Film is Pwn

Imagine a future where you will be able to send an android double to go watch terrible movies like Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in Cop Out.  That is – sorta – the idea behind Surrogates.

In this near future sci-fi-thriller, humans live life from the comfort of their homes as their robotic stand-ins work, play, and party on their behest.  Still trying to get your head around Surrogates?  Think Avatar except no blue aliens and minus about a billion dollars in box office receipts.

The Surrogates themselves are in some cases idealized representations of humans.  Give me a robot that looks just like me except 50 pounds lighter, perfect hair, toned calves, and literal abs of steel, please!  In other instances, the Surrogate embodies nauseous role-playing.  One attractive blonde Surrogate turns out to be a fat dude living out his own fantasy and my nightmare.  Who hasn’t dreaded finally meeting Ms. Right and discovering that she’s secretly Horatio Sanz?  Just me?  *Sigh* (more…)

Starring: Denzel Washington, Eva Mendes, Sanaa Lathan, Dean Cain
Directed By: Carl Franklin

Most movies take place in three acts which blend seamlessly to create the narrative story arc.  Out of Time is no different, except that the difference between the first act and the second act is staggering. (more…)

It is snowing in my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina.  An alien invasion does not debilitate New York City to the degree that an inch of snow shuts down Charlotte.  Charlotte’s citizenry forget how to behave when beset by fears of the white powder descending from the heavens like millions of malicious storm troopers.   (more…)

Starring: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson
Directed By: The Hughes Brothers

Just saw The Book of Eli, and I liked it.  It’s a post-apocalyptic film that feels like a classic Clint Eastwood Western.  (more…)

Oh, Asylum, you’ve done it again!

Princess of Mars is based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which is allegedly the inspiration for James Cameron’s Avatar.  In fact, right on the front cover of the DVD it says, “THE CLASSIC STORY THAT INSPIRED JAMES CAMERON’S AVATAR.”  The back cover of Princess of Mars boasts in a quote without a source: “HEART-POUNDING CREATURE ACTION OF STARSHIP TROOPERS AND THE EPIC ADVENTURE OF LORD OF THE RINGS!”  I hate to call anyone or any DVD cover a liar, but how can you trust someone who tells you that Starship Troopers contained “heart-pounding creature action”? Liar!

Avatar and Princess of Mars do both feature protagonists who are strangers in a strange land that fall in love with a scantily clad alien, but that is the plot to 94.2% of movies these days.  Of course, James Cameron spends more money on a single sneeze than the entire budget of the Asylum’s Princess of Mars. (more…)

2009’s big budget/big screen Sherlock Holmes movie was preceded by a subpar trailer and a thorough lack of buzz as far as I could detect, and I am an expert buzz detector.  Maybe the lowered expectations helped elevate the experience, but I thoroughly enjoyed director Guy Ritchie’s adaptation of Holmes.  (more…)

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Yancy Butler, Lance Henriksen, Arnold Vosloo
Directed by: John Woo

As an added bonus, this isn’t just a blog on a Jean-Claude Van Damme film, this, my friends, is the legendary team-up of Van Damme and Hong Kong’s logic defying director John Woo, Hard Target! Before you get your expectations too high, Hard Target, like most John Woo or JCVD films, has one idea (seldom original or clever), a lot of action, and no brains.

The idea is that there are a group of bad guys, led by Lance Henriksen (looking much like an evil Conan O’Brien) and Arnold Vosloo (a.k.a. the Mummy from the Mummy), who run an operation that allows wealthy men to hunt and kill homeless combat veterans for sport. The film opens as we see the latest victim, Bluto from the Popeye cartoons, who falls to an arrow in the curiously vacant streets of New Orleans. One interesting fact learned from the movie involving New Orleans is that the city contains zero residents not required by the plot either at night or during the day. (I assume they saved money by not hiring any extras and used the additional funds to blow more stuff up.) (more…)

Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver
Directed By: James Cameron

I have just witnessed what is allegedly the most expensive movie ever made, James Cameron’s gaudy, luminous follow-up to 1997’s Titanic, Avatar.  Yes, Cameron took a dozen years between releases, in part because he wanted to make Avatar and needed to wait for the technology to keep up with his vision.  What the dozen year lapse tells me is that the shiny spectacle in Avatar is way more important than other little elements like story and characters, and it shows.

The key characters are the alien race called the Na’vi who are sadly impossible for me to take seriously.  They’re giant, blue-skinned humanoid creatures with tails and long necks.  Think if Smurfette mated with Randy Johnson. If that image doesn’t conjure up what the Na’vi look like, imagine a race of blue Jar Jar Binks’. Get the picture? (more…)

Heartbreak Ridge is one of the often overlooked and neglected Clint Eastwood movies, and not for no reason.  It’s not great enough to pop up on any “best movie” lists — or even top ten Clint flicks – but it’s good enough to be watched and play in endless rotation on a movie channel like AMC. If you’ll forgive a digression, AMC ought to be forced to change their moniker from something other than American Movie Classics after recently being caught red-handed airing Halle Berry’s Catwoman.  When you let “Catwoman” in the door as a “classic,” what movie can’t be considered a classic? Can Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus be far behind?

There’s a lot working for Heartbreak Ridge, one being director and star Clint Eastwood.  Eastwood rarely makes movies that aren’t either “darn good” or  “a lot of fun,” although I should note that I have yet to see any movies where he co-starred with a monkey.  Just a note on that note: I have no intention of EVER seeing any of those Eastwood monkey movies, as I have maintained my respect for him even after seeing him singing with Lee Marvin. (more…)

Finally got around to seeing Terminator: Salvation Friday night.  This is one of the big, Summer 2009 movies that ended up on my “Maybe” list with mixed reviews and an uninspiring trailer, and I never got around to it.

All in all, I kinda liked it.  Lowered expectations might be a good thing, this is nowhere near as good as James Cameron’s original Terminator or the terrific sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but fortunately far from the disaster of Terminator 3 sans Cameron. (more…)

Growing up, I was not a big fan of zombies. As a monster, I felt that they were actually quite terrible. They have no personality, are mindless and they move so slowly that one could fight them off with an arquebus (A 15th century muzzle loaded firearm that requires and enormous amount of time between shots – I guess if I have to explain it, it isn’t a great reference). But the problem remained for the poor zombie. They were a lousy monster, and their place in films was limited to low budget drek. But oh how times have changed… zombie are now en vogue and some films have reinvented them as strong, agile creatures (See I Am Legend, but don’t read the book, they are vampires in the book). The trailer for Zombieland was great, and the film looked to be fast paced and exciting… (more…)

For reasons hotly debated by office temps and great hunters around water coolers and water buffaloes, Jean-Claude Van Damme just loves to play two roles in his movies.  JCVD has played twins in not one but two movies (Double Impact & Maximum Risk), and in Timecop he teamed up with a past version of himself to battle time traveling hooligans.  Strangely, I’m reminded when a friend on a little league baseball team told the coach he wanted to become a switch hitter and bat left-handed, to which the coach replied, “Son, don’t you think you ought to get good at hitting right-handed before you try left-handed?”  Along these lines, someone ought to tell this to Mr. Van Damme, that before you attempt to tack dual roles in films, be good at one role first.  I should note that the most recent Van Damme film I saw, JCVD, Van Damme was good, but that can largely be attributed to the face he played himself, the role he was born to play.

In today’s subject, class, Replicant, scientists have found a new way for JCVD to square off with himself on-screen: Cloning. 

Here’s the concept: There’s a diabolical serial killer known as The Torch (Van Damme # 1), who burns mothers whom he overhears on the street rebuking their children as bad boys, sort of a knee jerk reaction to his own poor childhood.  Methinks this is a message to parents that if you spank your kids or do anything other than over protect and coddle them, they will become serial killers, bed-wetters, lame martial arts movie makers, or perhaps even worse. (more…)