Clash of the Titans is the tale of Greek gods, demigods, Pegasuses, harpies, a few men thrown in for good measure, and a horde of giant scorpions capable of being domesticated and ridden like ponies. 

Perseus (Sam Worthington) is a demigod (half-man, half-god) the less than legitimate son of Zeus (Liam Neeson).   (A king was marching against the gods, so Zeus tricked his queen into sleeping with the Zeus-meister to get revenge; Perseus was born as a result of that union and he and Mom were promptly tossed into the ocean.  Good job, Zeus!)  Unaware of his origins, Perseus is raised by a kindly fisherman and his family.  When his adopted family is callously killed by god of the Underworld Hades (Ralph Fiennes), Perseus is out for revenge, or something like that. 

The plot is unnecessarily muddled, with city-state incurring the gods’ wrath by ceasing their worship of the gods and attempting to make themselves like gods.  Benevolent Zeus (who is benevolent except when seducing queens) gives in to brother Hades’ demands to unleash evil on the humans and earn their worship in the form of fear.  Hades demands the city-state to sacrifice the beautiful and bland princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) to the gods or else he will unleash the dreaded beast known as The Kraken.  Perseus leads a ragtag group of soldiers, hunters, and Dr. Doom impersonators out to find a way to vanquish the Kraken.

(If someone does a parody of this film, I strongly urge they “release the Kraker!”  And show a monsterous Larry the Cable Guy emerging from the ocean’s depths to unleash havoc.)

 The flashy effects and monsters are neat and all, but there’s no real characters, dialogue, or story to get behind.  Everyone is underdeveloped, the few jokes there are are not funny, and the one character whose motivation is explored, Perseus, is not that interesting.  Perseus, you see, rejects Zeus’ aid and his godly ancestry altogether.  He wants to defeat the Kraken as a man, even if refusing such gifts as Zeus’ shiny, magic sword causes some companions to die. 

If you go see Clash of the Titans, you’re going for the visual effects, most of which were given away in the cool trailer.  Frankly, Avatar blows Clash of the Titans out of the water when it comes to visuals.

The original Jaws is an all-time classic; it was the original Summer blockbuster that made oodles of money, put director Steven Spielberg on the map, and made chubby kids like me who swim like lame seals afraid to go in the water for fear of giant Great White Sharks.  Perhaps the only downside to Jawsis they forgot to kill off the fearsome beast at the end so that studio executives could not green light lame sequels.  Oh wait, I forgot, star Roy Scheider DID kill off the shark, blowing up the doggone thing in rather convincing fashion so that what was once the terror of the oceans became but mere chum for passing minnows.

But there is no such thing as a conclusive, definitive death in film, not when money can be made, just ask Jason Vorhees, Freddy Kruger, Spock, and John Travolta’s career.

Roy Scheider had the good sense to not sign on for Jaws 4, which I would like to attest to Roy’s integrity in refusing to taint the purity of the original.  However, Roy appeared not only in Jaws 2 without Spielberg’s involvement but also the sad sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey without Stanley Kubrick, I guess they just didn’t offer the man enough money.  But Scheider’s on-screen wife from the first two Jaws, Lorraine Gary, returns to play Ellen Brody, now widow of Scheider’s Sheriff Brody.  How is Sheriff Brody’s death explained in Jaws 4?  With this little gem of dialogue between Ellen and her marine biologist son, Michael (Lance Guest):

Michael: “Dad died of a heart attack!”
Ellen Brody: “No. He died from fear. Fear of that shark!”

Yes, Sheriff Brody died from sheer terror at the thought he might at any point be eaten by a large shark he’d managed to kill on two separate occasions.  You know, a lot of us are justifiably afraid of sharks, though few of us are sweating them while munching down on a Big Montana at the local Arbys.  Some shark-o-phobics choose to take silly precautionary measures like not going in the ocean or — and I’m just spit-balling here, folks — moving to Harcourt, Iowa.  Harcourt, Iowa is not only the hometown of my late, Great Grandmother Roos it also is tied with approximately 28,187 other cities in America for fewest shark attacks on its citizenry.  (If not for that tragic incident on I-485 last year involving a curious motorcyclist who drove too close to that Sea World tanker, my hometown of Charlotte, NC would be on that list as well.)  And if living 1,000 miles from the ocean isn’t enough to assuage your fears, just carry some of that “Shark Repellent Bat-Spray” at all times and you’re good to go.  Take it from me, my Shark Repellent Bat-Spray has come in handy on more than one potentially tragic occasion.

Trudging along to the story, Ellen’s youngest son is now a deputy and is lured out to the ocean by a tampered buoy (implying that the shark must have been a master saboteur during the Great War).  The shark eats the youngest son, and Mom bizarrely jumps to the correct conclusion that it’s the shark that has tormented her family ever since her late husband killed it that first time.  Look for a great scene where Mom is given her dead child’s possessions by a deputy, and those possessions include the kid’s GUN.  Just what a grieving, paranoid, unlicensed widow needs.

Older brother Michael takes grieving Mom with him back home to the Bahamas, where she can get her mind off paranoid fantasies that a serial killer/shark is targeting her entire family on a tiny island, which, like the majority of tiny islands, is surrounded by water.

Ever versatile, the shark is not simply a master saboteur but also a accomplished tracker capable of following the Brody clan from Massachusetts to the Bahamas based off of their scent.  The shark’s sense of smell must be really strong to catch their scent while they travel via plane.  Or perhaps ol’ Jaws has an informant (I never trusted that pet goldfish!) feeding him inside information.

Just to make sure that no one in the audience could possibly suspect that we’re just dealing with a hungry shark, Jaws casually swims by Michael’s delicious friend (Mario Van Peebles) – walking on the ocean floor marinated in tasty, zesty barbecue sauce — in order to try to make Michael who is sitting safely on a large boat,  his next victim.  Michael is understandably stunned at the possibility his crazy mom is right about the shark that has a vendetta against their family, just as he was surprised to learn that if you .

In all this, as Michael’s anxiety increases, Mom’s abates as she romances local gambler/pilot, Michael Caine.  Caine’s participation is so inconsequential that other than providing cinema some much needed senior citizen seduction scenes, it is only worth mentioning for two memorable events, one on-screen and one off.  The first is the classic scene where Caine’s character nearly evades getting eaten by the shark as his plane submerges, but Caine survives and pulls himself up onto a boat 100% DRY.  The second is the fact that Caine was unavailable to accept his Academy Award for Hannah & Her Sisters because he was busy filming Jaws 4.  Interesting historical fact: Jaws 4 did not win any Academy Awards.

The film’s side-slapping finale sees Mom, upon realizing that the shark will not stop and not wanting to inconvenience her loved ones with a landlocked life, steals her son’s boat and sails into the ocean, presumably to sacrifice herself to the shark or maybe she intended to engage in mortal kombat.  Shark versus Golden Girl, now that’s a T-shirt someone should make!  Sadly, we don’t get the ultimate showdown, as Mom’s son, boyfriend, and son’s friend show up and gang up on the shark, blowing him up . . . again.

Strangely, during the showdown, there are flashbacks to Roy Scheider killing the shark in the first film (you know, the good one).  This is particularly bizarre because none of the participants in this particular shark-destruction installment, so there is only one conclusion: Jaws is nostalgically reminiscing about his own demise before being undone by his arch-nemesis’ widow.  If you don’t buy that, try this one on for size: Jaws 4: The Revenge is one of the dumbest films ever made and given a wide release. 

But, since it’s hideousness succeeded in curtailing the Jaws-sequel machine, we do owe it some gratitude.  So, thank you, Jaws 4: The Revenge, for being so bad. 

(With that said, Im sure it is only a matter of time before Tim Burton decides to remake Jaws, casting Johnny Depp as the shark.)

Beauty and the Beast: A Dark Tale takes place in generic, Middle-Age times in a generic, Middle-Age land.  A generic King lies dying without an heir, and various poseurs, distant relatives, and regal dentists are posturing for the crown.  How did people decide who won things before reality TV dancing and/or singing competitions?  Chicanery, of course.  Evil Count Rudolph (Rhett Giles) plans to increase his kingly stock by capturing the legendary Beast (no relation to Dr. Hank McCoy).

Meanwhile, Belle (Estella Warren), the Washer Woman’s daughter, is wandering the forest looking for herbs to make clothes smell good (not a joke) when she is saved by the mysterious Beast.  Belle promptly shows her gratitude by ratting out his location to Count Rudolph and his henchmen.  Thanks, Belle!

Rudolph and his mirthless men come across a creature that proceeds to slaughter a good number of them, and presume it is said Beast.  But it is in fact a crappy, digital troll.  The troll was unleashed by requisite witch Lady Helen (Vanessa Gray), who also happens to be responsible for Beast’s curse and has eyes for Rudolph.

Belle initially believes the Beast to be murderous a beast, but is rather easily convinced this is not the case by affable Sherriff Otto (Tony Bellette), who raised the Beast since he was a little Beastling.

With Otto incapacitated for plot convenience purposes, Belle goes to the suspected mass murdering monster without a specific purpose.  Semi-true to legend, Beast is less than hospitable, and tosses Belle in a makeshift, easily escapable bamboo cell that he has prepared for no particular reason.  After escaping the minimum security, honor-system jail, Belle opts to help the Beast.  Why?  There’s no time for explanation, I have to begin a new paragraph!

Beast has an uncanny knack for showing up after the troll kills people, and being seen as the guilty party.  So prone is Beast to framing himself for the troll’s deeds that I must speculate that either the dimwitted troll is a genius or Beast is a moron.  Perhaps the Beast is a direct ancestor to Jessica Fletcher.  The THIRD time Beast bursts onto the scene only to be discovered with the troll’s victims, Belle’s mother is the corpse and Beast is taken prisoner remarkably easily.

Before Rudolph can execute Beast, he is persuaded by Sheriff Otto to uphold the King’s Law and give Beast a fair trial by jury.  Again, I’m not kidding.  So Rudolph dutifully provides over a trial for a freakish Beast with a jury of panicky villagers as Belle plots a rescue.  Oh, how I wish I could make this stuff up.

Like most women in the Middle-Ages, Belle is supermodel gorgeous with perfect hair, lips, and makeup at all times.  It’s amazing how great those legs look even after scaling a castle wall and spending a night in a tree.  Belle is clad in an immodest pink dress complete with leather bustier, which may not be true for the period, but it sure helps keep the kids from changing the channel.

As for things that made me want to change the channel, the Beast (Victor Parascos) looks like a Trekkie whose homemade Worf costume did not come out quite right.  The legend calls for a hideous monster living in tortured isolation in a cursed castle.  What we have here in Beauty and the Beast: A Dark Tale is a guy with scraggly hair and a luchador mask living in a shack who is no more intimidating than your average waiter at Chili’s.  Beauty & The Beast, it’s more like Supermodel & Robin Williams. *shudder*

The only time I ever watched the Disney animated classic Beauty & the Beast, I was with several small children who loved the film.  I recall their reaction  to the conclusion when the witch’s curse is broken and the Beast transforms into his handsome prince self: “Eww!  He’s ugly!”  The Beast being unbeastified was a sad ending from their perspective.

At the risk of providing spoilers (oh, retroactive spoiler warnings for the previous paragraph, by the way) a similar event happens in the low-budget Beauty and the Beast: A Dark Tale.  While this Beast is by no means handsome, being a poor man’s Klingon, the human self is in fact hideously ugly.  Also amusing is that the tattered garments the beast is wearing at the time of the decursening become Kingly robes.  Huzzah!

Because I’m so squeamish, modern horror films hold little appeal for me.  It’s not that I don’t like being scared from time to time, rather it is just that I hate seeing blood and guts on screen.  “Disgusting” is not the same as “frightening.”  It’s not to say that fright and disgust do not co-exist or are  mutually exclusive.

A man wanders in the woods at night, his path lit by torch, a pistol clutched in his hands as he scans the bushes for sign of Monster.  That’s scary.  The Monster burst out of the woods and pounces at the man, who, in panic, fires his gun too high.  That’s scary.  Five minutes of the Monster devouring victim with a knife and fork as the victim watches his organs used to create a shish kabob.  That’s disgusting.

In the Universal horror classics, you get the scary parts without the stomach-churning gore.  Part of the trade-off is that the creature effects look more like Halloween costumes than an actual hell beast.  Let’s be honest, the Wolf Man that inspired nightmares in 1941 now looks quaint and charming.

Lon Chaney Jr. in full Wolf Man transformation resembles a beatnik from Planet of the Apes.  I swear Chaney’s Wolf Man could walk down the streets of modern day New York without raising too many eyebrows.  Well, he could if not for the fact that Mr. Chaney passed away several decades ago, severely limiting his walking down the street capacity.

The plot of Wolf Man (1941) involves estranged son Larry (Chaney, Jr.) returning from America to his home in England after his elder brother’s death.  Larry has a rather cordial reunion with his estranged father (Claude Rains, great character actor), then the two mend their differences in the traditional male-bonding practice of telescope repair.  It’s the tradition that made the Hubble family so darn close-knit.  Unfortunately, Larry fails to use the telescope for good, instead of evil.  He uses the impressive equipment for peeping on the little English town’s most attractive pawn shop owner, Gwen (Evelyn Ankers).

Larry wastes no time rushing down to the store not just to hit on Gwen, but like a true creep he uses information gleaned from said peeping session to advance his case.  Strangely, this works.  Since Larry has a date and I don’t, who am I to judge?

Although Larry’s evening on the town is rather lame from the onset.  Gwen invites Larry to join her and her dead meat lady friend to visit the traveling Gypsies and get their fortune told.  The only fortunes I’m familiar with are vague observations that come in cookies (I actually had one that read: “You have great skill at expressing yourself to be effective”). But movie fortunes are quite specific and invariably come true. For example, Ms. Third Wheel’s fortune, delivered by a Gypsy named Bela played by Bela Lugosi, is that she will be killed by a werewolf in the next three minutes. Sure enough, the fortune comes true in surprisingly short order, or else the woman would have had solid grounds for demanding a refund. “You said I’d die, but I’m still alive! What a rip off!”

Larry manages to kill the hideous werewolf (read: dog) with his silver walking stick but is bitten in the process, and you know what that means.  It means at night he will turn into a cast member of the hit Broadway musical Cats and prowl the English countryside!

A couple things struck me about Wolf Man:

1) Star Lon Chaney Jr., sans Wolf Man affectations, looks more like a member of FDR’s cabinet than a Hollywood Leading Man Type.  Not a criticism, just an observation.

2) The opening credits introduce the actors in olde fashioned style, with the actors on screen and text declaring “Ralph Bellamy as  Colonel Montford,” etc.  Not only is star Lon Chaney, Jr. billed last, he is introduced as “Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Wolf Man” rather than a more obvious “Lon Chaney, Jr.” as Larry Talbot.  That struck me as a strange move because the Wolf Man transformation takes place in the later third of the film.  (The original trailer, see below, has the same revelation.) Early spoiler warnings, any one?

3) The Wolf Man’s low body count of 1.  He kills a gravedigger.  He gets snagged by a bear trap (I hate those!) and has to get saved by an Old Gypsy Woman.  (Spoiler alert!)  Eventually, Wolfy is killed by his father  by rapping him on the skull with his cane.  Oooooh!  I think it’s safe to say that the first werewolf in film history was the least successful werewolf in film history.

All in all, I really enjoyed the Wolf Man. Sure, it’s more quaint than blood-curdling, but what’s so wrong about that?

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*

There are a few absurd notions you have to buy into in Surrogates.  First and foremost is that seven years into their development, the vast majority of the population has a fully operational, robot stand-ins complete with the in-home appliances necessary to operate and charge the things.  Riiiiiiight.

Second, crime has become nigh extinct thanks to the establishment of Surrogate use.  Call me crazy, but I’d imagine having a remote control android capable of superhuman leaps and feats of strength at your beck and call would only embolden certain criminal activities.  What’s the downside of robbing the convenience store if it’s your metal look-a-like who’s going to take the business end of a little old ladies’ robot’s purse?

Bruce Willis plays the protagonist, FBI Agent Tom Greer.  Greer’s Surrogate is wrinkle-free version of Willis, with a hilarious Flock of Seagulls coif.  Greer investigates a back-alley assault wherein two Surrogates were fried, causing not only their deactivation but the humans behind the robots to be fried as well.

The implications are allegedly dire, as the point behind Surrogates is that they get hurt and you don’t.  You vegetate in a Barcalounger safe from everything except gruesome bedsores.  The Surrogates take the risk as you gad about town engaging in all the decadence and debauchery that previously resulted in this little thing I like to call “consequences.”

Greer’s investigation takes him to the secretive inventor of Surrogates, Canter (James Cromwell), whose son was one of the victims.  Canter was expelled from the Surrogate Company he created for mysterious reasons, and now lives as a recluse.  Canter may have been the intended target of a vast conspiracy to undermine the Surrogate-reliant-society.

One suspect in the deaths is a man called “the Prophet” (Ving Rhames), who is the leader of the anti-Surrogate movement.  Actually, the Prophet and his people aren’t just against robots, they have entirely rejected technology and live like Amish hippies in closed communities.  While I’d personally lean toward the no-robot-stand-in crowd, does that really mean I have to renounce the combustion engine and my iPod too?  Mr. Prophet, sir, maybe we don’t need to revert back to the sun dial just because we don’t want to live vicariously through Lt. Commander Data?

Greer chases an assassin into the Prophet’s No Gears Allowed Club, and the anti-technology crowd destroys Greer’s Surrogate.  Greer’s neutral zone infraction gets him suspended.  Suspension in Surrogate-land apparently means no badge, no gun, and no robot.

Greer is forced to physically step outside his domicile sans automaton proxy in order to get to the bottom of things.  Greer the “meatbag” is the freak in conventional society, an actual homo sapien with wrinkles, scars, and imperfections walking bustling city streets populated by idealized mannequins.

Generally speaking, I kind of liked the message behind Surrogates.  It’s about re-engaging with human beings away from technology.  But I can’t say I hold much fondness for the movie itself.  Surrogates is goofy and unrealistic despite taking itself far, far too seriously to qualify as fun/bad.  At best, it’s a guilty pleasure you can wait for to air on TNT in about 18 months.

Yes, it’s a bad movie, but please let me explain: I am a Christian and thereby had a vested interest in the movie.  Most Asylum releases I sit back and enjoy the B-movie goodness as “so-bad-it’s-good.”  But this wasn’t just a B-movie, it’s a Christian B-movie!  So, Meteor Apocalypse I had a little emotional investment. 

Why do I care?  To get a perspective, imagine you’re watching a bunch of kids play T-ball.  They are running around aimlessly, falling down arbitrarily, getting distracted by passing clouds, and one is attempting to chew on the baseball rather than throw it back into the infield.  Kinda funny, right?  Not if your kid is the worst of the bunch; then it’s embarrassing. But if your kid is as good as all the other bad kids, it’s okay! (Right? Someone with kids back me up on this!)

You see, when it comes to movies, Christians haven’t been doing too good for ourselves.  You don’t have to dumb down to go from secular books to Christian books.  Call me crazy, but I actually prefer Christian music to popular music.  However, with rare exceptions like Passion of the Christ, the best Christian movies pale in comparison to the worst mainstream motion pictures in every category (acting, production value, script, etc.). 

I’d like to watch Christian movies, but it’s hard.  I turned off the sensation Fireproof (a film made by a church in Georgia for half a million bucks that earned over $30 million just in theaters) after five minutes because I couldn’t take it.  My point is that I love movies and I want Christian movies not to suck, but they simply do not.

I’m not implying that I’d only drink milk from a Christian cow or get my oil changed at a Holy Lube.  But hey, in a country where the vast majority of the population believe in God and seemingly less than 1% of Hollywood believe in anything other than generic Oprah-brand-faith, a Christian on-screen is a pleasant change of pace.  Normally the Christian in the film is the religious nut in the Dirty Dozen, the religious zealot trying to burn people at the stake, or a televangelist trying to take the money from old people.

So in that capacity Meteor Apocalypse is nice.  It’s still bad, don’t get me wrong, but I have to compare it to all the other Asylum/SyFy Channel Original movies I’ve seen, not to the latest Stephen Spielberg picture.  Meteor Apocalypse is, after all, a low-budget film about meteors that cause a apocalypse. 

Meteor Apocalypse has all the Asylum trademarks: A recognizable actor who doesn’t get a lot of work these days (Joe Lando, who came to fame in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Claudia Christian, of Babylon 5 “fame”); you’ve got oodles of low-budget effects (meteors crash to Earth repeatedly causing much digital mayhem); and plenty of cast members who look like they’re moonlighting from their day jobs as office temps.

The basic plot is that when the meteors start hitting, the water supply is contaminated causing as much havoc as the deadly, digital rocks from space.  Hero Joe Lando is separated from his wife and daughter, who are taken into quarantine.  The rest of the movie is Lando’s exploits trying to track down his family and survive in post-catastrophe America. 

The plot and dialogue aren’t aggressively preachy.   Lando’s character isn’t the typical Christian but someone married to a good Christian woman who holds Bible studies and pesters him to come to church.  There are several good Christian people thrown in the mix, prayers are said, and some Christianese is spoken (“kingdom moment,” etc.).  I was a tad bit shocked when one benevolent woman who takes our heroes into her church for sanctuary gets blown up real good when a meteor strikes said church. 

If you hold up Meteor Apocalypse, it is just as good as any film of its ilk (sci-fi without finance). 

Here’s the quote they can throw on the back of the DVD cover: Meteor Apocalypse is s a tolerable, fairly watchable, very low-budget, disaster movie in the tradition of 2012: Supernova.

The official release date is Tuesday, February 23rd — thanks for the early copy, Asylum!

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.

The first act introduces us to Denzel Washington, the Sheriff of a small town in Southern Florida.  Denzel is recently divorced from Eva Mendes (his first mistake) and currently having an affair with a married woman, Ann Merai.  Perhaps the greatest unanswered question of Out of Timeis: Was the character Ann Merai’s parents to some degree dyslexic, but this topic is sadly never broached though it rages to everyone of us who have gone to imdb.com to see how to spell her name.  How do you solve a problem like Ann Merai?  Well, I can’t just use the actor’s name in her place (as I’m doing with everyone else in the film) because Ann Merai is played by Sanaa Lathan.  “Sanaa” is not easier to say and she is not yet a household name, despite her breakout performance in Alien vs. Predator.  But I digress . . .

Back on topic, by Hollywood morality standards, Denzel and Ann Merai’s affair is morally acceptable because Ann Merai’s husband is a jerk.  The jerk husband in this case is played by Dean Cain, noted B-list actor and star of the iconic c-list film Dragon Fighter in a brief reprieve from movie limbo to get to act opposite an A-lister like Denzel.  The next time Cain would get quite so close to the A-list is when he did a guest appearance on CSI: Miami.  Of course, the closest CSI:Miami gets to the A-list is the fact that ”star” David Caruso (and I use the word “star” loosely) once got to work with Russell Crowe.   To be fair, Cain does all right for himself in Out of Time, and isn’t at all out of place (like David Caruso when working with Russell Crowe).

Soap opera quality drama ensues as Dean Cain suspects his wife is sleeping with Denzel.  To complicate things (insert dramatic organ music here) Ann Merai contracts a fatal disease and can’t afford the medication for treatment without selling off some of the unnecessary vowels in her name, which she patently refused to do out of principal.  Ann Merai sucks Denzel into her doctor visits and attempts to secure a pre-death life-insurance payout of some sort, but it falls through.  Coincidentally, Sheriff Denzel happens to be sitting on oodles of cash in the station evidence locker from a high-profile drug bust, evidence that will likely be in limbo for some time.

Ever the well-intentioned gullible sap, Denzel decides he can “borrow” the money to “loan” to Ann Merai.  At this point I would like to quote the woman sitting in front of me in the theater when I first saw this film: “Don’t trust her, Denzel!”

Never one to listen to the advice of people watching his movies, Denzel gives Ann Merai the money.  As soon as he does, Ann Merai’s house burns down and she and Dean Cain are presumed dead, the money gone.  The fire marks the end of act one and the beginning of the actually entertaining section of movie.

From here, you see, Denzel is left in a rather awkward position: He’s the Sheriff in charge of an arsonist’s double-homicide and the natural course of the investigation is leading to the mysterious man Ann Merai friends think was having an affair with Ann Merai, a logical suspect although Denzel knows the mystery man is himself.  Neighbors who saw a suspicious character around the house the night before say the guy looked like Denzel, which Denzel laughs off smoothly as, “So he was good looking?”

Denzel is feverishly attempting to conduct his own side-investigation with the facts only he knows but cannot divulge without implicating himself of murder and confessing to creative borrowing, i.e. theft, of evidence.

If that’s not enough, the aforementioned evidence is being called upon prematurely by a hard nosed F.B.I. agent who is unwilling to accept a bureaucratic runaround from a panicked Denzel.  Oh, and if THAT is not enough, Denzel’s ex-wife and local homicide investigator is put on the case (insert wacky sitcom music here).

Out of Timefalls in the “not great, and only barely good” categories.  The beginning is tedious and predictable to the point of it being painful and the conclusion is rather pedestrian.  Still, there are some great, fun scenes like the one where Denzel is being chased just out of sight of police pursuers, determined to keep his secret safe, hides the crucial evidence he took from the scene, then turns around and pretends like he is in pursuit of the unknown suspect and doesn’t know where he went.

Out of Time isn’t worth making time to check out, but on a lazy night it could make for an entertaining alternative to NCSIS: Des Moines, or whatever crap Dean Cain is guest starring on these days.

When the forecast calls for snow in these parts, people stock up on bread, water, and firewood as if the Apocalypse were nigh.  I was glad the theoretical blizzard was set to occur over the course of the weekend. You see, if I were to be at the office when the snow started, there’s no telling how long it would take for my panicked, Southern co-workers to resort to cannibalism despite the copious quantity of Dorito’s still in the snack machine.  (I can talk down to panicked Southerners because I very briefly lived in Chicago as a pre-teen.  So what if I’ve lived in the South the vast majority of my life? I’m a Chicagoan! Go Cubs!)

Friday evening I left work in hopes of picking up dinner and renting a movie for my night’s entertainment.  Getting there was a bit of a challenge as drivers dared not venture above 15 mph on Highway 485 as the first snowflakes fell, hours before they would stick on the surface or freeze on the road.  My local Blockbuster video, generally a ghost town, was inundated with families desperate to acquire a weekend’s worth of DVDs for fear they might have to converse with each other. 

Alas, I couldn’t justify standing in line for thirty minutes to rent the new release of the week, Bruce Willis’ bold remake of Will Smith’s bastardization of I, Robot, Surrogates, so I picked up something to eat and headed home.  I tell you that to tell you why I ended up watching the animated film, Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  My parents bought it and lent it to me, and it had been sitting in front of my DVD player for a couple of weeks.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is terrible, and it’s not just because its title implies two different kinds of “Wars.”  Is it a “star war” or a “clone war” – make up your mind, Lucas!

Chronologically, Star Wars: The Clone Wars fits in between Star Wars II: Send in the Clones & Star Wars III: Revenge of the Script.  Intellectually,The Clone Wars falls somewhere between Star Wars I: The Fandom Menace and The Star Wars Holiday Special.

The plot revolves around those titular Clone Wars, where the Jedi’s and their clone friends (alias the Storm Troopers) are battling the evil Count Dooku (that’s a real name, I promise) and his endless supply of thoroughly useless robots.  It’s astounding how the robots make the Storm Troopers look competent by comparison.

Count Dooku has a master plan to shift the balance of power in his favor, and it involves currying the favor of Jabba the Hutt.  If you recall, Jabba the Hutt is the giant slug/gangster featured in Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi, which chronologically is decades down the road.  Jabba essentially ran one wacky sand trap whose greatest weapon was a hole in the ground, and posed no real threat to our heroes outside of comic relief.  So imposing a foe is Jabba and his crew that he ultimately will be defeated in Star Wars VI by two ambiguously gay robots, a princess in a bikini, and Billy Dee Williams.  If not for giving the world the gift of said Princess in a bikini, Jabba the Hutt’s contribution to the Star Wars universe would largely be forgotten.

But let’s forget that we know from that (good) film made twenty-five years earlier that Jabba is a bad guy who is easy to defeat.  By golly, his cooperation is going to be key to the victory in the Clone Wars! . . . for some reason.

Count Dooku’s plan to curry the favor of Jabba the Hutt?  You’d better sit down for this one: Dooku plans to kidnap the slug child of Jabba, wait for the Jedi’s to try to rescue Jabba Junior, and record footage of the Jedi’s rescuing Jabba Junior, which he will pass off to Jabba as the Jedi’s kidnapping Jabba Junior.  At this point, Dooku’s nefarious scheme requires him to kidnap back Jabba Junior from the Jedi’s, or just kill Jabba Junior and then blame the Jedi’s for it.

It really seems like a lot of trouble when a good old-fashioned BRIBE would probably get the job done just as easily.

Our heroes are familiar favorites, Obi-Wan Kinobi, Anakin Skywalker, Yoda, R2D2, etc. Anakin gets a plucky, girl sidekick in Padawan learner Ahsoka, who adds nothing outside being a plucky, girl sidekick.  Sidekick Ahsoka’s addition is particularly cloying because Anakin is really nothing more than Obi-Wan’s sidekick, so what’s the fun in giving your wise-cracking side-kick a wise-cracking side-kick? I use the phrase “wise-cracking” loosely.  An example of Ahsoka’s lines are grating like this: “I’m the one with enthusiasm. You’re the one with experience, which I’m looking forward to learning from.”

The Clone Wars doesn’t really answer any questions the later trilogy and doesn’t really add to it at all.  Come to think of it, I had no questions left unanswered by the later trilogy other than “Why was this made?” The only good the Clone Wars has done is make that cinematic trainwreck look like a good idea in retrospect.

There’s no foreshadowing of Anakin’s dark side (which is the point of the trilogy, is it not?).  Padme — mother to Luke and Leia, the woman Anakin loves so much that he will betray the Jedi’s for her –- is an afterthought, and her key relationship with Anakin is barely alluded to.

Padme appears with 20 minutes left to go in a bizarre subplot involving Jabba’s Uncle Ziro the Hutt.  Ziro the Hutt cracked me up; he’s a southern, vaguely effeminate version of Jabba that sounds kinda like the old pervert from Family Guy.  Priceless.

The animation looks just dreadful.  Obi-Wan’s beard looks as if he’s taped brown blocks on his face.  As dreadfully unrealistic as the animation for the Clone Wars is, the presentation of Anakin Skywalker is a giant step up to the performance of Hayden Christensen.  Zing!

Speaking of Hayden Christensen, nearly none of the cast from the films provides the voices to their characters.  Christopher Lee as Dooku, Anthony Daniels as C3PO, and Samuel L. Jackson(!) as Mace Windu are the only returning favorites.  The rest are voice actors filling in for the regulars, so the dude doing Obi-Wan Kinobi’s voice (James Arnold Taylor) is doing an impression of Ewan McGregor’s impression of Alec Guinness. It’s hard to believe George Lucas couldn’t get any of the other actors. What’s the guy who played the Emperor doing that’s so important? A Star Wars convention in Cleveland?

If I had to say something nice about Star Wars: The Clone Wars is that it isn’t dull.  It’s dumb as all get out, looks dreadful, but there is always stuff happening on screen, so it should amuse the 6-8 year-old crowd. Parents, however, be warned!

Watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars is like watching someone else play a video game.  On second thought, that’s unfair to video games.  My brother showed me animation from a Star Wars video game released last year that looked light-years better than Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the video game trailer:

Here’s the movie trailer:

Maybe Lucas should let the guys who did the work on the video game do the next animated movie? Couldn’t hurt!

Just out on DVD, Whiteout was a relatively big-budget thriller starring Kate Beckinsale.  It appeared in theaters for approximately 17 minutes, barely long enough for it to be panned by critics and irritate the two guys who wanted to see.  One of those men was me, the other happened to be the mother of the film’s director.

In fact, so universal was the disdain for Whiteout that it actually appeared on RottenTomatoes.com’s 100 worst rated films of the 2000’s decade.  RottenTomatoes scores are based on a compiled consensus of positive/negative grades given by film critics and general movie fans.  Whiteout barely beat out Mariah Carey’s opus Glitter on the list.  Whiteout scored a paltry 7% positive on the tomato-meter.  For a point-of-comparison, the brainless, Gerard Butler action film Gamer that also just came out on DVD — and happens to be the only film of the decade that both my brother and I walked out of — scored 29%.

Being a glutton for bad movies, I had to check Whiteout out.

The premise of Whiteout is actually an intriguing one.  There is a scientific outpost in the arctic wasteland that is Antarctica.   As the outpost prepares to shutdown for “the winter” (isn’t it always winter in Antarctica?) a dead body is discovered.  ‘Twasn’t an accident, suspects the U.S. Marshall (Beckinsale) on site, who opens the first murder investigation in Antarctica history.  Who killed who and why?  Who’s going to get killed next and why?  How does it involve the contents of a Russian plane that crashed decades earlier?  Who let the dogs out?

So instead of the murder-mystery-thriller story featuring a cast of characters trapped in a house, a resort, a boat, or some other remote locale, Whiteout uses an entire continent to create a sense of isolation.  Granted, it’s a continent where at times you die in mere seconds if you venture outside unprotected.

The negatives to the film are plentiful if you choose to dwell on them.  Other than Beckinsale as the lead and reliable character actor Tom Skerritt as “Doc,” the cast is forgettable.  There’s a death-defying escape that defies logic or explanation.  The criticism on the TV show At The Movies was that the plot moves slow, you can’t tell what’s happening in some scenes where characters fight in blinding arctic conditions known as a “whiteout,” and there aren’t any penguins.

While I must confess there are no penguins, I sheepishly admit I kinda liked Whiteout.  Not enough to fully recommend you spend money on it, but when it’s on TV give it a shot and see for yourself.  I dug the locale (Canada standing in for Antartica) and the story (based on a comic book, believe it or not) held my interest.  I even liked Kate Beckinsale’s plucky heroine.  While I must stress it isn’t a “good movie,” it is rather “an all right, I can watch this movie.”  Low expectations certainly help.

A side-note: Perhaps feeling shame over the film’s critical performance, the marketing team has attempted to disguise the nature of Whiteout.   The DVD cover features a close-up photograph of the lovely Kate Beckinsale in exaggerated black and white.  Based on the picture, I would surmise that Whiteout is the tale of a blind albino attempting to make her way in the cruel world of modeling.  While this is an intriguing premise similar to my unsold screenplay, Rhonda The Pale Supermodel Who Fell Off the Runway, is not what Whiteout is about.

Watching the trailer after watching the movie is rather astounding, and it’s obvious they were trying to promote a different movie than what the filmmakers made. The chain events in the trailer after the line, “we hit something big” are so misleading it is ridiculous. This is a “murder mystery” and they are trying to make it look like it’s about an extraterrestrial invasion of some variety.

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.

The plot of Princess of Mars is as follows: John Carter (Antonio Sabato Jr.) is a modern day U.S. Marine stationed in the Middle East.  Carter is critically injured in combat and as this brave American hero fights to survive, his commanders send him to Mars.  I’m not kidding.  He’s transported via some experimental technology that will recreate him on Mars, though not the Mars.  Carter is told: “We are sending you to Mars.  Not the Mars that you think.  This is Mars 2-16.  A small planet in the orbit Alpha Centauri.”  The Viet Nam vets thought THEY had it bad.

According to the source of all wisdom and knowledge, the novel Princess of Mars featured a Civil War veteran in mystically transported to the actual Mars when attacked by Indians. This makes remarkably more sense than the film, which apparently believes they cannot use the actual planet Mars because we are now relatively certain that there is no life on Mars (I will say “relatively certain” until convinced that the Sham Wow Guy is indeed an Earthling). So the filmmakers assume that their audience will not accept civilization on Mars in a film titled “Princess of Mars,” but they will embrace the concept that the U.S. Military will send an injured soldier to another planet called Mars (without his consent). Really, no explanation for a veteran’s appearance on another planet than that.

On *cough* “Mars”, Carter finds himself in a power struggle between the be-tusked aliens who look like cast-offs from Star Trek: Voyager and the human-like aliens.  On this planet known as Mars, which I remind you is of no relationship to the planet Mars, Carter has super strength and the ability to leap tall mountains in about two or three bounds.  Presumably forgetting that he can jump half a mile at will, Carter becomes captive to the Elephant Men remarkably quickly.

Carter and works his way up in the Elephant society, earning his place as a warrior when he helps fend off cheap digital spiders.  In reward, the Elephant people feed Carter a worm that somehow translates the languages of the peoples, sort of a Universal Translator Worm for Plot Convenience.  I kid you not. 

Some of the other great culture clash moments include Carter receiving water in the form of sweat rung out from a towel kept underneath the Elephants cloths and fed via pudding being coughed up from a giant slug.  Yum!

Despite fitting right in with the herd, Carters feels loyalty to the humans and their allegedly “hot” Princess of Mars.

One of the central dramas is that the humans are attempting to attend to the facility that keeps the planet’s air pure, known as the “Royal Pumping Station.”  In fact, Traci Lords, the former adult film star playing the titular Princess of Mars spends much of the film desperately attempting to reach to the “Royal Pumping Station.”  This is a PG-rated site, so I shall comment no further.

Carter tries to convince his Elephant friend to let the Princess go to the Royal Pumping Station to save the planet, but the Elephant Man does not believe that there is a machine purifying the air.  Elephant Man rebuffs the request by saying, and I quote, “The Princess may believe her words are truthful, but they are LIES!”

The plot is really not the point.  Princess of Mars is camp science fiction at its finest, a guilty pleasure all the way.  Antonio Sabato Jr. spends most the movie wearing a diaper.  Traci Lords spends the entire film attempting not to smile for fear of her wrinkles showing while clad in Princess Leia-style slave girl attire from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. . . .

. . . .  . .  Sorry, my mind wandered there for a minute.

To summarize, Princess of Mars is a great Asylum movie. Lots of fun, lots of laughs. Plus, it is about 70 minutes shorter than Avatar, so it’s got that going for it.