Awhile
back I spotted this title on an upcoming releases list and I initially
thought it was a remake of the 1982 horror classic, ‘Alone in the
Dark’. Further investigation told me it, in fact, was not a remake, but
instead a movie version of an old horror themed video game. So far the
success rate for the video game into movie formula is really fuckin'
low, so my hopes dimmed. And upon seeing that it was directed by the
man behind the 2003 slap in the face to every single horrorf an in the
world, ‘House of the Dead’ I had pretty much given up on this film
before I had even seen it. But I watched it anyways, because I think
Christian Slater is a good actor and fuck it, it was a horror movie that
I hadn't seen.
It's about a detective of the paranormal named
Edward Carnby who is trying to unravel the mysterious disappearance of a
close friend. Throw in some agency who deals with the paranormal, a
mythic monster and Tara Reid, as an archaeologist and you get this.
I'll go as far as to say that this is a much better movie than ‘House
of the Dead.’ Hell, I made it through this one without walking out the
first time. But, unfortunately, that is about the only good thing about
this movie. The plot is seemingly pretty involved, but once shit
happens, I quickly realized that I didn't care about any actors or
anything that happened to them. Random people attack Christian Slater
(who has appeared in A LOT of crap lately: see my ‘Mindhunters’ review)
and I just waited for the eventual graphic dispatching of said
attacker.
There are monsters who "live only in the dark" but
they aren't scary. In fact, most of the FX budget was spent on
explosions and gun shot effects and squibs. Any monster on human
carnage is shot in the dark so its hard to see what’s happening. Save
for one grisly split head effects, I would say the FX in this one suck.
Oh well, Stephen Dorf shows up on but adds nothing to the movie, and
Tara Reid simply cannot emote fear any other way besides opening her
mouth real wide. And she doesn't even take her top off during the sex
scene. Yeah this one is a stinker. I would place this at the same
level as the made for video movies that fill the sci-fi channels
Saturday afternoon programming. And I see no end to the madness as
director Uwe Boll already has two more video games turned into movies in
post production. Watch out and view at your own discretion! (Edward
Black)
Well,
they finally made a Batman movie that doesn’t suck. Now I know some people
are thinking to themselves, “What are you talking about? Tim Burton’s
‘Batman’ and ‘Batman Returns’ were great.” I hate to break it to you, but
you’re wrong. Hell, I’d almost rather watch Joel Schumacher’s ‘Batman
Forever’ again than sit through Burton’s pretentious bullshit. At least
Schumacher’s Bat-flicks were so bad they were funny. Now on to the issue
at hand.
‘Batman Begins’ is structured similarly to ‘Superman:
The Movie’ except that it isn’t boring. In other words, we spend a good
deal of time with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) before he actually becomes
Batman. Wayne trains under the tutelage of Ras Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe) and
Ducard (Liam Neeson), learning to turn his personal fears to his advantage
and kick criminal butt in general. But a philosophical disagreement with
his trainers leads to a showdown and the death of Ras.
When Wayne returns to his home town of Gotham, he finds
a city festering with corruption. With the help of family butler Alfred
(Michael Caine) and a scientist at the family company (Morgan Freeman as
“Lucius Fox”) he whips up a bulletproof Halloween costume and some nifty
gadgets to better wage his war on crime. His first target, a mob boss (Tom
Wilkinson as “Carmine Falcone”) turns out to be just a pawn under the
control of a villain named The Scarecrow. But the buck doesn’t stop with
The Scarecrow, either. Could it be that Ras Al Ghul has survived, and plans
to mete out his own brand of “justice” on Gotham?
Anyway, that’s the plot more or less. Gary Oldman also
turns up as Sergeant (not yet commissioner) Gordon, and as you might expect
he turns in a great performance. The same cannot be said for Katie Holmes
as token love interest Rachel Dawes. Admittedly the script doesn’t give her
much to do, but I think that’s for the best. Kirsten Dunst she ain’t. Bale
is solid as Batman, and he manages to do something none of the other actors
playing the “caped crusader” ever have: make the character come off as
believably scary. He also handles the Bruce Wayne part of his role well,
which is good considering he’s not in costume for much of the running time.
I could (and will) gripe about the fact that the movie
has a couple of unnecessarily over the top big action scenes, but most of
the fights are down and dirty, the way they should be. As with most comic
book adaptations, some changes are made, but the spirit of the source
material is respected. It’s still not the great ‘Batman’ movie that I’ve
been waiting to see, but it comes pretty close. While far too many summer
movies find me leaving the theater either loudly proclaiming, “that sucked”
or shrugging and saying, “it was okay”, I genuinely enjoyed this one. (Bob
Ignizio)
The
description of this movie asks, “Where does this evil come from? Who
are the mysterious children who arrive to document the carnage? How can
the bloodshed and terror be stopped?” After watching ‘Buzzsaw’, I’m
still not sure what the answer is to any of these questions. Anyway,
what I did get is that maintenance man Pete (Stephen J. Heffernan, who
turns in a solid performance) and his junkie friend/assistant Cass
(Jason Allen Wolfe, also very good) find themselves in the middle of a
murder spree at the apartment complex where they work. All the murders
are being committed by the maintenance guy’s tools, which have decided
to fly around by themselves like something out of ‘Hardware Wars’, only
bloodier. Pete is trying to hook up with a waitress, and Cass is trying
to score some drugs. We spend a lot of time with Cass and his junkie
friends. I’m guessing the junkie milieu interests the filmmakers, who
also did the drug related ‘China White Serpentine’. But in the context
of this film, the junkie stuff doesn’t really seem to have much of a
point. There’s also a couple of weird kids who live in a tree house and
take notes on the murders. The film is all very experimental and artsy,
and obviously trying to be edgy. That’s fine, but at some point in some
way it’s a good idea to clue the audience in to what’s happening. I’m
sure the filmmakers know, but they just don’t give the audience much in
the way of clues to figure it out. I’m not saying spoon feed it to me,
but a little coherency goes a long way. So in the end, while I admire
some things about ‘Buzzsaw’, it just doesn’t come together. Maybe I’m
dumber than I thought I was, but I think this will be a frustrating
viewing experience for most viewers. (Bob Ignizio)
From
what I have read about this, it is mostly a remake of a film from the
60's, which I have never seen, so I won't comment on that aspect. What
happens is an oil rig is shut down and two men are hired to fly in, make
sure everything is shut down, and then fly the workers out. Mysterious
drifter Elliot (played by the always good Giovanni Ribisi) comes along
for a ride, but the plane is too heavy and crashes in the desert during
a sandstorm. The crash scene is really well done, mixing the harrowing
moments of the plane flying apart and the actual crash, while not making
it so over the top that it seems like it was tailor made for a movie.
Good job there. I guess sometimes a little restraint goes a long way.
The rest of the movie deals with the cast trying to get out of the
desert. The acting here is pretty well done for a movie like this. No
awards will be won, but we get solid performances all around from Dennis
Quaid, Miranda Otto, and the aforementioned Giovanni Ribisi. In fact,
the plot is spread pretty thin and had the acting been bad, then the
movie would have failed. But that is not the case here. Later on in
the movie, there is a pretty huge plot point dealing with a mysterious
character, his motives and the plane they are building and it is so
ludicrous and funny and kick ass, that it totally made the movie for
me. It's just plain silly, but the actors make it work, like when they
are yelling at each other about whether or not what they have done has
been a waste of time or not. This is a fun little popcorn movie that
not too many people saw when it was in theatres. (Edward Black)
Awhile
back I spotted this title on an upcoming releases list and I initially
thought it was a remake of the 1982 horror classic, ‘Alone in the
Dark’. Further investigation told me it, in fact, was not a remake, but
instead a movie version of an old horror themed video game. So far the
success rate for the video game into movie formula is really fuckin'
low, so my hopes dimmed. And upon seeing that it was directed by the
man behind the 2003 slap in the face to every single horrorf an in the
world, ‘House of the Dead’ I had pretty much given up on this film
before I had even seen it. But I watched it anyways, because I think
Christian Slater is a good actor and fuck it, it was a horror movie that
I hadn't seen. 
Well,
they finally made a Batman movie that doesn’t suck. Now I know some people
are thinking to themselves, “What are you talking about? Tim Burton’s
‘Batman’ and ‘Batman Returns’ were great.” I hate to break it to you, but
you’re wrong. Hell, I’d almost rather watch Joel Schumacher’s ‘Batman
Forever’ again than sit through Burton’s pretentious bullshit. At least
Schumacher’s Bat-flicks were so bad they were funny. Now on to the issue
at hand. 
The
description of this movie asks, “Where does this evil come from? Who
are the mysterious children who arrive to document the carnage? How can
the bloodshed and terror be stopped?” After watching ‘Buzzsaw’, I’m
still not sure what the answer is to any of these questions. Anyway,
what I did get is that maintenance man Pete (Stephen J. Heffernan, who
turns in a solid performance) and his junkie friend/assistant Cass
(Jason Allen Wolfe, also very good) find themselves in the middle of a
murder spree at the apartment complex where they work. All the murders
are being committed by the maintenance guy’s tools, which have decided
to fly around by themselves like something out of ‘Hardware Wars’, only
bloodier. Pete is trying to hook up with a waitress, and Cass is trying
to score some drugs. We spend a lot of time with Cass and his junkie
friends. I’m guessing the junkie milieu interests the filmmakers, who
also did the drug related ‘China White Serpentine’. But in the context
of this film, the junkie stuff doesn’t really seem to have much of a
point. There’s also a couple of weird kids who live in a tree house and
take notes on the murders. The film is all very experimental and artsy,
and obviously trying to be edgy. That’s fine, but at some point in some
way it’s a good idea to clue the audience in to what’s happening. I’m
sure the filmmakers know, but they just don’t give the audience much in
the way of clues to figure it out. I’m not saying spoon feed it to me,
but a little coherency goes a long way. So in the end, while I admire
some things about ‘Buzzsaw’, it just doesn’t come together. Maybe I’m
dumber than I thought I was, but I think this will be a frustrating
viewing experience for most viewers. (Bob Ignizio)
From
what I have read about this, it is mostly a remake of a film from the
60's, which I have never seen, so I won't comment on that aspect. What
happens is an oil rig is shut down and two men are hired to fly in, make
sure everything is shut down, and then fly the workers out. Mysterious
drifter Elliot (played by the always good Giovanni Ribisi) comes along
for a ride, but the plane is too heavy and crashes in the desert during
a sandstorm. The crash scene is really well done, mixing the harrowing
moments of the plane flying apart and the actual crash, while not making
it so over the top that it seems like it was tailor made for a movie.
Good job there. I guess sometimes a little restraint goes a long way.
The rest of the movie deals with the cast trying to get out of the
desert. The acting here is pretty well done for a movie like this. No
awards will be won, but we get solid performances all around from Dennis
Quaid, Miranda Otto, and the aforementioned Giovanni Ribisi. In fact,
the plot is spread pretty thin and had the acting been bad, then the
movie would have failed. But that is not the case here. Later on in
the movie, there is a pretty huge plot point dealing with a mysterious
character, his motives and the plane they are building and it is so
ludicrous and funny and kick ass, that it totally made the movie for
me. It's just plain silly, but the actors make it work, like when they
are yelling at each other about whether or not what they have done has
been a waste of time or not. This is a fun little popcorn movie that
not too many people saw when it was in theatres. (Edward Black)