasy. And before this review gets any deeper into the science of the how and why, I'm just gonna say... it's so intense that I literally couldn't sit calmly through most of the movie. It's so in your face and exciting that I was physically exhausted by the end. I wanted to cheer and I most certainly applauded. It is an experience not to be missed by action junkies. Not for casual viewers though. I know many many people who simply would not be able to sit through this movie. The bloodshed and bone-breaking is non stop and hits with the impact of a freight train.

  When all is said an done, The Raid seems like a test run in comparison. The Raid 2 is a showcase of the master's refined skill, delivering two and a half hours of non-stop violent "action" and gut-wrenching excitement. I can't recommend it enough if this is up your alley. The term "greatest action movie ever!" is being thrown around a lot, and while I would subject that in itself to scrutiny, I'm not going to try and stop that phrase from spreading, because the more it does... hopefully, the more people see it. And lord knows, it deserves to be seen. No, it deserves to be experienced.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

  I don't usually review TV shows. I might have reviewed 2 or 3 total since I started the blog. I've always intended to review more, like Breaking Bad, Cowboy Bebop, and stuff I've put serious time into. Alas, reviewing an entire show is a daunting undertaking, and I really dislike reviewing seasons because you have to dive into minutiae and talk about stuff a casual reader might not know about. "X character in this season finally married Y character over here! This was a BAD move and really brought the show down." Why? Does someone who's never seen the show have any idea who X and Y might be? Not to mention it's a major spoiler. Would they know why that particular pairing cheapened the show? No. So I prefer to review an entire show, so I can let people know if at the end... you'll feel like it was worth your time as a whole.

  Enter: Deep Space Nine. My love for all things Star Trek feels like I was born with it, but in truth, I merely grew up with the franchise. I was watching episodes of Star Trek: Voyager when I was just a toddler, and I've seen a couple of the Next Generation movies in theaters. Even at the ripe young age of 6 I knew that The Wrath of Khan was the greatest. I used to rent it often. So, in short- I was a Trekkie in the making. I don't feel like delving into my history with Star Trek (as a frame of reference to know where, I, as a viewer am coming from with my point of view on this show) is complete without talking about how I really got sucked into it. Star Trek was always around in my childhood, but it wasn't something we were religious about. We watched the movies pretty often, but even then...

  One fateful day, at a garage sale back in the mid 2000's (mind you, even 2004 was a decade ago) I was digging around for movies or video games and I found a box full of VHS tapes. I do mean full. There must have been about 50 tapes in this box. As I read the label on each tape, I quickly discovered that each tape had two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager recorded on it. This must've been a full third of the entire show. My mom quickly insisted that we buy it. The guy only charged us $5, and then said... he'd have someone help us load up the rest of the boxes. There were two more boxes. Both full. After going over all the tapes at home, we realized we had every episode of the entire show. It took us a good two months to watch them all, in order of course. It was amazing. We'd never had the opportunity to watch any Star Trek show from start to finish before. We'd always happen to tune in a season too late to watch The Next Generation in it's entirety when it was airing on the Sci-Fi (now called SyFy) channel. Couldn't even find the original series anymore.

  In short, we fell in love with Star Trek: Voyager. We started the whole series over again at least once a year. Then, life pushed my family and I around for a while and we moved, things happened, and we kinda gave up watching the show. We'd watch a bit, here and there, but mainly we were back to the movies and whatever out-of-order episode of The Next Generation was on SyFy. Then came Netflix. A proud owner of a PS3, when Netflix streaming hit... it pretty much was the most amazing thing ever. About a year later, all the Star Trek shows appeared on Netflix. Sheer bliss. Naturally, being able to watch Voyager without having to fast forward commercials was my first instinct... but not for long. I now had access to The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise.  All of them. So of course, being ever familiar with Kirk, and Picard, we powered through The Original Series, and The Next Generation. At least twice over. But even then, I knew there was one show I simply couldn't ignore anymore. A show not even my parents bothered with, much less even liked... Deep Space Nine.

  I'm not sure if I started watching it because I'd already seen everything else (excluding Enterprise. Which I just don't like) or if I genuinely wanted to discover it. It was always "that one show" in my family. Nobody cared for it. My mind had been made up for me, before I even had a chance to find out on my own. So I started watching it on Netflix. The series premiere didn't grab me. I saw it. Forgot about it. Moved on. After starting Voyager again with my family I thought to myself, the premiere of this wasn't so great either... and neither was the premiere of Next Generation... maybe I should give Deep Space Nine another shot? So I did. I won't lie, it was a timely mix of sheer boredom and inertia that carried me through the first couple seasons of the show. They were unbalanced, and they struggled to find a rhythm. Yet... even Next Generation and Voyager stumbled through their first couple seasons.

  Deep Space 9 however is almost frustrating to watch in it's sophomoric seasons. You get the sense that it's much more story driven than the other shows, and by that I mean a single story. One big unfolding plot that threads through the entire show. Yet, this big plot isn't handled so well in the beginning. Everything sort of... doesn't fit. The show had potential for chemistry, but only glimpses of when everything truly 'clicked' in seasons 1 and 2. It tries to maintain the "monster of the week" formula that served it's predecessors so well, but the catch is, Deep Space Nine is set on a stationary outpost. You can't "seek out new life forms and new civilizations". You're stuck. On a very confined space station. So you're left with mainly character episodes. Unfortunately for the show, the characters are in their infancy development-wise this early on. Usually episodes like this come during seasons 4 or 5 in any other show. You simply don't know these characters that well so early. Certainly not well enough to care by default.

  Season 3 was a godsend. The writers seemed to get wise to how these characters could interact successfully. Bam. Sparks. This was the turning point for the whole show. Am interesting cosmic conspiracy began to form coherently, eventually they were given a swank little ship, the characters blossomed, chemistry flowed and the show mostly dropped the "monster of the week" formula. Some shows NEED that (ahem. X-Files, looking at you...) others can't sustain it at all. Just like DS9.  The cast really came into their own in the seasons that followed and so did many other things. The space station stopped feeling like a hotel, Benjamin Sisko stopped feeling like a hotel director, and everything started feeling important. The station became the lynch pin in a war against a powerful alien enemy, and Sisko, the show's main protagonist, became more than just an explorer and a diplomat like Kirk, Picard or Janeway... he became a soldier. A soldier on the front lines of an intergalactic war.

  The setting of a war like that gave the show some very interesting material to deal with. The show becomes very political and intricate. Cause and effect lasts beyond any singular episode. Things happen that have lasting repercussions for seasons to come. This is also why it's hard to watch out of order. All the other Trek shows can be casual viewing. Not Deep Space Nine. No way. You have to follow the story sequentially to get the full effect. This I imagine, robbed it of some of it's larger audience. Even Trekkies. This show demands your full attention and continually too. Miss an episode of Next Generation, and you're fine. Catch it on a rerun. Miss an episode of Deep Space Nine, and the tides of the entire war might have shifted, a crucial character might have died, someone might be missing, and the station might be under siege. It could be any... or all of these things. And any one of those plot threads might extend over five or six episodes, with measurable effect on the rest of the entire show.

  Deep Space Nine is a show you have to follow intently. Things are mentioned from earlier episodes, even earlier seasons, and you have to know those things in order to understand what's going on. It'd be incredibly hard to simply 'tune in' halfway through the show and expect to enjoy it. However, because the show demands so much of it's viewers in a franchise that's so very very different, it's easily way more rewarding. The characters in the show form a much tighter bond in my opinion. The kind of lasting friendship you can see in Kirk and Spock can be seen amongst the crew of DS9. The camaraderie is palpable because you're watching a group of people bond not just over regular day-to-day situations, but over the course of a war where their lives are constantly on the line in a way previously unseen in a Trek show.

  Deep Space Nine is definitely the red headed child of the Star Trek franchise, but that is no reason to avoid it. Especially not now when awesome services like Netflix have made it available in it's entirety right at your finger tips. It's an incredibly rewarding show with top shelf stories and sci-fi concepts for the ages. The characters end up feeling like family in a way that only certain singular episodes of the other shows were able to relate to the audiences. Having finished the whole show, I feel more complete as a Star Trek fan. Is this a good jumping-on point for people who've never seen any Star Trek shows before? No... I don't think so. For that, I suggest Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 3 and onward. Arguably the most polished and well defined seasons of the entire franchise. Or, fall in love with the movies. Make no mistake though... if you're a newcomer, no matter where you choose to start, Deep Space Nine more than deserves to be a stop on your tour through the vast Star Trek universe. While not my favorite Star Trek show, it is undeniably, a fantastic show, and even a worthy hallmark in the Star Trek franchise. It's one I wholeheartedly recommend and one I can't wait to revisit sometime in the future.

Bounty Killer

  It's movies like this that just... make my day. While the art of exploitation may not be the general norm these days, there are movies and people who try to keep it alive. Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and maybe even Eli Roth are some of the few who did so, quite famously. Yet, the indie/low-budget/straight-to-video market is chock full of wannabe exploitation movies. Movies that try to be grindhouse... but never really get there. Oddly enough, the original genre was born out of greed. These movies weren't made for the fun of it, or for the 'art' of it. They were made to make as much money as possible. But in the 70's and 80's, you had to compete with box office juggernauts like Jaws, and Star Wars. So, what do you do...?

  Of course, you obviously make ripoffs of those movies, with a few... changes. Mainly, boat-loads of nudity, tons of gore, and some of the most off the wall insane concepts you could possibly imagine. Sometimes exploitation movies didn't directly ripoff any specific movie, but you'd be hard pressed to say the concept, look, or general story wasn't painfully familiar, if you could only put your finger on it... Often times these movies simply took a very tried-and-true concept, maybe even overused and made it it's bread and butter. The rape/revenge genre for example. Tons of exploitation movies boil down to that. Thriller: A Cruel Picture, I Spit on Your Grave, Savage Streets, Ms.45, I could go on...

  The point is, exploitation movies sought to lure in a crowd by being vulgar, graphic, in-your-face, and... well... exploitative. You could see in these sleaze-fests what you couldn't see in mainstream movies. They had no holds barred, and without anyone much trying, they were often a hell of a lot of fun. Usually because they were unpredictable and overly violent. Simple, bloody, to-the-point, fun. If X villain killed your family, you grabbed a bunch of guns, and killed him to death. What's not to love? For some people... nothing. It's not their bag. I get it. It's not for everyone. These movies are glorified trash. Even fans admit that. But there's something irrepressibly fun about exploitation movies. Which is why filmmakers romanticize the genre even to this day.

  It's become something of an artsy sub-genre of movies because nowadays, you have to replicate the look of how exploitation movies looked back then, or at least replicate the atmosphere and design of things. Back in the 70's and 80's, these movies were grainy, dirty looking, and low budget. That stuck with the genre like white on rice. So when guys like Rodriguez and Tarantino made their movies, they of course replicated the dirt, grain, and grime. You just had to. Unfortunately, not all efforts are as successful. Some movies over-complicate things, or overuse the grain filter, or use CGI too much (which REALLY kills the experience) and it just... doesn't feel right. Lemme tell you something, low budget CGI is ugly, clunky, and could only possibly be seen as nostalgic in maybe another 20 years. So when these wannabe exploitation movies have like... CGI blood... it's lame. Fail.

  I get tired of getting my hopes up for some of these movies, and since so many of them sail under my radar, I rarely touch any of the new exploitation movies. Then this movie came along... I happened to like the lead actors, so I thought to myself, I give it five minutes- if it hasn't hooked me by then... I'm turning it off and going back to bed. As if it read my mind and said "Chill out bro, we got this..." it hooked me immediately. The movie opened with a big bloody shootout in a bar. Blood? Not CGI? Check. Beautiful woman who's in a lead role wearing impractically sexy clothing? Check. Ruggedly handsome lead actor who shoots a lot of guns? Check. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. This was promising. Yet it could have gone so wrong...
and didn't.

  This movie is like The Road Warrior (a genre classic in anyone's book) and Mr. & Mrs.Smith, smashed together. It has all the trappings of a fantastically fun exploitation flick and good looking stars with plenty of chemistry between them. The concept is a bit wonky, but like any good grindhouse flick- it's almost unbelievable yet... scarily enough, could actually happen. It brings to mind the state of society as seen in the movie Death Race 2000. A society so desensitized to carnage and death, it became a national pastime. Completely ridiculous, no?  Yet... we enjoy movies like that, don't we? Such meaty food for thought. In a similar manner, Bounty Killer shows us a future where big corporations ended up controlling the world- overruling governments, and starting business wars between each other. Literal wars. I found it funny how brand name corporations brought about the nuclear apocalypse and not warring governments. Yet, are they really any different when all is said and done? More meaty food for thought!

  Yet, the movie isn't a thinking man's movie. It's a movie where people get chopped in half, decapitated, shot to pieces, stabbed in the eyeball, explode, and ultimately die in various horrible yet awesome ways. This is why you come to exploitation movies! The killing! What else? This movie is spectacular in it's gratuitous violence. Few low budget movies have the guts to forego CGI blood, which is definitely cheaper these days, and use loads of real fake blood. Real... fake... blood. It's a funny phrase, but a necessary distinction, albeit one I'm sad I have to make. CGI blood, just... shouldn't be a thing. If it's existence is necessary, it wasn't meant to be used for something so trivial as shooting someone in the chest onscreen. More or less, it's about believe-ability. You have to buy into what you see on the screen to a certain extent. Sure, bright red blood isn't exactly realistic- but it is tangible, and as far as something that exists in reality, and is on set, being sprayed all over the actors... it has a certain gravitas to it that can still make you cringe. CGI blood... takes you out of the experience. It just looks extra fake, to the point where it doesn't even look like it's there. So very bad.

  Bounty Killer uses real fake blood. A LOT of real fake blood. This made me smile, and the sheer variety of ways in which our protagonists kill the bad guys. Oh boy. So much fun. Yet despite the desert-punk, post-apocalyptic, motorcycling, gun-toting, good time this movie is- there are a few drawbacks I'd be remiss if I didn't point out. First, there is a lot of CGI usage. Understandably so though. Since matte painting and miniatures are such dead art forms, hiring people to do that stuff for you now could be insanely expensive. Especially when you can hire some college dude to whip up a serviceable background or helicopter shot on Photoshop for next to nothing. This is why I'm not holding it against the movie. It doesn't feel like they were copping out, but more like they had budget restraints. I can understand that. To be fair, they do a damned good job of trying to blend the CGI bits and pieces in to plenty of practical effects. Most of it is really well done. Great job.

  Secondly, you guys had Gary Busey... and wasted him. The granddaddy of scenery chewing, and he gets one little scene where he does next to nothing. This guy could've been walking, talking, gold in a movie like this! Yet oddly enough, he seems to be the one person sleepwalking through his screentime, all five minutes of it. Shame on whoever's fault this was. For once, Busey isn't funny or outrageous. He walks into the movie, and is forgettable five minutes later. Matthew Marsden does a fantastic job as the leading guy. He has the gruff post-apocalyptic hero shtick down to a T. He looks good attached to the trigger of a gun, and thankfully, that's where he spends most of the movie. This movie is full of action, as any good exploitation action flick should be. Gunfight after gunfight, each one eclipsing the last. It's a thing of beauty. And then there's car chases through the desert so friggin cool that they would have Max Rockatansky sending flowers.

  Lest I forget to mention Christian Pitre. She is a quintessential exploitation lady of action. Strangely enough though I can't find a damn thing about the actress online. A bare bones iMDB page, no wikipedia page at all, and only a handful of credits to her name. Shame. She's amazing. I do think though she's a bit older than her character was supposed to be, and sometimes it showed and was odd, but it wasn't a cardinal sin or anything. She got into the role, got bloody, dirty, and all messed up... repeatedly. As much of a star as Marsden, if not more, she was a shining delight to watch in this movie. There was even a comic relief guy who wasn't unbearable. I want to fault the movie for including him, because exploitation movies didn't really intentionally inject humor into their movies. They ended up being unintentionally funny, which is something Black Dynamite understood in spades. 

  Yet, I can't fault Bounty Killer for this, firstly because the guy is actually funny, secondly because this movie walks the line. It doesn't employ film grain or anything and it's not overly gimmicky of being an exploitation movie. It just is. It's not trying to be a grainy, drive-in, bloodfest from the 70's, anymore than the exploitation movies in the 70's were trying to spawn a retro-cool sub-genre. Bounty Killer is simply inspired by those movies, influenced by them, and fueled by them. It has no problem existing in 2013 though. More stupid fun movies should be like this. It knows it's entirely batshit crazy and off-the-wall, and like any good movie in the genre does- it embraces it. 

There's a scene in the movie (semi-spoilery but not really?) where the villain is trying to coerce the hero into joining her- someone knocks on the door, and the villain says "We're in the middle of a meeting!" Of course the person knocks the door down and it's our hero's leading lady. Who of course, promptly punches the villain in the face with a quip. The hero then says... "I would've said 'this meeting is over!'"
Which is exactly what I was hoping would be said. If you thought the same thing, then undoubtedly, you'll love this movie. If you rolled your eyes and groaned, stay far away. 

Spawn

  A dark, Gothic comic book to begin with, Spawn never had an easy transition to the big screen. At the time, when you said "comic book movie" you obviously meant something like Superman: The Movie, or Tim Burton's Batman. Both well respected movies. Both relatively family friendly. (In Superman's case, maybe excessively so...) Then you try to pitch the head honchos a comic book movie... about a hero who gets his powers straight from Satan? The more you try to explain, the worse it would seem. See, he's an assassin who's a borderline psychotic who gets killed and winds up in Hell and makes a deal with the devil to lead his satanic army against god and his angels in exchange for seeing his wife again... and then there's John Leguizamo's character. Oh boy.

  There is no part of this that sounds PG-13 or even remotely family friendly. For movie studios looking to make some money, this is a very uncomfortable prospect. After all, their #1 priority is to maximize the appeal of this movie- of any movie -so that more people will see it. Obviously. More people = more money. Would Spawn have been better without studio imposed restrictions? Most likely. Would it have been that much better? I doubt it, and... this is the first time I've doubted it. In a roundabout way, I grew up with this movie- although I wasn't allowed to see it as a kid, it's always one I wanted to see. Much like Small Soldiers, and Mars Attacks. My parents lumped it in with that 'edgy' group of movies that was just out of reach for a kid like me.

  I saw the toys in stores, the ads on TV, the trailers, the box art at the video stores, the posters, the comic book adaption. I wanted to see Spawn very very badly. It looked awesome. So when I finally saw it, I was 14 and admittedly, it was a pretty cool experience for me. So when it came time for me to assess the movie with my underdeveloped movie critic sensibilities, I blamed all of it's flaws on the studio interference. Honestly, it's quite easy to do because without studio interference this movie might have been Rated R. I would've like that, and fans would've too. Yet, the Director's Cut is Rated R, and that doesn't fix any of it's problems. Mainly because it was still shot with PG-13 in mind, so a little Director's Cut can only restore what was altered or cut our prior to it's release. Sigh.

  Anyways, the problem does not solely lie on the studio involvement, much blame can be placed squarely on the shoulders of first time director Mark A.Z. Dippe. As I read what I'm writing here in my head, I say his name with a slow and over-articulated draw that is dripping with disdain. Yeah, the guy has done good visual effects work on movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, but why on Earth they handed him a forty million dollar summer blockbuster like this will always escape me. You need a tried and true director for stuff like this. Dippe is out of his league and it shows. This sophomoric effort is disjointed and lacks any real bite. A movie like Spawn needs teeth, so to speak. You have all this wonderfully dark and grim thematic content, yet you squander it on the most banal humor that only a five year old would find funny, and you shortchange the movie in the action department as well.

  Spawn is a mess. Entirely. There are some cool parts, no doubt. Michael Jai White makes a good hero, and he has several really cool scenes in the movie. The alley fight with the giant demon-gecko, The Violator, springs to mind as one of the few times this movie worked really well. The setting is another example. Much of Spawn's journey has him returning to an alleyway that the homeless have turned into a makeshift city. It's a grim set and filthy, yet it's also interesting and fully realized. Something that most of this movie isn't. When it comes down to it, I argue Spawn needed more action scenes to qualify as a guilty pleasure. It's stunning that this movie is so short on action. So much of the movie is chewed up by awful voiceovers that overly explain everything, and stupid scenes between Leguizamo's Clown and (a horribly misused) Martin Sheen, that Spawn is almost a leftover character- scrambling to find time to make use of his new powers and kick some ass.

  He's relegated to operate under some terrible pacing issues that makes the film suffer so badly that it can't even scrape up enough energy to be a fun bad movie. For anyone who owns the movie, and has willingly sat through it more than once, it's appeal must lie in some warped sense of nostalgia. I know it does for me. It's an hour and thirty eight minutes of wasted potential in all areas, save a few. Like I said, there are some scenes that work so well, you're almost impressed. In those scenes you get a glimpse of what Spawn could have been, and sadly wasn't. But first and foremost the one aspect of this movie I find absolutely awesome, is the design aspect. Spawn looks really damn cool. The way his armor activates and adheres to him like a second skin, the look of his mask, his cape. He looks awesome. The movie does him justice, if nobody and nothing else.

  Unfortunately, this is not the "special effects event of the year!" anymore, and I doubt it ever was. The computer effects in this movie for the most part, are just... painfully outdated. I'm not one to rag on old effects, but these are so bad, someone should've reconsidered making this movie like they did. The scenes of hell are entirely computer generated and it's bad looking. Objects float around looking like a Windows 95 screensaver, textures are of such a low resolution they look flat and fake, pixels and other artifacts crop up frequently, oh and they couldn't render hair worth a damn. The devil himself, Malebolgia, looks just as awful as the setting he's trapped in. If I was him, I would most certainly enslave Michael Jai White to try and murder God so I could finally escape that flat 2D looking Hell and find myself some better looking CG accommodations in... maybe a Pixar flick?

  So, in closing, Spawn has all the ingredients there to have at the very least be a guilty pleasure movie. Fantastic design, some cool scenes, Michael Jai White, some occasional cool effects, and that's about it. It's up to you to decide if that's worth the stilted acting, gross humor, terrible pacing, and amateurish direction. For me? Eh. I watched it as an excuse to review it. Or... did I plan to review it as an excuse to watch it? It's such a misfire of a movie, but one that I have nostalgic feelings for. A movie that is nothing like what it should've been, yet still so different from anything else of it's time. It's a mixed bag, and one that I'd love to remember fondly, honestly, yet I just can't.

    Ladies and Gentlemen...
                                           Spawn.

Starship Troopers: Invasion

  Starship Troopers: Invasion, the franchise's side-movie. (Note the lack of a number in the title...) It looks nothing like the previous movies, sadly, taking on more of a Halo look and design. Who can blame them though? This one takes place almost entirely in space, and on starships. Is Invasion a bad one? Not really. If that's not the rousing self-assured answer you were hoping for... too bad. Invasion suffers the pitfalls of the second movie, and then some. Wooden acting is replaced by wooden CGI (a complaint mainly limited to facial expressions to be fair) and again any satirical edge is completely absent. This is a movie about two things, troopers and bugs. They spend the movie killing each other. I do have to admit, the story is better than I thought it'd be, and the characters end up being fun to watch- so if anything... this is, well, not bad.

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

  "It's a good day to die!" says the propaganda in the movie, yet I'd argue it's a good day to let the franchise die instead. If that sounded like a disheartening first line, well, you're right... but not entirely. Starship Troopers 3: Marauder blasts it way onto home video with quite a bang, in my opinion. First, and foremost, this movie marks the return of Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico. Colonel... Johnny Rico. Van Dien came under fire in reviews of the first movie as being wooden and in general, a sore point of the movie. Personally, I felt his soap opera-esque performance fit the tone of the satire quite well. I think people missed that point. Which was intentional, so sayeth the director. Who knew though that people would get so hyped about his return to the franchise? Only one movie away and already he was sorely missed.

  I can't say that Marauder is head and shoulders above Hero of the Federation, but hot damn I wish I could. People didn't realize how badly Starship Troopers would miss Casper Van Dien, and apparently the makers of Marauder didn't realize how badly they needed better special effects. Van Dien alone isn't enough to sell this movie 100%. The CGI bugs in Marauder look awful, in a word. They're plastic-y and they move like archaic video game graphics. One tends to forget how bad they are in comparison to the overall forgettable 2nd movie, but geez. Rewatching the 2nd one made me respect it a little more, due to the fact their CGI was admittedly on point, and looking very good. By contrast, Marauder's CGI looks like crap. No way around it. That seriously harms this movie. Because amazing to at the very least, decent special effects have been the hallmark of this franchise. Not good acting, or good stories. People like the bugs, and seeing them slaughter the troopers. Which looks... odd here.

  The return of Johnny Rico is cause to be excited. He looks like he's back in his element, and the movie is better off for it.Van Dien lends a bit of seriousness to this movie as without him, I feel like it'd be a bad joke. This is an effects heavy movie, but their computer generated effects aren't so hot. They instead rely more on animatronics and practical effects to achieve their goals. Those effects are actually pretty damn good. It's a shame the warrior bug looks like a computerized toy by comparison. There is more of what you loved about the first movie in this one though. Johnny Rico shouting his lines "C'mon you apes! You wanna live forever?"
and leading the charge against the bugs, decked out in the classic Mobile Infantry armor. You can't help but smile and get this warm and fuzzy blast of nostalgia when you see this. Whenever they're in the thick of things, shooting bugs, I have no issues with the movie. It excels whenever Rico is the main focus. Oddly enough, the same can be said about the original honestly.

  However, the supporting cast of Marauder isn't fun to watch. Most of these actors are even slightly annoying. None of them have the charisma that Casper Van Dien brought back to the franchise. At best, they're passable, at worst, they make it feel like a SyFy movie of the week. Ugh. I do have to give props to Stephen Hogan who plays Sky Marshal Omar Anoke. He has all the charm of a televangelist, and none of the good intentions. This guy oozes weird, and his on screen presence just gives you the willies. You can't tell if he's just a bureaucratic sleazeball, or a fame junkie, or if something more is going on. His presence certainly adds something to the movie. Whether or not that something pays off in a satisfactory manner or not... eh. However he is the (only) other actor of note in this movie. It strikes me funny that most of the actors playing troopers in this movie, were probably teenagers or preteens when Starship Troopers came out. It's not a stretch to imagine more than a few were fans, and getting to act alongside Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico? That must've been awesome. In a way that mirrors the movie as well. Hundreds of young M.I. Troops getting to fight alongside the legendary Col. Johnny Rico? Talk about a morale boost.

  Starship Troopers 3 tries hard to replicate the tone and scope of the original. Sadly, it just... can't. Budgetary restraints hold this movie back and almost cripple it. Despite having two million more to work with than it's predecessor, that's still only 9 million dollars. (Compared to Starship Troopers 100 million budget) For that, this movie was rather exceptional. They put a lot of money into sets and practical effects and those things were, visually, the highlight of the movie. All in all, Marauder is an easy movie to compare to Hero of the Federation because Marauder seems to be a direct response to the negative criticism of the first sequel. Hero of the Federation was lacking any sort of satirical edge, it lacked any familiar characters, the tone was very claustrophobic and the scope was confined. Marauder was almost the exact opposite. It brought back the satire, brought back hero Johnny Rico, the tone reverts back to a big war movie, and the scope was opened up considerably.  The tradeoff is obviously the special effects. Hero of the Federation had effects on par with the first movie, Starship Troopers 3 has CGI on par with... well, a SyFy movie of the week. I hate to bring up those crap-fests twice in one review, but... damn.

  My next point is the satire. They try too hard here, and often miss the point. The satirical commercial breaks in the first movie gave you a slick insight into this warped and fascist society. They'll censor a cow being butchered, but seconds later they'll eagerly show you the mangled and bloodied corpses of hundreds of mormon colonists. It was fascist propaganda. In Marauder, they play it all for silly laughs. Aside from one or two moments of spot-on satire, a lot of it seemed to be handled by people who didn't quite... get it. Clever and perverse propaganda is often reduced to sex jokes or slapstick ridiculousness.  Not to mention the movie's shoehorned and absurd stab at satirizing religion. The entire last act revolves around religion, and frankly... it's awkward and uncomfortable, because clearly, the makers had no idea how to do it properly. The whole point of satirizing something is not to make it look goofy, but to kinda sell it how it is, but showing how inherently silly it is. Like fascism, and propaganda ads. They miss the mark so badly with their take on religion and come off like amateurs fumbling around in Paul Verhoeven's sandbox.

  Marauder is truer to the first movie, and it's not entirely bad! It can be fun at time, no lie. Yet, in it's ambition, it stumbles. Which is unfortunate, because better effects and a stronger third act could've made this movie miles better. It does however mark the return of Johnny Rico, which makes this a must-see for fans, but I don't think anybody else could regret missing this movie. Just play the game, or watch the first movie. Maybe even read the book! Yet there is a certain unmistakable charm to this movie. It's ambition and goals place it head and shoulders above most DTV sequels, it's attempts to remain true to the original place it way above Hero of the Federation, and the return of square-jawed Johnny Rico make it the only true sequel thus far to the sci-fi juggernaut of the late-90's, Starship Troopers. So if you're dying to see a proper... ish (at least, well intentioned) Starship Troopers sequel, and you don't mind some clunky CGI- I suggest you 'Join up now!', 'Do your part!', and watch Starship Troopers 3: Marauder!


Lord knows I've recommended worse movies before...

The Flintstones

  Taking a one movie hiatus from my impromptu Starship Troopers reviewing marathon, I decided to pop in an old VHS tape, recently acquired from a thrift store. So old in fact, one could call it... prehistoric.  Maybe not literally that old, but those good ol' puns seem to write themselves in this clever, chuckle-filled piece of 90's nostalgia.  Rolling it's way back into my life, straight out of my childhood, last seen some 15-odd years ago... I had almost forgotten all about this odd (not-so-)little movie. The theme song is catchy as ever and The Flintstones are faithfully brought to the big screen in this, live-action, larger than life sitcom presented by... "Stephen Spielrock".  It even says so on the cover. I guess I never really stopped to think how strange this might be to some people. Including people who very well might not have ever known there was a live action Flintstones. Let alone two. However, one can hardly hate on this movie seeing as how it does exactly what you would expect. It is a live action version of the beloved 1960's cartoon. That's more than just a description, it's a summary, and a compliment. Yet basically, this movie is nothing more than a novelty...

  Adapting cartoons into movies was never a solid business. Masters of the Universe didn't fare so well, Speed Racer had mixed reviews, and I could keep listing epic misfires like this for a while. Yet alot of these movies have found a cult following. Speed Racer most notably. I see no reason why The Flintstones can't have it's own quaint little cult following.  It's not a bad movie per se, it's just kind of a puzzling one. I can imagine a lot of money was invested in this movie, and surprisingly it made it back. Yet it received a critical whipping upon it's release. For a long time not even audiences spoke fondly of this movie. Yet as I was digging through some internet forums threads about this movie, I found more people than not defending this movie. Whether it was because of the spot-on casting choices, or purely nostalgic reasons, people were sticking up for The Flintstones.

  As a movie it was never destined to be revered in the annals of famous comedies, nor was it going to pull down any serious accolades for special effects. It was intended to be a piece of nostalgia for fans of the cartoon. A novelty. "Hey look at this! They really brought it to life!" In 1994, fans of the 1960's cartoon would be well into adulthood. I have no doubt many of them thought it was a neat idea, or blasphemous. Yet it seems like the makers of this movie forgot that the cartoon persisted to find a young audience. The children's fanbase was just as big. There were tie-in toys, McDonalds' specials, et cetera. Yet so much of this movie is simply not for kids. It's for the thirty somethings who at the time were around when the cartoon was first airing. The movie's plot would sail clear over any kid's head. Mother-in-law problems? Cutbacks? Getting laid off? Embezzlement schemes? Infidelity? The Incredibles springs to mind as another movie that deals with all this stuff, yet it handles it delicately. With subtle suggestions and finesse.

  Halle Berry in a skimpy bikini crawling across Fred's (played by John Goodman) desk, trying to seduce him isn't exactly something for the whole family to see. This movie is played for laughs, as Fred's tie snaps and curls up, gawking at this seductress crawl about on his desk. You can tell the whole movie has a very grown-up tone. It'd be uncomfortable if I had to watch that with my kids. People would seriously object if that was in the cartoon, and now I know this is one of the reasons my parents had issues with me seeing this as a little kid. I'd say a good 90% of all the laughs to be had, would be lost on anyone under 13. It's a shame then that a movie like this was unavoidably be pandered to all ages. This isn't Disney, folks. A character in the movie actually points that out. He laments, 'I should've signed with Disney, they never would've made me do this'. Much can be said about a lot of content in the movie, though it's not as racy as I'd make it out to be, it's simply not a kids movie either.

  Disney has a knack for blink-and-you'll-miss-it innuendo, yet The Flintstones isn't so graceful. I suppose one could easily make a pun here, likening the movie to a boulder or a rock since neither are graceful either, and if you would laugh at a pun like that, congratulations, you'll probably like this movie too. That's not a bad thing, mind you. I like the movie too. I chuckled to myself as Fred and family went to the drive in, and the sign outside read: "George Lucas' TAR WARS". This movie is all about the pop-culture references, the in-jokes, the innuendo and the puns. OH the puns! They come cheaper than a dime a dozen here, but they're also handled quite well. I'm not too familiar with the director, but he knows how to play the dumbest pun for straight laughs. It works. What more can I say?

  The casting is rather brilliant I think. Goodman is simply the perfect Fred, and Moranis is a spot-on Barney. They both do the voices with ease, as if they'd been practicing for a lifetime. They find a good balance between full-on cartoonish panache and self-aware nods. Rosie O'Donnell as Betty is something of a serious issue... for some people. I thought she did fine. Most complain about the actress being too heavy for the role of such a skinny character. Or that she's a terrible actress and a horrible person. On one hand I get it, I wouldn't want someone I hated playing a character I loved. Yet, A, most of these people simply wanted Betty to have sex appeal, and B, the rest just don't like O'Donnell. I fall into neither category. This movie did not need sex appeal of any sort, and I have nothing against O'Donnell. Elizabeth Perkins as Wilma was great, and the rest of the cast was as well, great. If you wanted to see the Flintstones brought to life, this is the best cast you could hope for. They do amazingly well. All of them seem to really put heart into their roles, whereas this could've been a 'paycheck' movie for some, with phoned in performances. Surprisingly and thankfully, that's not the case.

  If only the Scooby-Doo movie was this good. By comparison, The Flintstones is head and shoulders above it in terms of how faithful it was to the source material. The makers involved seem to have a real affection for the cartoon, yet I wonder why they made it so adult since the cartoon was so innocent. Did they miss the mark? Not entirely, but the movie exists as an oddity. It's too child-like to go in the regular Comedy section of the video store, and too Adult to go in the Family section. Yet, because it's based on a cartoon, it will inevitably go in the Family section. This is an issue for the movie as I believe it's ideal audience is one that would rediscover it now. People my age who remember when this came out in the 90's. People who still get a kick out of these live action cartoon-based movies. A forgiving and nostalgic audience is what this movie deserves, and as it happens, that's the category I fall into. Yabba dabba- d'oh, you know how it goes.

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation

  Well. I certainly didn't expect to like this movie upon my second viewing in the past five years. However... string me up and give me ten lashes, I did. I liked it. Nobody could be more surprised than me. I kid you not. I saw this movie ages and ages ago. I rented it from a Hollywood Video along with Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, and had a double feature that night. I was not fond of this one. Yeah, it was gory and there were the trademark bugs but... it was lacking, in my opinion. In fact, I think it still is. It's thin. Starship Troopers doesn't function well without some sort of political or society commentary. It becomes just an inert, and hollow piece of sci-fi. Which is ultimately what Hero of the Federation is. Inert and hollow. Yet as much as it is nothing like the 1997 sci-fi blockbuster, helmed by the maestro of satire-action movies, Paul Verhoeven, it's not a bad movie when all is said and done.

  It's paper thin budget shows sometimes. Yet go figure, the CGI in this movie is head and shoulders above the third movie. I don't even know how that happened. I don't really wanna look at the budgets. It's just unfair. The worst part about the third movie, is the CGI. The best part about this one, is the effects. This is actually probably one of the last good DTV movies. It gets bashed like no other, and trust me, I understand. However, this is not bad. There are a few big mistakes it makes, one is the dialog. Some of it is just... nails on a damn chalkboard. Secondly, there are too many annoying characters. Especially that Psi-Ops guy. I was really hoping he'd die in the first half hour. No such luck. Third is the story. This is also where the budget shows. They had to confine the plot to a single location, which in effect, robs the movie from having the satirical elements it needed to thrive.

  You'll notice the movie is bookended by the franchise's trademark propaganda commercials, yet there's none throughout the film. Because in the first movie, those commercials would serve as a bridge, transitioning from one scene/location, to something else happening elsewhere. Starship Troopers 2 all takes place in one location, focuses on a very singular and small scale story. But by god, they worked with what they had. I guess the biggest problem with this movie is that it feels like it only needs to be thirty minutes. It feels like it could be absolved into a bigger movie because it's so thin on it's own. Yet that doesn't mean there aren't some awesome action sequences, some creative horror situations, and some fun one-liners. I get why people were so sore over this movie, but I think it was a collective over-reaction. It's nowhere near as bad as people, even myself made it out to be.

  The movie has a fair share of decent actors, and it makes use of them for the most part. However it's fairly obvious the movie is padded out to the max. It's a survival horror movie, best likened to movies like Resident Evil or Alien Resurrection. I know those are harsh and confusing comparisons for a movie I just said wasn't bad, but look at the scores. Resident Evil currently holds a 6.7 (out of a possible ten) on imdb. Alien Resurrection has a 6.3. Starship Troopers 2? Has a staggering 3.4. It's not that bad. Honestly. There have been many times I've been flipping through channels on TV, found Alien Resurrection and just watched it for a bit. It's a disappointing movie in the grand scheme of things, but it's not painful to watch or anything. That underwater scene is awesome as well. Hero of the Federation has a handful of decent and creative things in it. Stuff I'd argue elevates this movie above either of the other aforementioned movies.

  If you're in the right mindset, with the right expectations, it can be fun. If this was the pilot for a TV show for instance, nobody would be bitching. I think what sets it at a disadvantage is how distant it is from the first movie, yet it tries to keep connections and a continuity, despite not having any returning characters.  Starship Troopers was a sci-fi/satire, Starship Troopers 2 is a sci-fi/horror. So very very different when you dig into it. I suppose the bookends of propaganda were just tacked on to pay homage to Verhoeven, but... I never felt like they really worked. All in all, there are better DTV sequels, but don't be fooled this isn't one of those godawful ones. It's a serviceable action/horror movie with a familiar theme. It's still soldiers vs. giant alien space bugs. But in a very different tone. Much more like Aliens, but at the same time... not. It's not a great movie, or even a particularly good one, but damn. It's no 3.4 either. The amount of practical effects and creativity that went into somethings here deserve a fair shake.

  I'll reign in the sequel bashing whenever Hero of the Federation comes up in conversation in the future. It deserves, at least, that much. Yet being as thin as it is, I can't possibly write up a longer review. The content of the movie dictates the body of a review, and this one was rather anorexic, sadly. Edit: (2/5/2014) In retrospect, no matter how much I enjoyed this one, which was marginal at best, it was still disappointing. Starship Troopers pulled down good money at the box office and a lot of people liked it, it's very baffling to me that this is the best sequel anybody could come up with. On the other hand, it does funnel plenty of new and interesting ideas into the franchise, although those ideas seem born of budget constraints and necessity, not creativity. Hero of the Federation is a mixed bag for sure, it's a bad sequel, but not a bad movie. It's above average with it's special effects and action scenes, which I found more enjoyable than your average DTV dreck, yet at the same time... it's still a bad sequel. Take that as you will.