20170301: Drama Review--Manchester by the Sea

Name: Manchester by the Sea (2016)
IMDb: link to Manchester by the Sea page

Genres: Drama.   Country of origin: USA.

Cast:
Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler, Michelle Williams as Randi Chandler, Kyle Chandler as Joe Chandler, Gretchen Mol as Elise Chandler, Lucas Hedges as Patrick Chandler.

Written and directed by: Kenneth Lonergan.

Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Lee Chandler is the jack of all trades supervisor of a so-so apartment building.  He is frank and unapologetic is his assessments of the tenants problems.  They complain; his boss transmits the thunder to him; he does not care.

His brother Joe dies.  He has to pick up the pieces, including deciding whether to take care of his nephew Patrick, Joe's son.

Delineation of conflicts:
Lee has to deal with his memories of living with his ex-wife Randi and their three children, plus the fire that ended the marriage.  After Joe dies, he deals with Patrick and Randi.  His brother's will expresses Joe's desire that Lee be Patrick's guardian.

If he decides to be Patrick's guardian, he has to move back to Manchester, where his life was destroyed of his own hand.

Resolution: There is nothing that can be resolved.  Life sucks for Lee, mostly by his own doing.  Can he find a better place?  It does not matter.  His life will still suck.

One line summary:
Reckless drunk loses family in fire.

Michelle Williams as Randi Chandler; Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler

Statistics:

Cinematography: 3/10 This was quite variable.  Much of it looks like bad TV photography.  Other parts look rich and detailed and beautiful.  The mix is distracting.  I expect to remember none of the visuals.

Sound: 5/10 Noisy.  Most of the sound seems pointless or irrelevant, like much of the background music.

Acting: 4/10 Acting?  High-end high school plays have comparable performances.

Screenplay: 2/10 The main character is worthless.  I do not care whether he redeems his life after his brother dies or not.  In terms of plot flow, I disliked the many flashbacks.  In the first third of the film, I lost track of where the film's shattered narrative was in time.  About that time, I quit caring.

Final rating: 3/10 Please Amazon, I hope future productions feature better writing.

20161026: Action Review--Bourne Ultimatum

Name: Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
IMDb: link to Bourne Ultimatum page

Genres: Action   Country of origin: USA.

Cast:
Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, Joan Allen as Pamela Landy, Julia Stiles as Nicky Parsons, David Strathairn as Noah Vosen, Scott Glenn as Ezra Kramer, Paddy Considine as Simon Ross, Edgar Ramirez as Paz, Albert Finney as Dr Albert Hirsch, Joey Ansah as Desh Bouksani, Colin Stinton as Neal Daniels.

Directed by: Paul Greengrass.  Written by: Tony Gilroy, Scott Z Burns, George Nolfi (screenplay), from the books by Robert Ludlum.

Jason Bourne, Nicky Parsons

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
In London, UK, reporter Simon Ross hopes to expose Operation Blackbriar, considered an upgrade to Project Treadstone.  Unfortunately for Ross, both the CIA and Jason Bourne catch wind of this.

Bourne tries to protect Ross, but the CIA murders Ross.  The CIA sets about to find Bourne and Ross' source.  The CIA brings in Pamela Landy and Nicky Parsons, who have previous experience with Bourne.

Delineation of conflicts:
People with weapons are chasing Bourne.  He wants to get away.  They want to catch him or kill him.

Resolution: Can Jason find something that will get the bastards off his tail?

One line summary: Worst of the Bourne films.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 0/10 Endless shit.  The shaky cam never ended, and the editing was extremely choppy.

Sound: 4/10 I could hear the dialog.  The music over the end credits was good, but mostly useless during the film.

Acting: 4/10 I liked the performances of Julia Stiles, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, and Scott Glenn.

However, Matt Damon was in the film, which was a huge downside force.  His action sequences were believable about half the time.  His mind swamp of angst was a bad cross of irritating and boring.  His transformation from fighting superman to quivering spineless whipping boy for the likes of Dr Hirsch was just nauseating, and seemed to have little or nothing to do with the rest of the film.  So who cares?

Screenplay: 2/10 It's a chase film.  Again, who cares?  The delineation of conflicts section above was the shortest I've ever written.  What did it add beyond the second film?  Answer: ridiculous chase footage, fight scenes we've already watched, more angst nonsense, and some terrible film work.

Final Rating: 3/10 Unneeded pile of nonsense.

20160812: Action Review--Atomic Shark

Name: Atomic Shark (2016)
IMDb: link to Atomic Shark page

Genres: Action, SciFi   Country of origin: USA.

Cast:
Rachele Brooke Smith as Gina, Jeff Fahey as Rottger, David Faustino as Fletcher, and so on.

Directed by: A. B. Stone.  Written by: Scott Foy, Griff Furst.

Image courtesy of TMDb

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
At a Southern California beach, Rottger rents out his speed boat for water skiers.  While doing this, the skier is eaten by a red glowing shark.  Rottger reports this to the beach patrol, but is ignored.

On the beach, there are lifeguards (led by a total jackass), the environmentalists, the voyeurs, plus the normal folk.   Gina is Rottger's daughter, one of the lifeguards, and a so-so student of the environment.  She draws her boss' disapproval by insisting that there is a shark problem.

Delineation of conflicts:
The sharks would like to kill and eat the humans.  The environmental group would like the radioactive waste in a sunken submarine to be cleaned up.

As the incidents mount, the drone flyer, the environmentalists, Rottger, and Gina band together to take the issue to the source of the mutated sharks.  The sharks do not take it lying down.

The millennials want selfies every so many minutes, so there is the war with the WiFi.

Resolution: Depends on whether the WiFi works out at sea to coordinate the attack using tablets.

One line summary: Radioactive mutant sharks vs environmental students in SoCal.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 6/10 Bright, well-focused, reasonably framed for natural, outdoor, daytime shooting.  The CGI was frequently unconvincing.

Sound: 7/10 No particular problems.

Acting: 4/10 Jeff Fahey was about as good as he could get given the rotten screenplay.  Other than Jeff, the other actors were between mighty poor and abysmal.

Screenplay: 1/10 Gods of all stars, save me from this crap! The script was just terrible.  This is one of the worst efforts I've seen through Syfy, which is saying a lot.  There were shark movie cliches, beach cliches, stupid boss cliches, radioactivity cliches, and father-daughter cliches.  Add in stereotypical views of millennials, the necessity of WiFi, and the 'ability' of sharks to do just about anything.

Final Rating: 3/10

20160111: Action Review--Death Squad

Name: Death Squad [2047: Sights of Death] (2014)
IMDb: link to IMDb

Genres: SciFi, Horror   Country of Origin: Italy.

Cast: Stephen Baldwin as Captain Ryan Willburn, Danny Glover as Sponge, Darryl Hannah as Major Anderson, Michael Madsen as Lobo, Rutger Hauer as Colonel Asimov, Neva Leoni as Tuag.

Directed by: Alessandro Capone.  Written by: Tommaso Agnese and Luca D'Alisera.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux: Set in 2047, we open with Sponge reminiscing about the disasters that led to the current strongly screwed up Earth.  Cities have been largely destroyed and dosed with radiation. Satellites from previous eras fall to Earth now and then; they sometimes land with parts of their technology intact.  Captain Ryan Willburn was sent after the latest fall to determine whether any useful technology or data survived the re-entry.  After Ryan crashes instead of lands, he meets Tuag, a young mutant woman.

Delineation of conflicts:  Sponge and Ryan are part of the Green War front, which opposes the Confederate Central Government, CCG.  Just about everyone else is not part of Green War, and would rather shut them down.  Colonel Asimov, Major Anderson, and Lobo (leader of a mercenary gang) are out to capture Ryan.  Ryan thinks he has evidence from the satellite to bring down the current regime.

Asimov has more in mind than just official duties.  He's hired longtime ally Lobo to help him do his extracurricular activities.  This involves layers of cover up.  Just to make things more fun, the whole area of interaction is laced with some hallucinogen.

Resolution: Look hard.  I did not find one. The narration just dried up without any particular conclusion.

One line summary: Murky dystopian elimination derby.

Statistics:
  a. Cinematography: 4/10 The focus was usually good, and the cameras were not too shaky.  However, the sets were not well-lit, and the set of filters was poor to the point that it might as well have been greyscale.  The small number of VFX were rather badly done.

  b. Sound: 7/10 The dialog was easy enough to understand.  The background music was just so-so.

  c. Acting: 1/10 These actors (Glover, Madsen, Hauer, Hannah, Baldwin) have some fine movies in their filmographies.  This was not a shining moment for any of them.  The plus one was for Darryl Hannah trying now and then.

  d. Screenplay: 0/10 Was there a director on set?  The screenplay was hardly strong, but the director usually has some responsibility to check that delivery is up to some standard or another.  Baldwin's performance could have been topped by almost any high school thespian.  All these actors could have done better.

The story sucked rocks.  What did the Danny Glover thread have to do with anything?  Who were the anarchists?  Where was the eastern quadrant or whatever it was?  What was Asimov trying to do that needed covering up?  Was anything in the narration not hallucination?  Why should I care about this self-stultifying mess?

Final rating: 3/10

20150907: Horror Review--The Pact II

The Pact II

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: The Pact II
2. IMDb: Users rated this 4.3/10 (1,711 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   25% of critics liked it of 8 critical reviews posted
   15% of viewers liked it from 227 viewer ratings
   Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2014-09-05
6. Production Companies: Preferred Film & TV
7. Tagline: It's Starting Again...


8. Budget:  Budget estimate not available at review time.
9. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
10. Runtime: 96 minutes.
11. Genres: Mystery, Horror, Thriller


12. Written and directed by: Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath.


13. Starring: Camilla Luddington as June Abbott, Caity Lotz as Annie Barlow, Scott Michael Foster as Officer Daniel Meyer, Haley Hudson as Stevie, Amy Pietz as Maggie Abbott, Patrick Fischler as FBI agent Terrence Ballard, Nicki Micheaux as Lt. Eileen Carver


14. TMDb overview: The sequel is set just weeks after Annie Barlow's deadly confrontation with the Judas Killer. In this elevated sequel, we meet June, a woman whose carefully constructed life is beginning to unravel due to lucid nightmares so awful they disturb her waking life.



2. The three acts.


1. Setting the initial tableau: June is an artist who illustrates the dark visions she has.  She is also a crime scene cleaner for hire.  The film opens to her scrubbing up the mess in Annie's apartment after the first film.  Some weeks later, there is a semi-copycat killing.  June's boyfriend is Officer Meyer from the local police force.  Early on, they squabble about June's spending time with her mother Maggie.  He tells her about the latest bloody crime, and the arrival of FBI agent Ballard.  He agrees to recommend her as the cleaner for this latest mess.


2. Delineation of conflicts:  Maggie has many needs, and expects daughter June to fulfill them, but she is not that good at notification in regards to scheduling.  June gets tired of her professional schedule being squeezed.  Officer Meyer thinks the FBI agent Ballard is a high-handed pain; Ballard thinks Daniel is a low level factotum.  June keeps venting her dark visions through illustration, and lets Ballard know her low opinion of him.  Ballard has plenty of demands for Lt Carver, but little to offer in return.
   
   Ballard delivers some information bombshells to June about her mother and her connection to the original crimes of the Judas Killer. This increases June's distress, and everyone's hard feelings in general.  As one might expect from such films, more bad things start to happen.
   
   As the second act deepens, the petty irritations are still there, but pale in comparison to the quest to identify and stop the murderer.  Is June the murderer, or perhaps Ballard?  Is the supernatural truly involved, or do we have odd behaviour due to stress?  Will it actually help to bring Annie and Stevie (both from the first film) back to consult?


3. Resolution: Well, watch the film.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Murders continue in the sequel.
2. Three of ten.  Early on I thought 6/10, but the jump scares, shaky cam, the back biting, and the screenplay in general wore me down to 4/10.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 The film has the TV movie-of-the-week look.  This is not a compliment.  It has a few passages of shaky cam, which never fares well with me. 


2. Sound: 3/10 I can hear the actors, which is sometimes a good thing.  The background music does contribute some creepiness.  However, jump scares are what I consider cheap jack stupid tricks: the viewer is shocked by slamming into a sudden upward facing cliff of sound.  Worse yet, the residue of each such collision is that the protagonist looks like a weakling or a fool; neither of these makes me more interested in the film.


3. Acting: 4/10 I predict that this film will receive no award nominations for good acting.  None of the players were terribly bad, but the director did not get good performances either.


4. Screenplay: 2/10  On the one hand, there was nothing inventive or new.  On the other hand, there were plenty of cliches, irritation instead of suspense, unexplained phenomena, and unconcluded conversations.

20150802: Comedy Review--Three Night Stand

Three Night Stand

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: Three Night Stand
2. IMDb: Users rated this 4.8/10 (477 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   60% of critics liked it of 10 critical reviews posted
   36% liked it from 280 viewers' ratings
   Critics Consensus: no consensus yet


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2013-12-06
6. Production Companies: Vroom Productions, Banner House Productions
7. Tagline: Meet Carl. His wife. & the Love of his Life.


8. Budget:  1.2 million CAD
9. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
10. Runtime: 86 minutes.
11. Genres: Comedy, Drama


12. Written and directed by: Pat Kiely.


13. Starring: Sam Huntington as Carl, Meaghan Rath as Sue, Emmanuelle Chriqui as Robyn, Reagan Pasternak as Stacey, Jonathan Cherry as Doug, Dan Beirne as Aaron Berg


14. TMDb overview: A married couple's romantic weekend is turned upside down when the husband's ex-girlfriend, a woman he's secretly obsessed with, is running the ski lodge where they're staying.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Carl and Sue get ready for a weekend at a ski lodge.  Carl plans to get Sue a new ring, and for them to renew their vows.  When they arrive, they find that Carl's ex Robyn, who now calls herself Ryan, has bought the place and is running it.  Carl also hoped that during this weekend, he and Sue might iron out some turbulence in their relationship.  On top of that, Carl slips out now and then to telephone Stacey, his best friend and co-worker.  Stacey tries to help Carl as best she can, but has her husband Doug to contend with at the same time.


2. Worlds collide!


3. The rest of the film is about the consequences of the collision.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Not worth the effort.


2. Three of ten


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 Nothing to write home about.


2. Sound: 5/10 I could hear the dialog.  Sound was not an enhancement.


3. Acting: 4/10  I saw quite enough of Sam Huntington and Meaghan Rath in the television series Being Human (2011-2014).  The neural pathways are still thinking of their old relationship.  The action shows only lip service to any attraction between them.  This is OK, since there is no chemistry to speak of.  Although that fits into the setup of the script, it weakens engagement: why should I care about these two, the main characters, that is?


4. Screenplay: 2/10 Looks like the broad ratings are not too far off.  There is enough plot for about 15 minutes, but this gets stretched to 86.  There are not many laughs in this film.  The main situation that generates conflict is handled with the blunt instrument called Sam Huntington, so the script is rather lost to his blundering ways.
   
   If you hate women, you might like this film.  If you hate men, you might like this film. Both men and women are portrayed as being beneath worthless.  If you despise romance, you might like this film.  If you hate laughing, you might like this film.  There was no romance, but only callousness and cynicism.  I did not laugh while watching this movie.
   
   Since I do not fit into any of those categories, the picture had little appeal to me.

20150619: Drama Review--Beyond

Beyond

image courtesy of The Movie Database

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: Beyond
2. IMDb: Users rated this 3.8/10 (471 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   zero critics responded with ratings
   29% of viewers like it based on 103 ratings
   Critics Consensus: None yet.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2014-04-25
6. Production Companies: Attercorp Productions, Bigview Media
7. Tagline: Survival is a Choice.


8. Budget:  Budget estimate not available at review time.
9. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
10. Runtime: 89 minutes.
11. Genres: Drama, Science Fiction, Romance


12. Written and directed by: Joseph Baker, Tom Large


13. Starring: Richard J. Danum as Cole, Gillian McGregor as Maya, Paul Brannigan as Michael, Kristian Hart as Keith Novac, Sid Phoenix as Prof. Rawlston Jennings, John Schwab as National Space Agency Spokesperson, George Dillon as Newsreader


14. TMDb overview: A suspenseful sci-fi journey tracking the turbulent relationship of Cole and Maya as they struggle to survive in a world where the human population has been left decimated after an extra-terrestrial attack.


2. Setup and Plot


1. What is believed to be an asteroid approaches Earth.  There is a bit of imprecision.  The experts cannot decide whether it will impact our planet even when it is visible in the night sky.  As the object gets closer, other possibilities show themselves.


2. The scene jumps back and forth from before the arrival, when the couple met, to the present, after the encounter, when most humans are dead.  The dialectic is awkward in execution and definitely off-putting.


3. As the film rolls on, will we ever see the encounter?  Will we ever see the end of the couple's complaining about each other?  Will anyone survive this situation?


3. Conclusions
1. This is psychological drama, not science fiction.  All of the narrative is false, if one is to believe the ending.
2. One line summary: I would not recommend this to a friend.
3. Three of ten


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 Dark and gritty, to no particular point; a bit too much shaky cam.


2. Sound: 5/10 I can hear the dialog.  The reason for some of the musical interludes escapes me.


3. Acting: 4/10 For the majority of the film there are only two actors.  The pair seem listless and irritable, not under siege or in threat of their lives, not even hungry and dirty.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 The dialog is mostly boring, including the many tiffs; after hearing 'we need to talk' the first three times, the next dozen are irritating.  There are too many back and forth jumps in the timeline.  These two factors undermine any interest I had in the original concept.  In the post encounter/eradication era, there is not as much evidence of genocide as I would have expected.  Eliminating billions of humans would leave some traces, but many of the scenes are devoid of any signs of previous habitation.  The ending more or less throws away the rest of the film.  Another way of putting it is that the rest of the film provides next to no foundation for the ending.

20150212: Action-Adventure Review--Divergent

Divergent

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, released in 2014, 139 minutes runtime; action, adventure, scifi.
2. IMDB: 6.8/10.0 from 223,546 audience ratings.  Estimated budget, 85 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 41% on the meter; 71% liked it from 132,716 audience ratings.
4. I saw this on HBO.
5. Directed by: Neal Burger.
6. Starring: Shailene Woodley as Tris, Theo James as Four, Ashley Judd as Natalie, Jai Courtney as Eric, Ray Stevenson as Marcus, Zoe Kravitz as Christina, Miles Teller as Peter, Tony Goldwyn as Andrew, Ansel Elgort as Caleb, Maggie Q as Tori, Mikhal Phifer as Max, Kate Winslett as Jeanine.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film is set in the remains of Chicago in a post-apocalyptic dystopian city state. Society is segmented into five factions (dauntless, abnegation, erudite, candor, amity) plus the Factionless.  Those in the factions are privileged, while the Factionless are impoverished.  The abnegation faction controls government.  The film, in short, involves the attempted mutiny of dauntless and erudite to replace abnegation as the rulers.


2. Young people in this society are faced with a choice in their late teens: to choose a faction.  Each teen is given a test to help determine the faction, but the teen's choice is the determining factor, not the test.


3. Tris (well, Beatrice), daughter of Natalie and Eric, sister of Caleb, gets an inconclusive test.  Tori, who administered the test, advises her to just leave and say the test was flawed.  Tris does this.  On the day of choosing, she chooses dauntless over her family's faction, abnegation.


4. The story follows Tris' acclimatisation into dauntless and her involvement with the unspoken motives of dauntless and erudite against abnegation.  The other central theme is her flawed test.  What really happened there?


5. This is the first installment of a trilogy, and some of the first moves of dauntless plus erudite against abnegation are detailed.




3. Conclusions
1. This is another exercise set in a dystopia that is simply not possible...so who cares?


2. There was nothing to balance that: nothing and no one to bring identification, or empathy, or involvement.


3. This film is in the YA female demographic.


4. One line summary:  Teen's coming of age in a factionalized future dystopia.


5. Three of ten


6. Recommendation: fine if you are in the demographic.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Reasonable skill was shown.


2. Sound: 5/10 I could make out the words that the actors spoke.  The background music was between insipid and irritating.


3. Acting: 3/10 I liked the performances of Ashley Judd, Kate Winslett, and Theo James. The rest of the cast was well worth forgetting.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Boring, not involving, not believable.

20130923: Horror Review--Silent House

Silent House

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length, 2012, thriller, horror, mystery, rated R, 86 minutes.
2. IMDB: 5.2/10.0 from 12,553. 
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 41% on the meter, 30% from 40,989 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Chris Kentis, Laura Lau.  Screenplay: Laura Lau.
5. Starring: Elizabeth Olsen as Sarah, Adam Trese as John, Eric Sheffer Stevens as Peter, Julia Taylor Ross as Sophia.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Sarah, John (her dad), and her Uncle Peter go to the family's lakeside house to pack before selling the place.  Sarah meets Sophia, who claims to know her, but whom Sarah does not particularly remember.


2. Sarah sets about to clean out the room where she and her cousins used to stay.


3. After the establishing footage, the film changes mode.  Sarah is alone, and gets scared for a number of reasons.


4. Sarah cannot find a way out of the house.  Someone seems to be in there with her.  She finds her father badly injured and bloodied.  She decides to try to leave the house so she can get help.


5. She finds signs of squatters having stayed in the house intermittently.  Again, someone else is there, and she hides from them as best she can.  She keeps encountering locked doors, and the only key she has does not work the first time or two.


6. She gets out, and meets her uncle in the driveway.  Peter goes into the house with his gun.  They have trouble finding John, but they do find a bloody patch where he had been.


7. The generator goes out, they are in darkness, and someone takes Polaroid photos.  When the generator starts again, Peter is gone, Sarah is hiding under the table, and she sees odd things.  This includes Peter being dragged away by his feet.  Sarah gets Peter's gun, and takes some shots at unknown targets.


8. Sarah has a recurrent hallucination of a small girl.  She starts seeing growing blood pools all over the place.  Sophia visits.  Looks like Sophia is also an hallucination.  After all, no one else was shown interacting with Sophia.


9. As expected, this was a psychological drama, and Sarah finds her way out of her own trap at the end.  There are no supernatural elements.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Psychological drama where abused daughter resolves bad family dynamics.
2. Final Rating: 3/10.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 2/10  Lots of semi-darkness, vignette filtering, and complete darkness, showing way too much enthusiasm for Blair Witch techniques.


2. Sound: 9/10 So much better than the rotten visuals.


3. Acting: 0/10 Elizabeth Olsen is the only actor for a large proportion of the film.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Finally resolves with one minute to go.  Misrepresented as horror.

20130904: Action Review--DNA 1997

Name: DNA (1997)
IMDb: link to DNA page

Genres: Action, SciFi  Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Mark Dacascos as Dr. Ash Mattley; Jurgen Prochnow as Dr. Carl Wessinger; Robin McKee as CIA operative Clair Summers;  as Roger Aaron Brown as Loren Azenfel.

Directed by: William R. Mesa.   Written by: Nick Davis.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Carl excavates bones in northern Borneo, and discovers how to extract DNA from the bones.  He's short an enzyme or two to complete the process of regenerating an animal from the DNA.  He turns to Ash, who runs an underfunded clinic in Sarawak, Malaysia.  Ash had been in mainstream medical researcher, but was run out when he could not complete his discoveries about immune-boosting enzymes.  Carl supplies the missing link in Ash's work, and suggests an expedition into the jungles to get enough rare beetles to make enough enzymes to prove the discovery, and make a lot of money from the medical/pharmaceutical industry.

Delineation of conflicts:
The expedition goes well for Carl, but not so much for Ash.

Two years later, Clair comes to Ash to help identify the cause of death of several mutilated bodies.  The answer is the presence of the Balakai, the creature Carl had wanted to revive. The second expedition with Clair is much less well-prepared, and looks doomed from the start. They find the monster soon enough, and what is left of Carl's party.

Not much after that, the film goes through a shift.  Carl describes the monster as an alien.  When met in the outdoors, the monster is a skilled alien hunter (style of Predator) capable of invisibility on command.  Its appearance is a bit like the alien in Alien.  Ash does some rituals with locals, then goes after the alien.

Resolution: The ending is rather flat, given all the 'borrowings' from other films.
 
One line summary: Fools resurrect alien monster in a derivative film.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 7/10 Usually OK, but suffers from darkness and graininess.

Sound: 8/10 The incidental music is a bit florid, but the recording is well done.

Acting: 3/10 Mark Dacascos and Robin McKee were just plain bad.  Both are miscast, which makes matters worse. Veteran actors Jurgen Prochnow and Roger Aaron Brown were better, but had to deal with the mediocre script.

Screenplay: 5/10  Supposedly set in Malaysia, but some of the 'natives' use language one might find in the Philippines, where the filming was done.  The expedition early on in the film had a Raiders of the Lost Ark feel to it, with a dash of King Solomon's Mines during the meetings with the locals.  Perhaps the worst motivational piece was Carl asserting that many countries would pay large amounts of money for this bio-weapon.  Please!  They could not control it in the least, just as nothing could control the alien killers in Alien or its sequels.  There is no military application here, so no source of money. If they had kept with the idea of immunity-enhancing enzymes, the film would have been more coherent.

Special Effects: 5/10 The monster, at least outside, was clearly a not-so-good man in a rubber suit.  The helicopter crashes and explosions were between so-so and poor.

Final Rating: Three of ten.  Too many holes in the plot, even for a creature feature.

20130901: Horror Review--Atrocious

Name: Atrocious (2010)
IMDb: link to Atrocious page

Genres: Horror, Shaky Cam   Country of Origin: Spain

Cast: Cristian Valencia as Cristian, Clara Moraleda as July, Chus Pereiro as Debora, Sergi Martin as Jose, Jose Masegosa as Carlos, Xavi Doz as Santiago.

Written and directed by: Fernando Barreda Luna.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableau: 
Two late teens video tape their investigations into the 'lost girl' Melinda of local legend.  It's just a lark.  Then the dog dies. The teens don't tell the younger brother about this, so the younger brother goes looking for the dog alone at night. The older teens go looking for him.

Delineation of conflicts: The children in the dark with insufficient light versus the bogeyman who took Melinda.  How might that turn out?  There was little effective parental supervision.

Resolution: The police take charge the next day.  They look at the recordings, and try to come to conclusions using the visuals and the forensic evidence. 

One line description: Bad found film set in Spain.

Statistics: 

Cinematography: 4/10 The early parts of the film were fine, but then it went into Blair Witch mode.

Sound: 4/10 Good toward the beginning, then degenerated terribly.

Acting: 4/10 Hard to tell; the script was that bad.

Screenplay: 2/10 It is found film, but not quite as bad as Blair Witch.

Final Rating: 3/10