20150831: YA Review--Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

Name: The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013)
IMDb: City of Bones

Genres: Fantasy, YA female,  coming of age, romance, comedy

Cast:  Lily Collins as Clary, Jamie Campbell Bower as Jace Wayland, Kevin Zegers as Alec Lightwood, Jemima West as Isabelle Lightwood, Robert Sheehan as Simon Lewis, Lena Heady as Jocelyn Fray, Jared Harris as Hodge Starkweather, Aiden Turner as Luke Garroway, Godfrey Gao as Magnus Bane, CCH Pounder as Dorothea, Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Valentine, Kevin Durand as Pangborn, Robert Maillet as Blackwell.

Directed by: Harald Zwart.  Written by: Cassandra Clare (book), Marlene King and Jessica Postigo (screenplay).

The Three Acts

The initial tableau: In New York City, young Clary starts having problems.  She sees people and things that others cannot.  She obsessively draws strange symbols in her room.  She gets in trouble with strangers at a club and sees impossible actions.  Her friend who is a young man is interested in her in a way that she is not interested in him.  To top it all off, unknown forces kidnap her mother and ransack the apartment where the two of them lived.

The delineation of conflicts:  Clary discovers that she is a Shadowhunter, a dying breed who have fantastic magical powers, but are fully mortal.  That is, they age normally and they die fairly easily. Shadowhunters fight and kill demons as best they can.  They get their magic from inheritance (parents were Shadowhunters) or transformation (drinking from the Cup of Raziel). Drinking from the Cup also confers the ability to write runes on one's body; these often yield magical assistance.

Their recruiting has been weak of late since two of the most powerful of their members  (Valentine and Jocelyn) have gone off the rails.  Valentine consorted with demons to gain their powers.  Jocelyn hid the Cup to keep it away from Valentine.  Valentine wants the Cup back, and goes to all sorts of foul actions to get it.  Clary needs to go from her 'mundane' (ordinary human) state to being the most powerful and inventive of all the Shadowhunters in order to stop Valentine.  She's shorted on time, since Valentine and his henchmen move things forward quickly.

Simon is in love with Clary, Clary is in love with Jace, Jace is in love with Clary, but Valentine convinces Jace that he is Clary's sister.  Oi.  Magnus and Alec might be attracted to one another, but there is so much going on.

The resolution:  Well, watch the movie.  Many things get resolved, but not all.

One line summary: Reasonable coming of age #fantasy.

Statistics: 

  a. Cinematography:  8/10 Good looking film.  There are plenty of SFX, but not the massive destruction type.  Rather, the up close and personal type of SFX, showing the unexpected.

  b. Sound:  7/10 Not a hindrance, but not much of a help, either.

  c. Acting:  7/10 I liked most of the performances, both from the young crew (particularly Collins, Bower, and West) and the older crew (especially Heady, Harris, Turner, Gao, and Pounder).  The triumvirate of villains (Valentine, Pangborn, and Blackwell) was a very effective block of trouble for the young heroes to overcome.

  d. Screenplay:  4/10 There seemed to me to be just too much going on.  I do not fault the actors, but rather the script/book.  For this film, we inherit structure from werewolf, vampire, and warlock lore.  We inherit structure from biblical warrior angel lore.  But wait!  There's more!  On top of all the rules and logic already involved, we have the invented Shadowhunters.  Much of their baggage is not all that well explained.  Where did the portal come from?  How did they get all that real estate?  How do they keep the real estate when there are so few of them, and none of them work, apparently.  Where did the underground group dealing with the dead come from?  How are they connected?  Anyway, much as I liked the film, I thought it was dreadfully short of reaching sufficiency on exposition.  Since there is likely no second film matching the books, explanations will likely remain lacking.

  e. Final Rating: Six of ten

Concluding remarks: This is the film version of a six book series written by Cassandra Clare; City of Bones is the first book of The Mortal Instruments series.  In 2014, Constantin Films, which owns the film rights to the series, decided not to make a film from the second book.  Rather, they are opting for a Mortal Instruments TV series  in 2015.

20150831: YA review--Beautiful Creatures

Name: Beautiful Creatures (2013)
IMDb: Beautiful Creatures main page

Genres: Fantasy, YA female, coming of age, romance, comedy

Cast: Alden Ehrenreich as Ethan Wate, Alice Englert as Lena Duchannes, Jeremy Irons as Macon Ravenwood, Viola Davis as Amma, Emma Thompson as Seraphine, Emmy Rossum as Ridley Duchannes, Thomas Mann as Link.

Directed by: Richard LaGravenese.  Written by: Richard LaGravenese (screenplay),  Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (book).

The Three Acts:

Initial tableau: Ethan lives in Gatlin, South Carolina and visits high school there.  He bemoans the fact that he has little prospect of leaving, and has applied to a number of colleges.  The town seems stuck in the past, particularly the Civil War.  His mother is dead; his father is next to catatonic. His welfare is looked after by himself (somewhat) and Amma (mostly).  One day a new girl arrives in his class, Lena Duchannes.  Her family founded the town some centuries ago, and still owns everything of importance in it.

The delineation of conflicts: Ethan wants to get to know Lena, which immediately creates separation between him and almost all of his former friends in town.  Ethan visits Lena at home, which creates immediate tension between him and her uncle, Macon Ravenwood.  The Ravenwood/Duchannes clan are gathering at the family compound to witness the coming of age birthday of Lena.

So far, this all seems rather ordinary.  The fantasy element is that all members of the Ravenwood family are casters; that is, beings who cast magical spells, often with considerable power.  At the sixteenth birthday, Ravenwood teenagers reach their full power as casters, and choose between the dark and the light sides of casting.  Lena would rather not be a dark caster like her mother Seraphina, but fate seems to have marked her to be such.  Ethan would like to be Lena's husband, but has the full opposition of everyone in Lena's family.  Amma would like to help Lena and Ethan to their best possible outcome.

Resolution:  Well, watch the film.  The resolution was brilliant in my opinion, but what do you think?

One line summary: Well done coming of age fantasy.

Statistics:

  a. Cinematography: 8/10 I thought the lighting and camera work were fine, and the limited use of CGI was good.  It was not world destruction style CGI; rather, just enough to support the story.

  b. Sound: 8/10

  c. Acting: 9/10 The veteran actors were excellent and the younger ones did well enough.

  d. Screenplay: 8/10 I've seen this film compared to Twilight, which is odd.  This film has good acting and a witty script.  I do not remember laughing while plowing through Twilight, but this one is much better.  I anticipated some of the outcome, but not all, and the route to get there was a fun ride.

  e. Final rating: eight of ten

20150830: Commentary on media ownership

A reply to 'disks are old hat, sorry.'  MOVIES and BOOKS WORLD, 20150830.

I would strongly agree with this, but as part of a larger question of ownership.

1. Kindle/Amazon.  When one pays for a book, one gets the virtual copy immediately, and one can start reading.  Cool?  Sure.  However, if Amazon gets in a huff with a title's author, the book can disappear from your Kindle just as quickly as it showed up.  If someone hacks your Amazon account, and does bad things posing as you, your Kindle inventory might just all disappear.

Do you own purchased Kindle content?  No, not at all.

2. MMO video games.  These days, one

  a. buys into the game for a certain one-time price

  b. pays a monthly charge to keep playing.

Your game client is refreshed at every logon.  If anything goes south on your account (hacking, false complaints, game server belch), then your client will not longer work.  Your privileges and database records are sealed off from you.  Only direct telephone contact plus authentication plus straightening things out will restore this.

Do you own such a game?  No, you do not. The days when one bought a disk, installed from the disk, and repaired/recovered from the disk are gone.

3. Upscale software tools for individual users.

Professional tools have long been sold on a subscription basis.  A corporation (individuals or small companies could not afford this) would pay a fixed purchase fee plus a monthly fee for technical support, documentation, training, and upgrades.  For example, at one corporation where I worked, the build/version control tool we used cost 100,000 USD per seat plus monthly fees.  It was a dynamite tool, though.

At the other end, one had consumer tools like Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Access, etc) and Adobe image tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, etc) that could be purchased on disk.  One owned these.  They could not be taken away. One could bite the bullet and actually own these.  Tech support and training might be extra, but were available at prices much less than the giant corporation tools.

In the years 2014/2015/2016, the private ownership by individuals of such products is being phased out.  Even individuals have to buy a subscription (monthly fee) to continue using the latest tools from MS and Adobe.  If one stops paying the fees, one is locked out.  There are no disks, there will be no functionality that you own.

So, ownership of such products will completely end in a few years.  The earlier versions that one owns on optical disks will eventually not work with current operating systems.

4. Movies.

Wow.  This is one of the last, if not the last, frontier of consumer ownership in media.  There are hundreds of millions of optical disks out there for movies and music.  So there is more inertia to keep it that way.  However, stuff changes.  Do we still use 8-tracks?  No.  Laserdiscs for movies?  Probably not.  Cassette tapes for music?  Not too likely.  Try buying a cassette player!  VHS tapes for movies?  Cringe!!  DVDs?  Passe, and they have such low resolution.  Blu-ray?  Hm, I would have to buy a 1080p monitor, a blu-ray player, and, well, all those damned disks, again.

When my wife and I saw that DVDs were outmoded, we started our transition to streaming rather than blu-ray.  We bought a 1080p monitor and an AppleTV.  At first we were mighty disappointed at the small amount of content that actually justified the move.  After a while, though, we got hooked on 1080p, and are continually disappointed at DVDs, VHS, and at least half of cable television.

About two years after that decision, we moved house, this time a compression move (downsizing?), and we had to trim our belongings. The 8-tracks left, as did the VHS tapes, some of the cassette tapes, and some of the DVDs.  We owned that media, and we still had players, but...the results are so disappointing!

Going forward, we did not want to invest heavily in anything that takes up space.  Further, blu-ray 1080p will be replaced in ~5 years by blu-ray 4k.  Do I want to buy a whole galaxy of 4k blu-ray disks?  No, I have space constraints.

5. Movies and ownership.

As opposed to Kindle, video games, and software tool packages, it seems there will still be a path to continued ownership of movies.  That is, owning

   a. VHS, DVD, blu-ray 1080p disks, plus owning an appropriate player that likely cannot be replaced or serviced
   b. blu-ray 4k disks plus player--for the best there is.

However, I'm not sure these routes will do all that well.

Smartphones and tablets do not have optical drives.  Yet one still sees movies on them through streaming services.  Phones and tablets are used quite a bit in watching films, despite the small screens, and neither device uses optical media.  These devices naturally cut into the market penetration of disks.

When I look forward with trepidation to replacing my Mac laptop, I see that my next one will not have an optical drive.  Personal computers will not play movies from disks without the purchase of an external optical disk reader.

Why would Apple make a decision like that about their Macintoshes?  Well, they would like to sell you content that resides on their servers.  Even better, they would like you to rent movies that reside on their servers.  If you want to see a film multiple times, you will need to rent it multiple times.

It's not just Apple.  Microsoft (see above), Adobe (see above), Amazon (their instant video), and Google (see Barry Ward's post) are all into streaming rentals, not selling optical disks.  This is one of the biggest reasons that disks are old hat for movies.

Then there is Netflix, which offers only rentals.  One pays subscription fees and gets on demand properties...but only when Netflix offers them.  You do not own them since you do not have disks for the properties.

So, the big media corporations are clearly moving toward the 'we own it, you never will' model with movies.  Amazon and Apple have some options for 'buying' media content, but these are somewhat difficult to trust.  Your 'owned' content resides on their servers somewhere.  Whenever I switch devices or have some OS update event, I often have to download the property again from the servers, which is a pain for HD content.  I imagine UHD will be much worse.  Also, if the corporation hosting your movie gets hacked, one might just not be able to reclaim your content.

6. Summary

Disks represent a cut in profits for large companies.  So they are doing their best to move forward the phasing out of disks, and the ownership of copies of films.

20150827: Drama Review--The Babadook

The Babadook

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: The Babadook
2. IMDb: Users rated this 6.9/10 (79,570 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   98% of critics liked it: 168 critical reviews liked it of 172.
   73% of viewers liked it based on 29,186 ratings
   Critics Consensus: The Babadook relies on real horror rather than cheap jump scares -- and boasts a heartfelt, genuinely moving story to boot.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2014-05-22
6. Production Companies: South Australian Film Corporation, Screen Australia, Smoking Gun Productions, Causeway Films
7. Tagline: If it's in a word, or it's in a look, you can't get rid of the Babadook.


8. Budget:  2,000,000 USD
9. Revenue: 4,222,200 USD
10. Runtime: 93 minutes.
11. Genres: Drama, Thriller, Horror


12. Written and directed by: Jennifer Kent.


13. Starring: Essie Davis as Amelia, Noah Wiseman as Samuel, Daniel Henshall as Robbie, Tim Purcell as The Babadook, Hayley McElhinney as Claire, Cathy Adamek as Prue, Craig Behenna as Warren, Benjamin Winspear as Oskar, Chloe Hurn as Ruby, Tiffany Lyndall-Knight as Supermarket Mum


14. TMDb overview: A single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son's fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a sinister presence all around her.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Amelia's husband dies while she is pregnant with Samuel. Losing the husband is a huge traumatic spike, and raising the now unwanted child as a single parent is strong ongoing stress.  She does not impose practical boundaries on the child, who responds by pushing her well past the limit.  That is, she is a terrible parent, and the child makes her and everyone around them pay for that fact.


2. At age six, Samuel starts broadcasting his dislike of the way he is treated. His aberrant behaviours at school and around town invoke additional stressors to Amelia's already weakened mental state. When mother and son find a book with a pop-up character, they make the mistake of reading it together at night.  Their lives get worse by this simple foolish choice that could be revoked at any time.


3. Will Amelia heal herself and flush all this ridiculously obvious nonsensical cluster of lies?


3. Conclusions


1. This is a psychological drama where the protagonist refuses to resolve her own self-generated difficulties.  There was no character to identify with in the film.  As the film progressed to the ten minute mark, my empathic response to the self-destructive protagonist had already evaporated.  So, who cares?


2. Netflix classifies this hot mess as Thriller, Independent Thriller, Psychological Thriller.  At least they did not mark it as 'horror.'  Also, Thriller?  Really?  There is nothing thrilling (or even engaging) about this descent into the outer boundaries of stupidity.


3. The Movie Database (TMDb) calls it Drama (yes), Thriller (no), and Horror (no).  The film had no body horror, no serial killers, no gorefest.  The madness aspect was all fake, so the supposed supernatural elements were each and every one fake.  What aspect of horror is this misstep supposed to represent?


4. Rotten Tomatoes marked the genres as Drama, Horror, Mystery and Suspense.  There is no suspense here since there were no real threats involved.  The protagonist's pathology was set clearly during the first 45 seconds.  The mystery, I suppose, was whether she would decide to get well.  The other mystery is why RT rated this dog so highly.


5. There are so many dull stretches in this film. At times I thought I was watching Paranormal Activity without the jump scares. Also, watching full-screen, low resolution badly taped ancient television is just boring, whether or not the protagonist thinks she sees something in the childish images. There is nothing there, just the wandering consciousness of a sleep-deprived weakling who has given up on life.


6. One line summary: This film is 93 minutes of witnessing ongoing willful self-delusion.


7. Zero stars of five.  This is one of the worst films I have ever seen. Why it received sacred cow status is a mystery.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10 Oh my, dark and evocative?  Well, no.


2. Sound: 0/10 Unfortunately, I could hear the dialog.


3. Acting: 0/10 I suppose most of the actors accomplished the tasks the director set them.   In that way, this film resembles some of Wes Anderson's horrible early works.  The actors did what the director wished, but that was just the problem.  The director's flawed vision trumped any and all of the actors' efforts, rendering the net effect of acting as zero, nada, zilch.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 There are no real threats, no real suspense, no real anything.  This film is 93 minutes of witnessing ongoing self-delusion.  I did like the line where the child says to a potential suitor that she won't let him have a birthday party and won't let him have a dad.  Of course he hates her, deeply, strongly, and forever.  This all could have been done in much less time.  Apparently the auteur director had already done that: Babadook was an expansion of Monster (2005), which clocks in at 10 minutes.

Babadook is an anagram for 'a bad book,' but 'a bad author' might have been better. As Amelia bragged to her friends in one passage, Amelia wrote the problematic book, and constructed it out of ordinary materials. Then she foisted it on her unsuspecting child.

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.

20150801: Thriller Review--American Psycho 2

American Psycho 2: All American Girl

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: American Psycho 2: All American Girl
2. IMDb: Users rated this 3.9/10 (11,673 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   Tomatometer: 11% based on 9 reviews
   18% of viewers liked it, based on 25,215ratings
   Critics Consensus:No consensus yet.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2002-04-22
6. Production Companies: Lions Gate Films
7. Tagline: Angrier. Deadlier. Sexier.


8. Budget:  10,000,000 USD
9. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
10. Runtime: 88 minutes.
11. Genres: Horror, Thriller


12. Directed by: Morgan J. Freeman.  Written by: Alex Sanger, Karen Craig


13. Starring: Mila Kunis as Rachael, William Shatner as Starkman, Geraint Wyn Davies as Daniels, Robin Dunne as Brian, Lindy Booth as Cassandra, Charles Officer as Keith Lawson, Jenna Perry as Young Rachael, Michael Kremko as Patrick Bateman, Kim Poirier as Barbara, Boyd Banks as Jim


14. TMDb overview: Rachel is a criminology student hoping to land a position as a teacher's assistant for professor Robert Starkman. She's sure this position will pave the way to an FBI career, and she's willing to do anything to obtain it -- including killing her classmates. The school psychiatrist, Dr. Daniels, becomes aware that Rachel is insane, but Rachel is skilled at her dangerous game of death and identity theft.


2. Setup and Plot


1. There is a lot of voiceover toward the front end of the film, and voiceover later on.  This is usually a sign of not enough attention being paid to developing the screenplay.


2. Rachel has, for good reasons, more than a bit of a fixation on Patrick Bateman from the first American Psycho film.  When she reaches university, she wants to be the assistant of Robert Starkman, a former FBI profiler renowned for catching serial killers.  She wants to know everything he can possibly teach her.  The assistant position would also likely mean she would get a choice entry into training at Quantico.


3. She has some competition for the position, though.  What is the movie about?  It's about whether or not anyone catches up to the extraordinary methods that she used to eliminate the competition.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Essentially a non-sequel despite the name.


2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 The visual quality of the version that Netflix screened was not all that good.  The usage of camera was all rather pedestrian as well.


2. Sound: 6/10 I could hear the dialog.  The sound mixing strongly favoured the background music over the spoken voices, however.  The choice of background music was not the film's strong point.


3. Acting: 6/10 American Psycho II, filmed just outside Toronto, made me appreciate the cast in American Psycho I just a bit more.  I like Canadian actors William Shatner (Star Trek), Robin Dunne (Sanctuary), Geraint Wyn Davies (Forever Knight), and Lindy Booth (The Librarians, Dawn of the Dead [2004]).  However, I like them in sci-fi television for the most part.  Their performances in a psychological thriller were a bit unexpected.  Davies and Shatner were fine, but the scenes with only Dunne and Kunis were not the best.  On the other hand, the scenes with only Davies and Kunis were engaging.


4. Screenplay: 5/10 The large percentage of voiceover was not a plus. The badly written dialog featuring Kunis or Dunne was quite off-putting.  Still, the film had a beginning, a middle, and an end, with reasonable connections from scene to scene.

20150731: Drama Review--American Psycho

American Psycho

image courtesy of The Movie Database

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: American Psycho
2. IMDb: Users rated this 7.6/10 (312,703 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   67% of critics liked it of 142 critical reviews posted
   85% of viewers liked it from 300,623 ratings
   Critics Consensus: If it falls short of the deadly satire of Bret Easton Ellis's novel, American Psycho still finds its own blend of horror and humor, thanks in part to a fittingly creepy performance by Christian Bale.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2000-04-14
6. Production Companies: Lions Gate
7. Tagline: I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.


8. Budget:  7 million USD
9. Revenue: 34 million USD
10. Runtime: 102 minutes.
11. Genres: Crime, Drama


12. Directed by: Mary Harron.  Written by: Mary Harron, Guinevere Turner


13. Starring: Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, Reese Witherspoon as Evelyn Williams, Justin Theroux as Timothy Bryce, Josh Lucas as Craig McDermott, Bill Sage as David Van Patten, Chloë Sevigny as Jean, Samantha Mathis as Courtney Rawlinson, Matt Ross as Luis Carruthers, Jared Leto as Paul Allen, Willem Dafoe as Det. Donald Kimball


14. TMDb overview: A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Patrick is the protagonist, Evelyn his fiancee, and Jean his secretary.  His drinking buddies are Timothy, Craig, and David.  Luis ('the dufus') and Courtney are seen together in public, but Patrick is having an affair with her, unknown to Luis.


2. Patrick is in the banking sector in New York City. He obtained his position in Mergers and Acquisitions via nepotism.


3. So, Patrick has a job, male friends/competitors, and female bedmates. The only flaw in this picture of overabundance, privilege, and recreational drug use is that Patrick is insane. Patrick keeps his homicidal urges fairly well under control toward the beginning of the film, but less and less and the film progresses.


4. The exposition style is what I call archipelago. The movie consists of islands of film taped together. There is no mainland; there are no bridges. There are only discrete pieces separated by whim and held in place by time order. Sort of.


5. Vignettes (islands), humourous: The touchstones where Patrick notices (to the audience) how much he and Paul Allen are alike.  The passages about one upmanship, be it business cards or restaurant reservations.  Patrick trying and failing to give a homeless man some help.


6. Vignettes, horrifying:  The Paul Allen goodbye sequence strained credulity too much. The Ed Gein story was a bit of a shock, even in contrast to the unyielding misogyny just preceding it.  There are many more.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Great visuals undone by script and direction as well as inconsistent sound capture and editing.


2. Shorter summary: Exercise in self-delusion.


3. Five of ten


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Each scene is well thought out, and the shooting is wonderfully executed.


2. Sound: 7/10 The scenes with musical accompaniment are lush and rich; they have a feeling of depth.  Some of the quiet scenes involving only conversation are tinny, weak, thin, and disappointing.


3. Acting: 2/10 There were some fine actors in this motion picture.  All of them seemed to be doing what the director wanted. Bravo for their professionalism.  However, the director's vision was so worthless that the performances were of little note.  This is strongly parallel to some of the weaker Wes Anderson films, where the efforts of good actors were thrown away by the poor direction.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 The protagonist talks directly to the viewer.  This is bovine scatology. The entire film is about a delusional protagonist, so nothing is to be trusted in the plotlines, such as they are.  Just because some action is depicted on the screen does not mean that it happened outside the sour operations of this afflicted mind.  One might as well be suffering through Walter Mitty, except that the lead has bloody fantasies instead of Mitty's pleasant ones.
   
   So, since nothing of the exposition is to be trusted, what is the point of this vile mess?
   
   As one navigates through this maze of false threads, that is the central question. The hideous ending casts everything even deeper in doubt. The film is reminiscent of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) which was heaped with praise since Terry Gilliam directed it. That does not change the fact that after watching the film, one wonders whether Depp's character did any of the actions shown on screen. In American Psycho, the disappointment was much stronger because the production values were so much higher. Whereas FLiLV looked sleazy, AP looked exquisite; interspersed with the shock segments, that is.  I expected some sort of value for having suffered through the recurring horrific images, the type one expects from a slasher film or a mild gorefest, but done by someone like Hitchcock.
   
   If American Psycho is considered as a collage, bits of the film were good for witty conversation or for commentary on the 1980s and the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. The collage as a whole, though, is just an incoherent collection of high quality materials badly assembled.
   
   The last two minutes were almost interesting, but the rest of the film did not support the message. The effect as a whole is doubled: who cares? It is all delusion and of no point at all.

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.

20150610: Horror Review--Human Centipede 2

The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)
2. IMDb:  3.9/10 from 22,780 viewers
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   30% on the tomatometer, from 77 critics
   23% from 10,651 viewer ratings
   Critics Consensus: The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) attempts to weave in social commentary but as the movie wears on, it loses its ability to repulse and shock and ends up obnoxious and annoying.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2011-10-07
6. Production Companies: Six Entertainment
7. Tagline: 100% medically INaccurate.


8. Budget:  Budget estimate not available at review time.
9. Revenue: (US market) 141,877 USD. (International) unknown at time of review.
10. Runtime: 91 minutes.
11. Genres: Crime, Drama, Horror


12. Written and directed by: Tom Six.


13. Starring: Laurence R. Harvey as Martin, Ashlynn Yennie as Miss Yennie, Dominic Borrelli as Paul, Georgia Goodrick as Valerie, Maddi Black as Candy, Kandace Caine as Karrie, Lucas Hansen as Ian, Lee Nicholas Harris as Dick, Dan Burman as Greg, Daniel Jude Gennis as Tim


14. TMDb overview: Inspired by the fictional Dr. Heiter, disturbed loner Martin dreams of creating a 12-person centipede and sets out to realize his sick fantasy.


2. Setup and Plot


1. The protagonist Martin is quite short, morbidly obese, and seemingly without friends of any sort.  His job is as security at a dreary parking garage.  During his copious free time, he obsesses on the first Human Centipede film.  How is that for self-referential?


2. Martin's goal is to create a centipede from 12 people rather than 3.  The first big block of the film is about Martin's acquisition of enough live bodies. 


3. There is a parallel sideshow about his being sexually abused by his father, verbally abused by his mother (since father is in jail for the abuse), and his shrink's desire to bring him new abuse.  Sigh.  His mother tries to kill him herself.  She also sets the psychotic neighbor (biker with loud music, lives above them) on him; he beats the daylights out of Martin with boots and fists.  The list goes on well past these points.


4. A bit over halfway through the film, Martin meets Miss Yennie (the actress, not the character) from the first film.  There is a clash of worlds.  She expects to discuss a role in a new film.  She gets to see Martin's handiwork instead.


5. Does anyone get out alive?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: More gross than the original, but even less engrossing.
2. Two of ten.  One blackhole for screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 3/10 It's in greyscale ('black and white') which I do not care for in the least.  I like a few (Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) and Manhattan (1979)) greyscale films, but they have to be otherwise exceptionally good.  This film does not qualify.


2. Sound: 3/10 The background music supplies some creepiness, but not a lot.  The film is short on dialog (Martin speaks zero words during the movie), so sound is not a big contributor to quality.


3. Acting: 4/10  As in the first film, the protagonist was fairly good, but the other cast members were either not put to good effect or just not strong in acting.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 As a film about crushing the marginalised, this is fairly effective.  As an extreme horror film, this is a complete failure.  The endless use of the first film destroys any sense of engaging the viewers: it is all explicitly fakery.

20150609: Horror Review--Human Centipede 1

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
2. IMDb: 4.5/10 from 50,184 viewer ratings
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   49% (91 critics' ratings)
   26% liked it; 16,895 user ratings
   Critics Consensus: Grotesque, visceral, and (ahem) hard to swallow, this surgical horror does not quite earn its stripes because the gross-outs overwhelm and devalue everything else.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2010-08-30
6. Production Companies: Six Entertainment
7. Tagline: Their flesh is his fantasy


8. Budget:  2,011,799 USD
9. Revenue: ticket sales, 181,467 USD (72%); international, 70,740 USD (28%)
10. Runtime: 92 minutes.
11. Genres: Horror


12. Written and directed by: Tom Six.


13. Starring: Dieter Laser as Dr. Heiter, Ashley C. Williams as Lindsay, Ashlynn Yennie as Jenny, Akihiro Kitamura as Katsuro, Andreas Leupold as Detective Kranz, Peter Blankenstein as Detective Voller


14. TMDb overview: During a stopover in Germany in the middle of a carefree road trip through Europe, two American girls find themselves alone at night when their car breaks down in the woods. Searching for help at a nearby villa, they are wooed into the clutches of a deranged retired surgeon who explains his mad scientific vision to his captives' utter horror. They are to be the subjects of his sick lifetime fantasy: to be the first to connect people, one to the next, and in doing so bring to life "the human centipede."


2. Setup and Plot


1. Dr. Heiter, an older man who is thin as a rail, drugs and abducts a truck driver.  Two young women (Lindsay and Jenny) on a road trip through Germany get a flat near his house.  Unfortunately, they accept his offer to get out of the rain.  He drugs them as well.


2. They awaken to find themselves secured (tied-up) in the surgeon's basement with the poor truck driver.  Dr Heiter furthers his explanation of his plans for them.  His renown more or less explains his artwork: he became famous by successfully separating conjoined twins.  After his retirement, he attempted an inverse experiment: joining three dogs together, end to end, so that they would have one digestive tract.  This failed, but Heiter wishes to try again, this time with humans. Sadly, Heiter did not investigate why the first experiment failed.


3. Heiter's plans go forward with some bumps in the road.  For instance, he is rather cavalier about leaving sit the vehicles of the people he has kidnapped, all near his home.


4. So, will Heiter succeed, or will the victims find a way to escape?


3. Conclusions


1. For longer, detailed descriptions of some plot problems with this script, try the user reviews on IMDb.  Several people were glad to list them out.


2. One line summary: Gross but not engrossing.


3. Two of ten; one black hole for screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Well done; this is a good-looking film.  Some of the blood effects are non-convincing, but at least they did not look like CGI.


2. Sound: 8/10 The actors' words are easy enough to hear.  Of course,  many of them are in German and Japanese, so the subtitles were essential.  Mood music helped mildly.


3. Acting: 2/10 Well, they tried.  However, I do not think that this film will help the careers of any of the cast. 


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Fraught with logical problems and holes in the plot to the point where little if any of it made any sense.  Also, the subject matter was disgusting without being horrifying.  Suspense?  None.  Could one identify or empathise with any of the characters?  Not really; the whole mess was just too unbelievable.  

20150607: Horror Review--Taking of Deborah Logan

The Taking of Deborah Logan

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: The Taking of Deborah Logan
2. IMDb: Users rated this 5.6/10 (5,435 votes)
3. Netflix: average of 3.5/5.0 (540,642 ratings)
4. Rotten Tomatoes:
   critics rating not found number of reviews too low
   47% liked it from 850 viewers ratings
   Critics Consensus: none yet


5. Status: Released
6. Release date: 2014-10-21
7. Production Companies: Millennium Films, Bad Hat Harry Productions
8. Tagline: Evil lives within you


9. Budget:  Budget estimate not available at review time.
10. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
11. Runtime: 90 minutes.
12. Genres: Horror, Thriller


13. Directed by: Adam Robitel; written by Adam Robitel, Gavin Heffernan


14. Starring: Jill Larson as Deborah Logan, Anne Ramsay as Sarah Logan, Michelle Ang as Mia Medina, Ryan Cutrona as Harris, Brett Gentile as Gavin, Jeremy DeCarlos as Luis, Anne Bedian as Dr. Nazir, Tonya Bludsworth as Sheriff Linda Tweed


15. TMDb overview: What starts as a poignant medical documentary about Deborah Logan's descent into Alzheimer's disease and her daughter's struggles as caregiver degenerates into a maddening portrayal of dementia at its most frightening, as hair-raising events begin to plague the family and crew and an unspeakable malevolence threatens to tear the very fabric of sanity from them all.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Mia, as part of her PhD thesis effort, arranges grant money to help Sarah Logan take care of her ailing mother Deborah.  The condition for Sarah to get the money (and save the farm) is that Mia has to complete a film.  The film is to document the sort of life that Deborah has because of her illness, and how Sarah is also affected.  Gavin and Luis are Mia's techies, who are put down immediately and repeatedly as sub-humans.  The representatives of medicine and law, Dr Nazir and Deputy Tweed, are both women.


2. The early part of the movie includes results of medical testing of Deborah, and brief discussions of aspects of the disease that we think we understand.  Some of the visual presentation here is fine.


3. Deborah's disease progresses more rapidly than expected.  The not so subtle horror cliches telegraph the general type of trouble to come.  Is there something other than physical disease at work here?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Passable shaky cam possession story.
2. Two stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 3/10 Most of the movie is shot in found footage style or shaky cam.  The plus three is for the visuals during the early discussion of Alzheimer's as a disease.  Most of the film is found footage level badness.


2. Sound: 5/10 Far better than the visuals.  On the other hand, I could have done without the use of overbearing noise to help produce jump scares.


3. Acting: 5/10 Jill Larson was the undisputed centre of the film, and she was rather good.  Then there was the rest of the cast. 


4. Screenplay: 2/10 The film was easy to disengage from, and the ending did not seem well connected to the rest of the film.

20150528: SciFi Review--Age of Ice

Age of Ice

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: Age of Ice
2. IMDb: Users rated this 1.8/10 (1,207 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   zero ratings by critics returned
   19% of users liked it from 62 recorded ratings
   Critics Consensus: No consensus formed yet.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2014-12-09
6. Production Companies: The Asylum
7. Tagline: The world's greatest desert now a frozen apocalypse.


8. Budget:  Budget estimate not available at review time.
9. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
10. Runtime: 85 minutes.
11. Genres: Adventure, Science Fiction


12. Written and directed by: Emile Edwin Smith.


13. Starring: Barton Bund as Jack Jones, Bailey Spry as Amber Jones, Owais Ahmed as Tariq, Joe Cipriano as Dylan Jones, Jules Hartley as Diane Jones, Yaron Urbas as Capt. Kawar, Wilfried Capet as Simon


14. TMDb overview: Massive earthquakes open the Arabian tectonic plate, resulting in unstable weather and freezing temperatures that will be unsurvivable by nightfall. Attempting to reach safety, a vacationing family in Egypt must battle the rapidly cooling temperatures that usher in a new Ice Age, covering the Sphinx, Pyramids, and Sahara Desert with mountains of snow.


2. Setup and Plot


1. We start with the American Navy in the eastern Mediterranean.  All seems well, then a sequence of unexplained phenomena take out most of the USN ships and planes.  Sure.   This 'explained' (not) by referring to activity of the 'Arabian plate' which exposed magma to sea water which did something else between unlikely and impossible.  Then a blizzard starts. 


2. We start following the Jones family.  Father Jack, daughter Amber, and son Dylan are on a tour of Egyptian pyramids when the strange weather strikes.  They get re-connected with mother Diane before the problems get really serious.  Getting a plane out of Egypt fails.  The train ride fails because Dylan jumps off.  Camels work for a bit.  Walking seems a disaster.  Trucks were not all that safe either.


3. Since the entire Jones family seems to be good at making bad decisions, will the locals end up helping them?  Does anyone get out of this ever-worsening mess?


3. Conclusions
1. What is supposed to be Egypt was filmed in Detroit, MI, US.  Brilliant. The American teen Amber knows more about Egyptian culture than the locals? I don't think so. Either child knowing more than both parents about every issue? No, just no. People jumping off a pyramid 50 times their own height and landing uninjured with unsullied clothing? No.


2. There is nothing that this cast cannot ruin.


3. One line summary: The Asylum strikes again; the audience loses.


4. Zero of ten.  Four black holes for screenplay, acting, cinematography, and contempt for the audience.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 1/10 Poor CGI, some shaky cam, ridiculous set design.


2. Sound: 6/10 I could usually hear the dialog.  The music was not always bad.


3. Acting: 0/10 There was acting? 


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Stuff and nonsense.

20150527: Thriller Review--P2

P2

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: P2
2. IMDb: Users rated this 5.9/10 (24,482 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   35% of critics liked it of 69 critical reviews posted
   36% of viewers liked it from 67,662 ratings
   Critics Consensus: P2 is full of gore, but low on suspense, featuring a cat-and-mouse plot; has been done many times before.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2007-11-09
6. Production Companies: Summit Entertainment
7. Tagline: No tagline found.


8. Budget:  8,000,000 USD
9. Revenue: 7,766,240 USD (Box Office Mojo, world-wide figure)
10. Runtime: 98 minutes.
11. Genres: Horror, Thriller


12. Directed by: Franck Khalfoun. Written by: Franck Khalfoun, Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur.


13. Starring: Wes Bentley as Thomas, Rachel Nichols as Angela Bridges, Simon Reynolds as Bob Harper, Philip Akin as Karl, Stephanie Moore as Jody, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as man in elevator, Grace Lynn Kung as woman in elevator, Bathsheba Garnett as homeless woman, Philip Williams as Cop #1, Arnold Pinnock as Cop #2


14. TMDb overview: Angela, a corporate climber, gets stuck working late on Christmas Eve and finds herself the target of an unhinged security guard. With no help in sight, the woman must overcome physical and psychological challenges to survive.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Angela is an executive in NYNY trying to finish up her high-priority tasks before leaving to go to her sister's house in New Jersey.  A co-worker apologises repeatedly and profusely for inappropriate behaviour while drunk at the office party.  Such things extend her stay at the office to the point where she walks out with one of the main security guards, Karl, as he closes off elevator access as they descend.  


2. She watches the last car, other than her own, depart the car park, carrying the Asian couple who rode the elevator with her and Karl.   Then her own car will not start.


3. There is (almost) no one in the structure except her and the security guard Thomas. Unfortunately for Angela, he has extensive plans for her.


4. The rest of the film is the dialectic between the executive and the security guard in this mostly empty and strongly bounded environment.  Who will come out better?


3. Conclusions


1. Boring, nonsensical, male-bashing, lukewarm non-thriller.


2. One line summary: Lukewarm thriller with more than a touch of gore.


3. Two stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 OK, though nothing special.


2. Sound: 6/10 OK, though nothing special.


3. Acting: 4/10 Not all that engaging.  If we had Anthony Perkins instead of Wes Bentley, this was have been an entirely different matter.  As much as I appreciated Rachel Nichols' visual appeal, her acting did not engage me.  She was the principal reason I lost interest in the SciFi series Continuum, even though its underlying structure was one I would normally enjoy.


4. Screenplay: 3/10 The plot has its complications, and it hangs together somewhat.  However, its execution did not generate much suspense or many thrilling moments.  Also, the successful parts are neither new nor memorable.  The ending was ridiculous beyond measure.

20150527: Comedy Review--Tank Girl

Tank Girl

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: Tank Girl
2. IMDb: Users rated this 5.2/10 (22,760 votes)
3. Netflix: 3.2/5.0 based on 674,429 ratings.
4. Rotten Tomatoes:
   38% of critics liked it of 37 critical reviews posted
   64% of viewers liked it, based on 49,400 ratings.
   Critics Consensus: While unconventional, Tank Girl isn't particularly clever or engaging, and none of the script's copious one-liners have any real zing.


5. Status: Released
6. Release date: 1995-03-31
7. Production Companies: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
8. Tagline: In 2033, justice rides a tank and wears lip gloss.


9. Budget:  25,000,000 USD
10. Revenue: 6,600,000 USD
11. Runtime: 98 minutes.
12. Genres: Action, Comedy, Fantasy, Science Fiction


13. Directed by: Rachel Talalay; written by Tedi Sarafian


14. Starring: Lori Petty as Rebecca (Tank Girl), Ice-T as T-Saint, Naomi Watts as Jet Girl, Malcolm McDowell as Kesslee, Iggy Pop as Rat Face, Don Harvey as Sgt. Small, Jeff Kober as Booga, Reg E. Cathey as Deetee, Scott Coffey as Donner, Ann Cusack as Sub Girl


15. TMDb overview: Based on the British cult comic-strip, our tank-riding anti-heroine fights a mega-corporation, which controls the world's water supply.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Set in post apocalyptic Earth, circa 2033, well after a moderate sized comet impacted the planet.  It has not rained for 11 years, the film says.  This is a politics-of-scarcity environment, with the most rare commodity being water, the next being public and private security.  The law of the jungle has replaced rule of law.


2. The protagonist is Tank Girl, who survives by finding water by whatever means and by helping guard the compound where she lives.  The compound is breached early on.  Her boyfriend is killed, and her tween female friend Sam is abducted to be sent to a house of prostitution.  Tank Girl is enslaved.


3. Tank Girl breaks free, of course, and acquires friends Jet Girl and Sub Girl during the film.  Her main goals are survival, which includes obtaining water, and taking on Water and Power, which is a monopoly that no one likes, and are the folks who enslaved her.


4. So, do {Tank, Jet, Sub} Girls find allies to make a dent against Water and Power?  Do they finally end the sub-plot of Sam being in danger?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: You will likely either love or despise this one.
2. Three stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 The intro, credits, and long (hardly bearable) intertitles were done with comic strip style art with minimal animation.  Woof.  Ugly.  The live action parts, by and large, were done beautifully.


2. Sound: 6/10 The music is loud and not all that relevant to anything.  Good luck with that.  The dialog was comprehensible with some sort of normal volume setting, but then the intrusive music was so loud I would have to adjust the volume down.  Then the dialog was not audible.  So I turned on subtitles in Netflix.  Sigh.  The musical production of Cole Porter's 'Let's Fall in Love' was just horrible.


3. Acting: 6/10 I liked Malcolm McDowell in his role.  I usually like Naomi Watts no matter what, but not this time.  Lori Petty was, as always, Lori Petty.  That was just great for this role.


4. Screenplay: 5/10 The attempts at humour are many and are easily recognizable, just not funny.  I might have given this film full marks if had just been funny.  The film's plot, such as it was, was done archipelago style.  That is, an island scene here, followed by those terrible intertitles and overly loud music, then another island.  The whole sort of lurches toward coherence, and sort of makes it.

20150524: Horror Review--DeepStar Six

DeepStar Six

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: DeepStar Six
2. IMDb: Users rated this 5.1/10 (6,388 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   0% from 6 critics ratings
   23% liked it from 479 user ratings
   Critics Consensus: Not enough critics' ratings to form consensus.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 1989-01-13
6. Production Companies: TriStar Pictures, Carolco Pictures
7. Tagline: No tagline found.


8. Budget:  Budget estimate not available at review time.
9. Revenue: 8,143,225 USD (Box Office Mojo)
10. Runtime: 105 minutes.
11. Genres: Action, Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller


12. Directed by: Sean S. Cunningham; written by Lewis Abernathy, Geof Miller


13. Starring: Taurean Blacque as Captain Phillip Laidlaw, Nancy Everhard as Joyce Collins, Greg Evigan as McBride, Miguel Ferrer as Snyder, Nia Peeples as Scarpelli, Matt McCoy as Jim, Cindy Pickett as Dr. Diane Norris, Elya Baskin as Burciaga, Thom Bray as Hodges, Ronn Carroll as Osborne, Marius Weyers as Van Gelder


14. TMDb overview: The crew of an experimental underwater nuclear base are forced to struggle for their lives when their explorations disturb a creature who threatens to destroy their base.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Project leader Van Gelder is driving most of the crew nuts.  He's behind schedule on constructing an underwater missile platform for the US Navy.  Unfortunately, pro forma sound checks reveal a cave beneath the seabed over which the platform was to be built.  Van Gelder orders that explosives be used to collapse the cave so that building can continue.  Burciaga and Collins register their objections due to structural risks.  Scarpelli objects since she will lose any chance of studying possible life forms that normally reside in the caves.  Captain Laidlaw sides with Van Gelder since the Navy is likely to shut down the project if there are any more delays.


2. Hodges and Osborne set off the charges as ordered.  When they send down a tethered remote unit to record stills and video, they manage to lose it.  They detach from their tractor housing to pursue the remote, since losing it would be so expensive.  The cavern is rather huge, and the likelihood of filling it in to continue construction looks bleak.


3. That's when the elimination derby starts.  The rest of the film is about survival: the crew versus whatever took out that the remote.


3. Conclusions


1. One line summary: Good actors who deserved a better script.


2. Three stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 Perhaps this was OK for its time, but then again, perhaps not.  Compared to The Abyss, which also came out in 1989, it looks rather ordinary and dated, especially the models of underwater structures.


2. Sound: 6/10 The actors were well-miked, so I could hear the dialog.  The background music was typical of 1970s, 1980s film scores but toward the lower end of the spectrum.


3. Acting: 8/10 The film had a competent cast.  Most of the actors were more or less in mid-career, and their filmographies continue well past this property.


4. Screenplay: 6/10 This was a rather ordinary entry.  It's sci-fi set underwater with some nasty creatures.  This one turns into a more or less by-the-numbers elimination derby, with none of the characters (except perhaps Snyder) showing any awareness of what was happening.  It was just not that interesting.

20150523: Horror Review--Strippers Vs. Werewolves

Strippers Vs. Werewolves

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: Strippers Vs. Werewolves
2. IMDb: Users rated this 3.1/10 (1,456 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   29% based on 7 critics' ratings
   14% of users liked it, from 216 viewer ratings
   Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2012-04-27
6. Production Companies: Black & Blue Films
7. Tagline: No tagline found.


8. Budget:  Budget estimate not available at review time.
9. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
10. Runtime: 93 minutes.
11. Genres: Comedy, Horror, Foreign


12. Directed by: Jonathan Glendening.  Written by: Pat Higgins


13. Starring: Adele Silver as Justice, Barbara Nedeljakova as Raven, Billy Murray as Ferris, Martin Compston as Scott, Sarah Douglas as Jeanette, Steven Berkoff as Flett, Alan Ford as Harry, Martin Kemp as Mickey, Lucy Pinder as Vampire Bride, Robert Englund as Tapper, Lysette Anthony as Basildon Cinemagoer.


14. TMDb overview: Mickey, who happens to be a werewolf and a crime boss, gets all worked up and hairy during a private dance at a strip club. Justice, the dancer, grabs the nearest weapon and lands a fatal blow: her silver fountain pen right through Mickey's wolfed-out eye. This ignites a small-scale war between Mickey's group of werewolf mobsters and the sultry strippers of Vixens.


2. Setup and Plot


1. At first I thought I was trapped in a badly edited version of Guy Ritchie's brilliant piece, Snatch (2000).  Then I realised that the seasoned, talented cast was missing as was the fine screenplay and tight direction.  (Well, Alan Ford was in both films, as Brick Top in Snatch, as Harry in this film.) The artwork for the credits looked a little too familiar, and the props, language, and atmosphere seemed recycled.


2. Instead of the wealth of fun and wry humour of Snatch, one has a jumbled mess about a deadly feud between those who work at a strip club and a gang of criminal werewolves.  The fake blood was unconvincing, the fights were ridiculously bad, and the gratuitous full frontal female nudity (first third of the film) was 12 on a scale of 1 to 10.  The werewolf makeup was not well executed, and I could have done without the werewolves masturbating.  


3. On the positive side, Robert England's performance was good, but also quite short.  Lysette Anthony was OK in a cameo, and there were a few laughs.


3. Conclusions
1. Did I identify with any of the characters? No. Did I empathise with any? No. Were the few laughs worth the overall low quality of the film? No. Was the climactic battle interesting? Well, no.


2. One line summary: No werewolves were harmed during the making of this motion picture.


3. One of ten


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 2/10 The sets were particularly badly done.  The use of split screen was more annoying than helpful.  The injected cartoon slides really marked this film as badly done.


2. Sound: 5/10 I could hear the dialog, such as it was.  The music was irritating.


3. Acting: 3/10 Sarah Douglas, Robert Englund, and Lysette Anthony were fine, but they did not portray the main characters.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 The main failure.

20150522: Adventure Review--Tales of an Ancient Empire

Abelar: Tales of an Ancient Empire

1. Fundamentals.
1. Original Title: Tales of an Ancient Empire
2. IMDb: Users rated this 3.1/10 (1,276 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   critics rating not found number of reviews too low
   4% of users liked it from 169 recorded ratings
   Critics Consensus: none formed yet


4. Status: Rumored
5. Release date: 2010-07-31
6. Production Companies: New Tales
7. Tagline: No tagline found.


8. Budget:  1 million USD (source: IMDb)
9. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
10. Runtime: 89 minutes.
11. Genres: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller


12. Directed by: Albert Pyun.  Written by: Cynthia Curnan.


13. Starring: Whitney Able as Xia, Kevin Sorbo as Aedan, Ralf Möller as General Hafez, Jennifer Siebel Newsom as Queen Ma'at, Michael Paré as Oda, Melissa Ordway as Princess Tanis, Matthew Willig as Giant Iberian, Sarah Ann Schultz as Malia, Lee Horsley as Talon, Scott Paulin as Tou-Bou Bardo, Olivier Gruner as Corsair Duguay, Sasha Mitchell as Rodrigo, Norbert Weisser as Xuxia, Victoria Maurette as Kara, Janelle Marra as Rajan, Inbar Lavi as Alana, Cazzy Golomb as Hekate.  Christopher Lambert as x?


14. TMDb overview: A princess is on a quest to unite the five greatest warriors to save her kingdom from a demon sorceress.


2. Setup and Plot


1. We start with a good 10 minutes of overview and backstory by Hekate, granddaughter of Ma'at, Queen of Abelar.  The granddaughter was portrayed as having some sort of speech impediment, or else the actress was just very badly miked.  I needed the closed captions.  This segment was largely done in sepia cartoons.  Artsy cartoons, perhaps, but still.  In any case, Ma'at's mother hired mercenaries to put down Sorcerer Xuxia and his vampire daughter Xia, before Xuxia opens a portal to the netherworld.  Duguay, Rodrigo, and Oda manage just that, but Oda introduces complications instead of completely finishing the job.


2. Twenty years later, Princess Tanis becomes the centre of the light side, and Xia, the risen Vampire Queen, the leader of the dark side.  The real core character, though, is warrior mercenary Oda, who slew the sorcerer Xuxia, reduced Xia to dust for 20 years, and fathered Princess Tanis, the mercenary Aedon, imperial assassin Rajan, and their sister Malia.  Rajan had daughter Alana, whom she trained as an assassin.  Besides those four, Oda fathered Kara by Xia, who gave birth before Oda, ah, dusted her off.


3. At the final command of Ma'at, Tanis finds her siblings.  The group goes off to find their wayward and fertile father, then put down Xia and keep the door to the netherworld closed.


4. What could possibly go wrong?


3. Conclusions
1. If the sowing wild oats aspect had been better written, the film would have been helped.  I thought it was quite humorous, but I suspect most will not appreciate the father-issue dialog.


2. One line summary: Swords and sorcery, wretched visuals, and a poor script.


3. One of ten; two black holes for cinematography and acting.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10 I hate sepia.  I hate similar filtration setups that essentially crush any visual richness and natural tones.  The CGI varied between bad and very bad.  The fake vampire teeth were obviously fake and caused the Xia character to have muddled speech.


2. Sound: 5/10 I could discern words of most of the actors, but I relied watching on Netflix with captions turned on to get the dialog.  The vampire fouling of speech was prevalent.  The music in the credits was good, but was out of context with a period piece such as this.


3. Acting: 5/10 The cast includes actors whose work I enjoyed in the past: Michael Pare, Lee Horsley, Olivier Gruner, Sasha Mitchell, Christopher Lambert, and Kevin Sorbo.  Gruner, Mitchell, and Horsley were OK in very short parts.  Michael Pare looked like he was at a first read-through Monday morning after a disastrous weekend, rather than in final take.  I was on the look-out for Mr Lambert, but I failed to see him.  Kevin Sorbo, at least, convinced me he knew he was on camera, and was delivering his lines while understanding the character's motivations.  I'm not saying this was Oscar level work, merely that he was present in the professional sense.  Mr Willig was good, but his part was also short.----The women characters were central to the film, much more important than the male characters.   The actresses, though, were either inexperienced or just off.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 Sigh.  This was another under capitalised project.  It shows.  The number of dead-end plot threads was too high.  Also, too much time was devoted to dreary conversations, then Hekate would narrate what should have been long action sequences in a matter of a few seconds.

20150521: Horror Review--The Ouija Experiment

The Ouija Experiment

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: The Ouija Experiment
2. IMDb: Users rated this 3.6/10 (831 votes)
3. Netflix: 2.8/5.0 from 187,564 viewer ratings.
4. Rotten Tomatoes:
   critics rating not found number of reviews too low
   17% of users liked it from 132 recorded ratings
   Critics Consensus: not enough responses.


5. Status: Released
6. Release date: 2011-05-05
7. Production Companies: La Luna Entertainment, Out of Body Films
8. Tagline: Cross Her Heart and Hope to Die


9. Budget:  1,200 USD (estimate; source, IMDb)
10. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
11. Runtime: 88 minutes.
12. Genres: Horror


13. Written and directed by: Israel Luna.


14. Starring: Justin Armstrong as Michael, Swisyzinna Moore as La'Nette, Carson Underwood as Brandon, Eric Window as Calvin, David Clark as Joseph Wheeler, Leah Diaz as Gracie Mendoza, Miranda Martinez as Lisa Mendoza, Belmarie Huynh as Shay.


15. TMDb overview: Based on true events, five friends who fall prey to the evil entities of the Ouija board. As they set about filming their experimental session, what starts out as bit of fun, soon escalates into a terrifying series of events as paranoia and personal demons are revealed…. and recorded.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Calvin and Michael are long-time friends. Calvin and Shay are boyfriend/girlfriend.  Michael and Brandon are more recent friends.  Calvin and La'Nette are siblings.  Michael has moved to new digs that still contain many of the old tenants belongings, including a ouija board.  Brandon is interested in filming some sessions using the board.


2. Most of the five leads think that talking louder helps communicate with the departed spirits.  There is an early laying down of rules about the use of the board.  The only one that seems to count is, 'say goodbye to the spirit' before ending a session.  Of course, this is violated multiple times.  Reading off a laptop screen to the camera does not add much for me about believability or acceptance of context.


3. There's a subplot about Calvin and Shay breaking up.  This was aided by the spirits, who told Shay of Calvin's cheating.  Calvin blames Michael for the breakup and takes the ouija board at one point.  The camera is Brandon's, but ends up in the hands of various characters.  This makes the plot even more disjointed.


4. At 50 minutes in, I have yet to see anything dangerous or interesting or paranormal. How about that?  That's when the mayhem and Internet 'discoveries' about the past begin.


5. After such a slow start, will there be anything that redeems this effort as a horror film?


3. Conclusions
1. Apparently this one did not make it to the theatres.  I'm not sure how this got to Netflix.


2. Perhaps one should view this as comedy only, of the unintentional kind. Laugh with the foolishness, the lack of awareness, the pointless fits of pique.


3. One line summary:  The worst side of amateur efforts at making horror films.


4. One star of five.  Two black holes for acting and screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 3/10 Better than many sloppy-cam efforts, but not great.


2. Sound: 3/10 Not well controlled.


3. Acting: 0/10  Terrible.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Terrible.