Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning

You know, as a huge bastion of movie knowledge, I get asked for recommendations ALL the time.  Especially around Halloween, where I really should just start charging for the sheer amount of lists I end up writing, and two movies I always, ALWAYS recommend are the 2001 cult film “Ginger Snaps” and its 2003 sequel “Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed”.  These are the epitome of great horror movies.  The first film centering around two sisters, one of whom is slowly turning into a werewolf in a not all that subtle, but still very well done, metaphor for puberty.  It was a solidly paced, well written horror movie with great performances and amazingly pulled off make up effects.   It was so good an idea that in 2009, “Jennifer’s Body” tried the exact same plot, and failed hilariously.  It came out and made some waves at festivals and did pretty well on DVD so a couple years later two sequels were made back to back.  “Ginger Snaps 2” was a sequel that I was actually not really looking forward to because, as I have come to learn, when a good horror film gets a sequel it’s rather redundant and underwhelming.  This was the exception, I recommend it just as much as the first one, actually I recommend watching both of them in one sitting, it’s quite interesting.  This time, Ginger’s (werewolf girl from movie one.) sister Brigitte is the one turning.  She’s taking steps however by injecting herself with monkshood which is delaying the transformation, but in hot pursuit is a male werewolf intent on mating with her.  Not helping matters is when she ends up in a rehab center and her injections are taken away.  This movie is how I’d love all horror sequels to be done.  It ups the stakes, it adds growth to the characters, it takes where the original started and keeps going replacing the puberty metaphor with drug addiction and withdrawal, not to mention this ending is just perfect, creepy and totally not going to be spoiled here.

            What is going to be talked about here is the third sequel, “Ginger Snaps Back:  The Beginning”, which as the rather dumb title suggests, is more of a prequel set during frontier times.  Shot right after “Ginger 2”, we find our two heroines Brigitte and Ginger wandering through a forest after the coach they were traveling in has crashed.  They come across a Fort where the men are constantly fighting werewolves and things are looking bleaker by the minute as the girls arrive and Ginger is once again bitten.

            So how is the movie?  *sigh* it’s really disappointing.  Don’t take that the wrong way, it’s not a terrible movie by any means, I’ve seen and reviewed far far worse, but following on the heels of two horror movies I would give either 5’s or at the very least 4.5’s to respectively?  This is really remarkably underwhelming.

Let’s start with the good, Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins are incredible as Ginger and Brigitte like always.  The movie has a very gothic, fairy tale-like atmosphere to it that kept giving me flashbacks to Neil Jordan’s excellent “The Company of Wolves” (WATCH THAT, NOW!) and ANYTHING that can make that claim is doing something right.  The make up effects are still great, many of the supporting bit characters are very well performed, and the film has a very interesting conclusion.

But, as I said this movie was not nearly as good as the other two.  I find it hard to really say why this is, since it had a lot of things that I liked about it.  Like the camera work and the costume and production designs, are all spot on, so what’s wrong with it?  The script, that’s what.  It’s just so lazy!
  This movie is sadly padded, not as padded as things like “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” but the movie really doesn’t go anywhere.  I kept waiting for the plot to start, but it just never seemed to happen until about the halfway point and even then the movie still drug like a sloth on the back of a turtle.  It was just a clichéd “group of sexist and superstitious men blaming all their ills and bad luck on the arrival of two women.” Type of story, even though that makes no sense as it was implied that the fort has been fighting off werewolf attacks for awhile before the girls were even lost in the woods! Not helping things are the stereotype priest character that is the main instigator of the whole deal.  This character is just ridiculous and has no right to exist other than to give this movie a cheap way to build tension, one that I might add, barely works.  Every single time the movie looked like it was going somewhere, the priest would do something or something else would happen that basically made this movie have the same five or six scene played on a loop!  It gets really old even faster than you'd think.    

There’s a lot of good elements here, but they’re going to waste because this script is just a badly written cliché that’s hoping its visual aesthetic will make up for its short comings.  It’s a lot like how I felt about Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” now that I think about it, only not QUITE as much of a train wreck.  This movie had a lot of potential but it never really rises to the occasion to take advantage of it.  It’s not a terrible watch, but as a big fan of the other movies it’s almost inexcusable how just plain old average it is.  I would recommend it, if only for the cinematography and performances, but I would much rather you go out and watch, or re-watch, the first two movies instead.

2.5 lycanthropes out of 5.

Next time:  Troll Hunter.

Fright Night (2011)

You’d think that from latest year’s rather incendiary and hate filled review of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” remake that I have a deep and passionate hatred for horror remakes in general, especially lately with nearly every horror movie that comes out these days being a remake, but don’t take that to mean that I hate remakes in general. That said there are things that I feel a remake should be held to. For starters, a good remake should start off with the same idea as the original, but then use that premise to do its own thing. The original “Fright Night” was a cheesy and fun vampire movie from 1985, and it was a basic boy who cried wolf story. Charlie Brewster starts to suspect his new neighbor is actually a vampire and when no one believes him he goes to the TV horror host Peter Vincent (played wonderfully by the late great Roddy McDowall) to take care of the problem, but in the midst of this, the vampire Jerry Danridge (Chris Sarandon) is in hot pursuit. It’s a solid flick but not without it’s flaws and it’s very of it’s time. So how is the remake? It’s actually really good. The movie takes the same basic premise and goes another direction with it. In the original Charlie’s played as a bit more of a nerd, which works fine but there were things to him that still felt a little odd like how he goes to Vincent thinking he’s a real vampire hunter, fine if he was like 11 or 12, but this kid’s in high school. In the new movie Anton Yelchin play’s Charlie is much more like, well, any character Shia LeBeouf has ever played. But what makes Charlie in the new Fright Night work is that Yelchin can play him with a little more charisma than LeBeouf tends to bring to his parts. He’s mostly a FORMER nerd that’s started to break into the cooler cliques thanks to his hot girl friend Amy played by Imogen Poots. Most of the nerdiness and early suspicion of Danridge actually comes from his friend Ed played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse who is also good and has basically perfected playing these kinds of characters at this point. But the real stars are the vampire and vampire hunter. I’ve never been a huge fan of Colin Farrell but I’ve also never really hated him save for parts that were just very poorly written anyway, but here he’s great. He adds just the right amount of malice, charm, and sheer insanity, not to mention he’s yet another vampire that actually ACTS like a vampire (suck it “Twilight”!) A lot of the movie’s suspense really comes from the fact that Farrell is just really damn intimidating. All this said, he’s totally blown away by David Tennant as the new Peter Vincent, who plays the character as pretty much a spoiled play boy/occult scholar/vampire hunter/ Vegas night club act and when he’s on screen you just can’t help but love this guy. He is really funny and you can tell Tennant is having a hell of a lot of fun with the part. However though Tennant steals the show with the part that added attention does drag up pretty much the only flaw I have with the movie which is that with all the things to make Vincent work in a time where TV horror hosts don’t exist anymore it does seem a bit like this is reaching, and while it is a little bothersome, it never becomes a deal breaker as the rest of the script is well written and the movie keeps a solid pace and I actually feel it does a lot better job tension with it than the original did. The director Craig Gillespie really seems to get that this movie works better if you have a gradual mixing of the horror and comedy, the film opens in a manner that’s indicative of a horror movie, but when the movie’s in its down time the characters get to be quirky and fun and it makes the audience actually give a damn what happens to them. Which is how a horror film should work, though these days rarely does. Final verdict is that “Fright Night” is the first truly good horror remake to come out in a long while. It’s atmospheric and well paced with a solid cast that all really bring their A game and if no other reason you should see it to be reassured that while “Twilight” is pretty much the worst thing to happen to vampires as far as pop culture, at least there are people that still know how it’s done and what really makes it work. Hell, even if you like “Twilight” Farrell’s sex appeal as a vampire should have gotten you in the seats already anyway, just don’t expect him to sparkle. (And no, I don't care what your reason is Stephanie Meyer, you will never ever convince me that was a good idea.)\

4.5 fangs out of 5.

 Next up Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning.

Rebirth of Mothra/Trigun Badlands Rumble

I’ve already said that I’m a fan of Godzilla and due to this I have recently be looking into other movies that fight into the genre the big G occupies, known as daikaiju (Giant Monsters.). I mentioned back when I was talking about “Godzilla: Final Wars” that I have a particular fondness for the movies of the Heisei era (Roughly 1984 to 1995ish) that I started looking into other things from that particular time period to expand my horizons in. The first thing I picked up was “Rebirth of Mothra” which peaked my interest because, well, Mothra has always kind of been the silliest of Godzilla’s enemies, with the possible exception of Hedorah the giant sludge monster. My first thought was wondering how Mothra would fair in her own movie again as she was first seen in “Mothra” in 1961 (no I haven’t seen it, but it could still be potential review material.) before taking full time work in the Godzilla movies. How was it? This movie is just weird. Not weird on the level as something like a David Lynch film or early Coen brothers movie, but still really damn weird. Featuring things like Mothra’s twin fairies riding on a miniature version of Mothra called Fairy and then getting into what can only be described as a dog fight with another, evil fairy riding what I went on to call the flying Derp-asaurus (according to Wikipedia it’s really called Garugaru but I can’t recall a specific time that they said it in the film) The plot is that Mothra has laid an egg to continue on her work as Guardian of Earth, draining a massive amount of her life-force. But at the same time a logging company has uncovered a prison containing a great evil sealed long ago and I’m sure you can see where this is going if you have a working brain. However, the plot isn’t really what daikaiju films are about, it’s the monster on monster battles that bring in the audience and as such having a stock plot is not that big a deal, but half the time this feels like a balls to the wall monster battle and the other half is like a bad Disney movie about a family coming together. That said the effects are all good and it’s all fun if you like that kind of thing, but there really isn’t much to say other than it’s an average at best monster flick that doesn’t do anything significantly special or different other than a few wtf moments that are more just odd than entertaining, I recommend it if you really like Mothra but that’s about it.

3 little fairies out of 5

 Since I had little to say on this choice of movie for this week, and it took me awhile since the last post. I’ll fill out this one with another review, and since we’re in Japan this time, let’s talk anime. “Trigun” is a famous manga by Yasuhiro Nightow about a lone gunman named Vash the Stampede, though in contrast to the typical stereotype of the uber gun man that can kill six people before anyone else could fire a shot, Vash actually hates violence and has sworn to never kill anyone. The story is much more about how he travels the frontier world of Gunsmoke and changes peoples lives for the better while trying to come to terms with a dark past that hasn’t quite finished with him the way he’s finished with it. It was adapted into a very well received anime series and just last year we got a follow up to the show in the form of a feature length animated movie. Done by studio Madhouse, who also did the original series, the animation is very fluid with great attention to detail and characters that never go off model, not to mention fight scenes and gun fights that would make even the great John Woo blush. The story is such that 20 years in the past Vash gets caught up in a bank robbery where the gang turns on their leader, who has now come back seeking revenge. Along the way he runs into old friends MillyThompson and Meryl Strife, but also fellow gun slinger Wolfwood appears as the body guard of the gang leader, Gasback. Also along for the ride is Amelia, a female bounty hunter that Vash can’t seem to leave alone. “Trigun: Badlands Rumble” is the kind of thing that I’d like to see more of when it comes to action movies. It’s serious when it needs to be, but it can be really funny without being stupid, unlike some other movie I saw this summer that I promise I will stop going on about, and it also knows how to make the action pop and get you on the edge of your seat. I went to a screening of this movie that was dubbed because while it is originally Japanese, I strongly prefer Trigun’s dub if for only for one reason, Johnny Young Bosh IS Vash. The way this character is, equal parts serious goof ball, bad ass and philosophical mentor, is really really hard to pull off without having the right balance and while in Japanese on the show it’s ok, it worked so much more for me when Bosh was doing it because he just seems to feel comfortable with the role in that way people like Harrison Ford naturally just slid into the roles of Han Solo and Indiana Jones. All the other people do the job just fine though as a fan of the original series I was rather disappointed when I found out that Jeff Nimoy wasn’t voicing Wolfwood in the dub but I’m just nit picking at this point. The point is that “Trigun: Badlands Rumble” is well worth the watch, I dare say even if you don’t like anime you should give this a watch. It’s fun, funny and well just plain old fashioned entertaining. At this point it’s not out on DVD yet, though it will be available September 27. Track it down if you can.

 4.5 trick shots out of 5

 Next up: Fright Night (2011)

Guyver 2: Dark Hero

You may have been noticing that I have been somewhat lagging in between my reviews. The reason is really because I’m getting to a point were I’ll see a newer movie on DVD or in theaters and I’ll really have nothing to say. Either because it’s just aggressively average and all I can say is that it doesn’t suck, or there just isn’t really enough to make a review out of. You have no idea how hard it is to write a review for something as intensely mediocre as “Skyline”. But the real reason that I’m having trouble is that, well, I’m really not all that interested in a lot of the new movies coming out. I’ve honestly always been way more interested in the obscure and foreign, especially lately. Yeah, go ahead and call me an elitist film snob, I really don’t care. This is my blog, I will use it how I want, and talk about what interests me. So in that vain, let’s take a brief trip to Japan.
Bio-Booster Armor Guyver originally started life in the 80’s as a manga written by Yoshiki Takaya. Its story is that of a high school student named Shō Fukamachi, who finds a weird object that attacks him and grants him a powerful armor called The Guyver. However, it is an item highly sought after by the Chronos organization who send wave after wave of shape shifting monsters called Zoanoids to retrieve it from Shō, threatening his family and friends in the process.
Guyver gained a fair amount of popularity in Japan, spawning two OVAs (the Anime equivalent of Direct-To-Video/DVD) a feature film called “Out of Control” which was totally fine as stand alone movie, despite ending on a cliff hanger. And two separate seasons of six episodes each, which have some spotty animation and a hilariously bad dub, but are still enjoyable in their own right. The most recent iteration was a 26 episode televised Anime series that ran from 2005 to 2006.
I’m not here to talk about any of those however, at least not at this time. I’m here to talk about the two live action films produced by New Line Cinema in the early 90’s. Due to the popularity over seas, the still relatively small film company picked up the American film rights and handed the keys to Special Make up Effects Artists Screaming Mad George and Steve Wang, here giving their first go at directing. For a first shot, it’s actually a pretty damn good effort, the action is well shot and the fight choreography is really good, especially for something that clearly didn’t have a glorious budget, which is also a good description for the suit and creature effects. However, from what I can infer and have read or heard over the internet, producer Brian Yuzna enforced some creative changes on the first film. Notably a marketing campaign that made it appear that Luke Skywalker him self Mark Hamill was the title character, instead of the supporting role that he actually had. Worse still, it was decided that casting Jimmie Walker as one of the main Zoanoid characters would help bring in a wider audience and an appeal for the younger crowd. Not that Walker is a bad actor, but when they make him into what I can only describe as the result of a tequila fueled one night stand between one of the Gremlins and Jarjar Binks, then add that this thing raps in the movie, whole new level of horror is created. These changes pretty much ruin an otherwise enjoyable little B-movie.
This brings us to the sequel, Guyver 2: Dark Hero. You think that with a first outing like that the sequel can’t be any good, right? I mean if the movie made enough money and Yuzna was still on it, we’d probably get a movie that was full of potential that’s drug down by attempts to pander to everyone. Well that’s the thing, Yuzna wasn’t attached to this movie, a fact that you can clearly tell was a relief to returning director Steve Wang. The film’s rating was bumped from PG-13 to a much more freeing R and the Jive-a-noid is nowhere to be seen. Is it a great movie? Not really, but for mid 90’s low budger cheese it’s actually pretty damn entertaining.
The premise this time since the origin story is out of the way is that Sean Barker, The Guyver, has found out about an archeological dig where they may have some answers for him concerning the armor. However, once he’s there he realizes that Chronos is up to it’s old tricks again and they are soon beset by the evil zoanoids.
Again, the fight choreography is very impressive, with the added ability to show the Guyver doing what it’s actually know for, killing things brutally, makes the plot more interesting. Plus, to Wang’s credit you can tell that he’s doing the absolute best with what clearly couldn’t have been that big a budget.
It’s movies like this that make me hate things like the Transformers movies. This is a low budget action movie that shows how a director actually works with his constraints and makes a movie more enjoyable through how he cuts or shoots a scene. Things like Transformers just blow their wad on bleeding edge CGI robots and shove them in your face… After, of course, they show off the jock strap clad ass of a middle aged man, dogs humping and a giant robot’s testicles. (No, I’m not ever letting that one go, now shut up!) It’s clear that Steve Wang just had much more respect for the original source material than Bay did.
I know, I’ve harped on this before, but I’m going to do it again, the robots in Transformers barely do anything in their own movie. Not only that, when they actually do something, it’s over way too quick and they may as well have not been in the movies anyway. By contrast, “Guyver 2: Dark Hero” is only about 90 minutes long, and the Guyver appears for four fight scenes in the entire run time. All four last about five to seven minutes a piece. Put simply, the title character appears, and actually does stuff, in over a third of the actual movie, and when he isn’t they are revealing aspects of his character or having the bad guys the Zoanoids doing things.
The bad news when it comes to Guyver 2, is that the acting is pretty much terrible. It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen, but it is pretty awful, notably the female lead and the main villain. However, this doesn’t take away from the film’s entertainment value. If nothing else it adds to it with some great potential for riffing.
Basically if you’re looking for something to have at a night of cheesy monster movies, “Guyver 2: Dark Hero” is more than worth your time. It has a couple hiccups here and there, but nothing to jarring. Check it out.

2.5 rubber monsters out of 5.

Captain America: The First Avenger

So, a heads up about “Captain America”, stay through the end of the credits, they include the first teaser of the upcoming “Avengers” movie. Now, the review proper can begin.
Captain America has always been a staple of the universe in Marvel Comics, if for no other reason because he’s one of the three key members of Marvel’s super hero team, The Avengers. However, Capt. has had a rough time making the transition from page to screen. There were two made for TV efforts done in the late 70’s with cult B movie action star Reb Brown in the title role, which were boring and nonsensical not to mention embarrassing for all involved. Then in 1990 the first theatrical attempt came out, it was slightly better if for no other reason it had Captain’s arch nemesis, the Red Skull, in it and featured more of his back story from the comics, buuuuuut it was another real dud because it’s action was boring, Captain America really didn’t do much and it had a whole bunch of WTF moments in it.
So not only does this new movie have the pressure of trying to actually bring this character to the big screen in a respectable way, it also has to be able to put the last remaining pieces together for the Avengers team up. This is no easy task, so how did it do? Amazingly!
This movie is extremely good. Other critics have called it the best of the Marvel Studios adaptations, and I whole heartedly agree. The main reason being that, for once, “Captain America” takes itself 100% seriously. Yes, you heard right, a movie about a guy that fights evil in a costume that is basically the American flag, takes itself seriously. The big problem that I can see with the other movies is that they were trying to hide it’s Americana origins by either down playing it and just turning him literally into Batman on steroids, or just kind of vaguely hint at it in the film’s opening before going the exact same route.
This time, the film’s action is set in the midst of World War 2, and Steve Rogers is trying to enlist in the army to help defeat the Nazis, but is unable to do so because of his own poor health. He’s then given an option to do so as a test subject for a super soldier serum. However, when the scientist is murdered and the last of the serum lost, Steve is the only such soldier to be created and thus becomes Captain America.
What makes this work is Chris Evans as Steve Rogers. He plays the character’s intense good guy, stand up for what you believe, never run from a fight persona with a HUGE amount of sincerity. In fact his performance helps the film over come one of its bigger flaws as far as special effects, because while you can in fact tell, really easily too, that they are using CGI to make him look puny and scrawny early on, Evans performance really make you not care. I’ll elaborate on that in a moment but the fact that the actor in the role is actually playing it straight, as a good man that got the chance to be a great hero is actually something that makes it really enjoyable. In fact the first time that you see him in the Captain America costume, he’s doing so to sell war bonds and boost national morale in the fight against the Axis. You’d think that he’d be resentful or emo about this, but no, he takes it seriously and goes at it like it was just as noble as if he were actually punching Hitler in the face, instead of just some guy in a costume.
All the other actors also take this very serious. Tommy Lee Jones almost steals the whole movie as Steve’s CO, and Stanley Tucci is very moving as the scientist that gives Steve his shot at glory. The love interest, played Hayley Atwell, is actually really interesting as a character first and as if director Joe Johnston hadn’t given us a delicious enough sundae, her chemistry with Evans is so good that I finally get to have some proof that I don’t hate a movie for having a love story because this one is actually, you know, well told and interesting.
Added to this, it has really stellar action and the way they have the good Captain fight in the movie is impressive and creative, it’s almost as if he has no real style to his fighting, more he just dives in and uses his own will power and cunning to make it out alive, again, going back to how seriously they took his character. On top of that, you can actually see every single punch and know who is shooting at what… You getting all this Michael Bay? Do you need a pen and paper to write notes on? The action has weight, and yet, it’s done quite simply. For action to be good, you need to have a tenable, emotional connection to what is going on. This movie’s villains are basically explained thusly, I’m not making this up, they are more evil than the Nazis. No, I’m serious, they just set them up to be unapologetically evil and could only be shown as more so if you saw them murdering puppies or something like that. And yet it actually works, you hate these guys and want good guys to bring them down. So when you see the Captain bash a guy’s face in with his shield, you punch the air yelling “YES!” I would like to invoke the great Bruce Lee here. When it comes to any kind of action or fight scene, the most important thing is that “We need emotional content”. And “Captain America” has that in spades. When you see someone vaporized in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” it’s just manipulative, it’s quite literally the movie telling you: “This is bad, you should be really concerned and sad now, or something I guess.” In “Captain America” the organization Hydra also has vaporizing weapons, but when you see someone get vaporized here, it feels like it’s out of a war movie. You get upset when these people die, even if you’ve never seen them before or knew their name.
In fact the only problem I can really find with “Captain America” is that it has a few moments where the effects kind of show that they are really just Special effects, but that’s not a bad thing. Things like the original “Clash of the Titans” or even further back, “King Kong” are the same way, but the films really makes them work through performances, story and other such things. Like I said earlier, early on the effects used to make Chris Evans scrawny and out of shape aren’t quite up to snuff but at the same time, Evan’s performance makes up for it and it goes back to that emotional content argument from before.
When all is said and done, I loved “Captain America”. It was well written, perfectly paced and a testament to how you can make something hard to adapt into a workable product. It never compromises or feels ashamed of itself. If “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” was the perfect example of the lowest grade I can give a film, “Captain America: The First Avenger” is the perfect example of the highest grade I can give a film. It’s well written, solidly directed and wonderfully performed. I highly recommend seeing it while in theaters and can’t wait to see the Captain in action in “The Avengers” again and hope that his own sequel is swiftly to follow.

I give “Captain America: The First Avenger”

5 moments of uncommon valor out of 5.

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

You may have noticed if you read my blog with any regularity that I have a big thing for bashing on Michael Bay. The main reason is that I really don’t like his movies (save for “The Rock” which I’ve already gone over) or directing style all that much. It just seems like the exact combination of elements to really put me off, plus the whole Platinum Dunes remaking every good horror movie thing earns him no points in my book. But the big reason that I can’t stand this director is because he has made two movies that I cannot stand, at all, even if you paid me millions of dollars I would not say that these movies were even remotely good. One was “Pearl Harbor”, a movie that was incredibly boring, not to mention kind of insulting if you ask me since it was supposed to be this big tribute to the men lost in tragic event of the title, but was actually a really badly written love story that went exactly nowhere. The other was “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. Now, I didn’t grow up with the transformers, they were around and I have fond memories of that one animated movie with kick ass music, but I was never hardcore into them. I just want people to know that I’m not some whiny fan boy or something like that, especially since I thought the first live action movie was a perfectly average summer blockbuster, meaning that it’s not actually that great a movie but I at least thought it was somewhat entertaining. However, when the sequel came out, I left the theater and the first thing that came out of my mouth was “That was the worst theater going experience of my life.” I HATED that movie so much. It was a stupid, low brow intelligence insulting piece of shit that ran waaaaaay to long and had nothing redeeming about it. The fact that I had to add giant robot testicles and the bare ass of a middle aged man to a list of things that shouldn’t be in a Transformers movie should explain why I really really disliked that movie.
So in a way, this third and dear god please let it be the last installment of the franchise gets to be a great catharsis for me because I can vent all my frustrations on the second movie and bash it’s sequel at the same time, oh SPOILER ALERT! “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” sucks! In fact, the nicest thing I can say about this movie is that yes, it IS better than “Revenge of the Fallen”, but since that puts the bar so low that it’s actually gone through the core of the Earth that really isn’t saying much, especially since it still has most of the same problems. For one, over two thirds of the movie is Shia LeBouf complaining that life isn’t fair… When’s he’s had a free ride to an Ivy League school, dated two super models, has a car that turns into a robot AND got a freaking medal from the president (which he will not let you forget. EVER!) Dude, shut up! If you’re life sucks than mine is completely a waste of existence by comparison. Also, I’m really starting to notice that outside the fact that Mr. LeBeouf is pretty much the textbook definition one note, Sam Whitwicky is actually a HUGE asshole. He insults the Autobots all the time, is so freaking self entitled that even Al Bundy would tell him to let it go, and to top it off SERIOUS anger problems. He flies into pointless blinding rages so often in this movie, and HE’S the one the audience is supposed to indentify with?
Then there are the numerous amounts of comic relief characters that serve exactly nothing for the plot, John Malkovich is kind of funny but totally pointless. Ken Juong is only there to give off a plot device and give us a really bad stereotype with some really bad homophobic humor before giving us the most satisfying death of the movie. John Turturo is back and as “zany” as ever, the list still goes on and on. Why? Why so many human characters in a movie ABOUT GIANT ROBOTS?! While we’re on it, the Megan Fox-bot version 2.0 (real name Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) is just as wooden as, and only slightly more visually attractive than the last model, not to mention it’s pretty clear that they just went into Microsoft Word and did a find/replace on the names. Plus the exploitation of her is offensive and horribly so. Yes Michael Bay, I think she’s cute too, but I don’t need an almost full minute shot of her ass, thank you.
That’s always been the overall problem with these movies. It’s supposed to be about the robots, they’re in the title, the posters feature them prominently, all the previews show the footage that has them, you get my point. So someone tell me, please explain to me in detail. WHY ARE THE ROBOTS THE B-STORY IN THEIR OWN GODDAMN MOVIE?! NO! I am NOT more interested in the stupid conspiracy sub plot! NO! I am NOT interested Shia LaBeouf being jealous of his girl friend’s boss! NO! I do not give a damn about what has happened with the guys from N.E.S.T.! For the love of God, it’s so simple, you call the movie Transformers. That to me means they must spend just as much time, if not MORE than the human characters in this movie. Adding even more insult to that, most of the action is actually the army doing stuff with most of the robot action being done off screen or only done in the last minute or so of a fight. To the people that say they want to see this movie for “robots fighting”, you will leave very disappointed. Bay has described this movie as “Black Hawk Down”, only with a homeland bend… and giant robots. Ok, ignoring that Michael Bay will NEVER make a movie as good as “Black Hawk Down” and while we’re at it, will NEVER have the kind of clout Ridley Scott has, how is this a good idea? Not to spoil but, the plot of “Black Hawk Down” was that everything went tits up and it was all about fixing the upwardly inclined mammories, in the process showing the soldier’s drive and determination to get out alive. This is not a bad plot, but it doesn’t really give much room to let the whole giant robots thing happen.
And on top of all this, Bay screws with his stupid pitch even more by not letting it have a coherent tone. One scene will be dark, and those with kids planning on seeing this, charred human remains and people being vaporized here. Then, we’ll turn around and have some horribly crowbarred slap stick or bawdy jokes, you know things that four years olds wouldn’t even find funny. For a frame of reference, before sitting down to write this I re-watched about 20 minutes of the animated Transformers movie. In that 20 minutes, yes a lot of the robots were killed, but they were major characters, giving their deaths weight, not to mention you could tell which robots were which a whole hell of a lot better, something the new movies can’t claim. Plus even the dark opening of one giant robot destroying an entire planet worked because it established a major threat that started the plot going. This 20 minutes was by far better thought out than this 200 million dollar, 155 minute live action movie!
Folks, I seriously could go on and on complaining about this movie. I have merely scratched the surface here and as I write this review, the movie has already made more than 162 million dollars in the states… A fact that just makes me feel so depressed. Yes, it’s just a movie, but for someone that loves movies as much as I do, knowing that one of the highest grossing movies of the years is going to be a bloated two and half hour mess of a movie, who’s only positive is that it’s slightly less painful in some regards to the last movie makes me just feel so… Defeated, I’m just done with this. Don’t go to this movie, at all! Oh, and Happy Fourth Everybody!

0 out of 5

And to show you that I don’t just have contempt for movies that you can just turn your brain off for, here’s a list of movies that fit that description and are by far more entertaining than all three of the Transformers movies, combined.

- Godzilla: Final Wars (the only way I will sit through another Transformers movie is if Ryuhei Kitamura is announced as the director)
- Broken Arrow
- Commmando
- The Punisher: War Zone
- Lethal Weapon 1,2,3 & 4
- Die Hard 1, 2, 3 & 4
- The Rock (Yes, there is an entertaining Michael Bay movie, fair is fair.)
- Robocop 1 & 2
- True Lies
- Hard Boiled (You can watch it dubbed if you don’t like subtitles.)
- Top Gun
- Man On Fire
- ANY of the James Bond movies.
- El Mariachi
- Desperado
- From Dusk Till Dawn 1, 2 & 3
- Once Upon a Time In Mexico
- Sin City
- Planet Terror
- Machete
- RED
- The Fifth Element
- The A-Team
- Predator
- Predators
- Blade 1 & 2
- Hellboy 1 & 2
- Supercop 1 & 2
- City Hunter
- Police Story
- Rumble In The Bronx
- G.I. Joe: Rise Of Cobra (Yes, there IS a movie based on toys that I give a recommendation to!)
- Air Force One
- Heat
- Ronin
- Collateral
- Drunken Master 1 & 2
- Under Siege (Yes, I would much rather watch Seagal than this!)
- Hot Fuzz
- Evil Dead 2
- Army Of Darkness
- Assault on Precinct 13 (Either one, though I prefer Carpenter’s original a lot more.)
- Escape From New York
- Escape From L. A.
- John Carpenter’s Vampires
- Enter The Dragon
- Fists Of Fury
- The Chinese Connection
- Return of the Dragon (Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris, enough said.)
- Shoot ‘em Up
- Crank 1 & 2
- Speed Racer
- Kung Fu Hustle
- Kill Bill
- The Wild Bunch
- Conan The Barbarian
- Total Recall
- The Professional
- L. A. Confidential
- Domino

Super 8

Trying to write a review for this movie is pretty hard because while J.J. Abrams’ “Super 8” is by no means a ‘perfect’ movie, it is really freaking good and it’s hard to make a very interesting review out of something like this because I don’t want to spoil the movie, but it’s hard to explain why the movie is so good while avoiding them. Thankfully being hard doesn’t instantly translate into impossible and thus, here we go.
The plot of “Super 8” is basically summed up as “E.T.” meets “Cloverfield”. In more details it’s about a bunch of kids in the late 70’s/early 80’s (They reference George Romero a lot, so I’m going to assume that Dawn of The Dead had come out, which puts this in the 1979 neighborhood.) that are making a zombie movie and while filming one night they witness a huge train crash. The military shows up and weird things start happening as they realize that what they filmed may be more important than they know.
So let’s get to what works, for the most part the script is really good, working in that character driven way that made things like “The Goonies” and “E.T.” work so well. Added to that the cast of young actors all play their parts well, seriously the kids are the best actors in this movie, Elle Fanning in particular is amazing and here’s hoping that this movie is the big jumping off point for a great career. Lead Joel Courtney does a nice job giving me flashbacks to Henry Thomas as Elliot and Kyle Chandler plays his father the deputy with a great balance of sadness and obsessive professionalism that creates a great dynamic between father and son.
However, as good as the movie is, I still have some quibbles with it. What really works is all the stuff with the kids and how they deal with seeing the train crash and what they do in its wake, and if the movie had stayed focused on that it’d be pretty much the template for a 5 star rating. Unfortunately it doesn’t, we spend just as much time with Chandler’s investigation of the weird goings on, and there’s a large amount of the story that’s devout to a military cover up story. Neither of these stories are really that well done and when you’re seriously wanting the b plot to go away so that the movie can be fun again, you really might as well not have the b plot.
But like I said, “Super 8” is a really really good movie despite those flaws I mentioned, which I feel to be minor hiccups in an overall damn good movie. I say go see it, it’s one of those rare summer movies that should be seen and is probably the closest we’re going to come to getting the spark that gave “The Goonies” such popularity and staying power for a long time.

Super 8 gets

4 mysterious disappearances out of 5