In short: Unhuman (2022)

Warning: there will be spoilers!

The bus harbouring the usual bunch of contemporary high school clichés on a field trap crashes, with an apparent big explosion of blood. The minor injuries incurred thereby will be the least of the kids’ and their cynical idiot teacher’s problems, though, for some mysterious chemical incident does cause a bit of a rage zombie issue. The survivors manage to get into a large, dilapidated building in the woods, where you get a mixture of bad, “psychologically insightful” monologues and some siege action.

Until a particularly idiotic plot twist turns the up until now already pretty terrible movie into something downright insulting. Spoiler: it’s not zombies, but a bizarre, nonsensical plan of the two (male and white, of course, because it’s just that kind of movie) outsider kids to get closer to girls and express their pain (or something equally stupid) going very wrong indeed.

The best thing that can be said about Marcus Dunstan’s Unhuman is that it made me realize how unfairly I have underrated the movies of Christopher Landon until now. This really, really wants to be a Landon-esque mixture of broad, often physical, comedy, bloody horror, social consciousness and serious exploration of teenage emotion, but where Landon is always in control of his material and shows impeccable timing with most of his tonal shifts, Unhuman just wavers from tonal shift to tonal shift, stumbles over the stupidity of its plot, and couldn’t land a joke to save its life.

Of course, to do any of what it attempts successfully, it would need a script – unlike the one it has by Dunstan and Patrick Melton – that includes joke that are actually funny, characters that are more than the most basic clichés interacting in exactly the ways you’d expect, or an idiot plot. The filmmakers certainly aren’t helping their case by bringing up Breakfast Club as a comparison, which only brings the lack of substance and quality in their dialogue to the fore, as well as the lack of young actors playing their asses off.

Also, what’s with all the slow motion?

In short: Critters Attack (2019)

I don’t know about you, but I dearly hope there’s nobody not wearing a suit who actually asked for another Critters sequel. Though, frankly, calling this thing an actual movie in the sense the other Critters movies were might be taking charity too far. At least with a bad backyard indie movie, you’ll witness something people have put actual love and (most probably misguided) effort in; this one doesn’t look that much better than a backyard indie would, but totally lacks any suggestion of the filmmakers giving a crap about making a movie, let’s not even speak of an entertaining one. It might as well have been made by robots.

The film-like entity is directed by Bobby Miller with such an impressive lack of verve and style, I do recommend a good bit of coffee for anyone willing to make it through this thing. The whole affair follows some poor young actors - whom I’m not going to hold responsible for the film they are in - pointlessly running around with a good, female Critter in tow (who is of course looking like it’s wearing make-up, because it is a girl, ugh) while supposed jokes happen.


From time to time, someone gets killed in a “funny” way that isn’t funny or interesting to look at; poor old Dee Wallace is apparently now an elderly bounty hunter and pops up in the sort of badly integrated cameo you may know from action movies featuring Dolph Lundgren or JCVD (alas without a scene where she tortures someone while shooting a video for her cooking channel, because that would be actually funny and/or weird). The script by Scott Lobdell (who is about as competent a scriptwriter as he is a comics writer, it seems – that’s not a compliment) is badly paced, full of jokes that don’t hit and characters nobody gives a toss about, going through the motions of a plot nobody making this gave one about either. And even though the Critters franchise always had more than a little of the soul of the cheap cash-in, its films generally seem to have been made with a mind to actually entertain an audience, so it really deserved better than it got with this one.

In short: Robin Hood (2018)

This godawful thing directed by Otto Bathurst is a sad attempt at making the Robin Hood legend “topical”. So expect crusaders in the Middle East carrying their bows as if they were assault rifles while wearing armour that’s meant to look like modern combat armour, our main character wearing a leather hoodie that makes him look rather a lot like the TV version of a certain Robin Hood inspired superhero, and a lot more in the spirit of an idiot’s idea of modernist theatre. Now, this sort of thing can be perfectly interesting – if perhaps not exactly what I’d want from a Robin Hood movie – if written with thought and care, but the responsible parties for the script, Ben Chandler and David James Kelly, treat their conceit with all the thoughtfulness and care of elephants waltzing through a porcelain store, never having encountered a thought they’d be able to actually follow through on.

Because this isn’t bad enough, the film’s plot is, absurdly enough, full of the worst attempts at your typical superhero movie’s narrative beats I’ve seen in quite some time, because obviously, it’s not enough for this one to be a shitty message movie, it also needs to be a really bad medieval superhero movie, too, with dialogue so bad, I started to fondly think about the Daredevil movie with Ben “I can’t do superheroes for the life of me” Affleck as the much superior film.


But hey, at least there’s some spectacle on screen, right? Well, unfortunately not, for Bathurst shoots the whole mess as if it actually were the amateur theatre production its writing reminds me of (probably mumbling something about Brechtian techniques), having never encountered a set he can’t make look like cardboard, and no action scene he can’t turn into nonsense by always choosing the least effective set-up, the worst camera angle, and so on and so forth. It’s honestly astonishing to me how a production that’s made by an actual production company and a director with experience in properly budgeted modern TV can look quite this shoddy. Need I even mention that the actors make the impression of having gotten no direction at all, so their performances meander wildly, with only Jamie Foxx actually giving the impression of playing the same character from scene to scene?

In short: The Glimmer Man (1996)

Sometimes, a boy just needs to remind himself of how much he hates Steven Seagal’s movies in general (and isn’t too hot on the man himself either). At least, that’s how I explain to myself why I watched this Seagal vehicle as directed by John Gray. The film falls into Seagal’s “Buddhist” phase, so his character, police lieutenant Jack Cole (who will turn out to once have been a badass black ops killer for the CIA), isn’t just a bigoted asshole bully shithead like all Seagal characters, he’s a Buddhist bigoted asshole bully shithead, and therefore also a total hypocrite, given that he’s murdering people with weaponized credit cards, his one facial expression, or shitty martial arts on the tiniest of provocations.

So it’s not really much of a surprise that he himself is quickly the favourite suspect for a serial killer he is hunting. After all, he’s apparently killing at least half a dozen people a day anyway, so him from time to time going out and murdering and then crucifying married couples seems pretty plausible. That’s my reasoning, not the film’s, mind you – the film’s is much less plausible. But don’t you worry, this is a Steven Seagal movie, so there’s never a moment where he actually seems to be about to lose a fight, his life, or his smug facial expression.

Which, as I’ve explained in the past, is pretty much the core problem with all things Seagal – he’s always treated as so clearly superior to all of his adversaries there’s no way for dramatic tension to exist in his world, no feeling of peril at all, and Seagal’s characters aren’t heroes conquering the odds but bullies beating up the physically inferior. This particular film goes so far as to even have Seagal mock the big bad during their supposedly climactic fight in a way films made by people who know what they are doing leave to the villains of an action movie.

But even if you’re a better person than I and can cope with the sheer Seagal-ness of this all, The Glimmer Man suffers from many other problems. Oh, who am I kidding, most of them still involve Seagal, because nothing in a Seagal film doesn’t. Take the way it tries to hide Seagal’s inferior screen fighting skills behind lots of vague and fast edits, so that most fights look like a Seagal-shaped form just barely visible bitch-slapping people and kicking them in the balls, which isn’t fun to watch independent of what you think about the lead. Or Seagal’s “clever” acting choice to have Cole speak in a voice somewhere between “totally stoned” and “incredibly offensive parody of a gay man” to make clear to the audience that he is an eccentric man of peace (who just happens to work in an extremely violent profession), but which mostly makes one wish somebody would punch him in the face. It’s just one atrocity after the next here, and even worse, they never seem to be committed in good fun but with a nasty sneer.


As you can see, I’m probably not the best guy to talk about Seagal movies, so hopefully, I’ll remember that and avoid them again for the next decade or so.

In short: Glass (2018)

Warning: I’ll spoil some elements of the film; I’d argue there’s not much to actually spoil here, though, for the idea of spoilers does suggest the existence of dramatic tension to be spoiled.

After the nearly good Split, I, the eternal optimist, was hoping its sequel, Glass, might just be that curious beast – a second M. Night Shyamalan movie making good on the great genre director The Sixth Sense had once promised.

What I then watched was pretty much the opposite: a slow and tedious crawl playing out like a bad bottle episode of a TV show that takes more than two hours to get through what’s at best a thirty minute plot (which often seems barely to exist at all anyway). You’d hope the film would at least enhance this non-experience via the mysterious arts of characterisation and mood-building, but the little personality anyone on screen shows belongs to a cast just a little too good to feel quite as empty as they are written. Why you’d cast Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor-Joy and Bruce Willis and then have them proceed to basically do no acting whatsoever, or why you’d let James McAvoy double down on his obnoxious performance in the first movie is anyone’s guess. But then, this one was written by someone (cough) who seems to believe he is - in a superhero movie in 2018 - doing something cleverly deconstructive by pointing out tropes the audience by now knows quite well from film where things are actually happening to keep them from falling asleep, and by doing a plot twist (that’s barely even a twitch) that consists of the film saying “Gotcha! You thought it was this standard ending trope! Instead I’m using this different yet even more standard ending trope! And I’m doing it as slowly and dramatically awkward as possible”!


Dramatically awkward is the watchword for the whole film. Glass is full of scenes that are slow (so slow) while having no apparent function in the narrative at all, going on for what feels like an eternity, pretending to do something immensely deep and clever the audience needs time to grasp while actually presenting not much at all. It doesn’t help here that Shyamalan seems to have lost every bit of dramatic instinct he once had. Take the triple “tragic” death scene before the end that gives two of the main characters and about a hundred of McAvoy’s personalities and their respective supporting characters way too much time to die (oh so slowly), drawing things out until even the last possibility of reacting to this nonsense with anything but laughter or eye-rolling disappears. I honestly have no idea what the filmmaker was thinking with these scenes. But then, I have no idea what he was thinking with the rest of the movie either.

Three Films Make A Post: SHATTERING ADVENTURE THAT BOLDLY EXPLORES THE JUNGLES OF THE HEART!

Infini (2015): As you know, Jim, I do love me some SF horror, so this Australian low budget film directed by Shane Abbess already has one thing going for it. It also has sparse yet convincing production design (in the Alien tradition of grubby, lived-in looking spaces – in space), a calm and effective soundtrack, decent acting, and a script that actually knows what it wants to do and isn’t willing to throw everything away for a dumb final twist, going for it. Sure, the film does perhaps feature a few too many scenes of crazed people bellowing at each other while the camera shakes and the editing finger wobbles, and its first two thirds do follow the genre expectations perhaps a bit too closely. However, it also has an unexpected and emotionally (perhaps even philosophically) resonant ending that’s not at all par for the course in its sub-genre, and is a film that really makes its low budget work, as well as a plot that actually works without everyone involved being an idiot.

Let Us Prey (2014): Despite clearly being a film made with great conviction and technical acumen, and far above your James Wan produced mainstream horror piece or your amateur gore movie, I didn’t really warm to Brian O’Malley’s film. It’s a temperamental thing, I think, an incompatibility between me and a film that, whenever it has to decide between a subtle and an unsubtle way to go about things, always takes the loud approach (quite effectively one has to say), which leads to something I surely can appreciate and respect but not really love. It may be I’m not its ideal audience in other regards either, the film’s exclusive interest in old testament based religion more than just a little suspect to this liberal atheist. The ending’s a bit problematic too, seeing as Liam Cunningham’s character calling themselves a mere observer is utter nonsense, unless you want to believe small towns on the British Isles have a psychopathic killer percentage of about eighty percent of the population, making the final decision of lead character Pollyanna MacIntosh really difficult to swallow. It might just be me, though.

Cowboys vs Dinosaurs aka Jurassic Attack (2015): Here, on the other hand, it’s most definitely not me, because everything about this thing is bad: the acting, the irony, the special effects, the score – you name it, it’s terrible. Which of course still leaves the decades old space for a movie about cowboys fighting dinosaurs that’s actually any good wide open. Though honestly, after having gone through this thing, I’ve finally developed much more of an appreciation for the fine filmmaking art and the love that went into The Valley of Gwangi.

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In short: Shihaisha no Tasogare (1998)

In some vague cyberpunk-y future Tokyo with demons. A young woman hires (kinda-sorta) the mysterious androgynous Tsunami to find a demon for reasons that would be spoilers if this thing had an actual plot. There’s some business about demons/ogres and the guardians supposed to protect humanity from them, sadistic flying telekinetics, and something about a drug that can turn normal humans into demons, but the OVA seems so disinterested in actually telling its story, I don’t know why I should care about any of this, if clearly nobody involved in the production did.

What Saki Okuse’s Madhouse one part OVA is supposed to be, neither itself nor I are sure. Sure, it consists out of a bunch of clichés taken right out of excellent horror anime in the Wicked City mould, but it doesn’t do anything at all with them, because even its borrowing of ideas is incredibly lackluster, with monster designs that look more like cost-cutting measures and visual storytelling so lame and static you hardly even notice this thing is actually animated. Which it only barely is anyhow, because this thing is so much below standards, it can’t even be bothered to move.

That the film’s story – such as it is – is barely told at all (using a phrase like “only in the most perfunctory way” would suggest to much dynamic in the storytelling), perfectly fits into an anime that isn’t so much an actual anime as Madhouse saying “Oh, you like mutations, weird sex stuff and dark future Tokyo?” and throwing some crap they had lying around in their garage at the audience. Watching this, is an embarrassing waste of time that could be more fruitfully used doing dishes or looking into the mirror while repeatedly uttering “please make it stop”.

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In short: Getaway (2013)

Warning: this is not to be confused with various other movies called The Getaway, but believe me, you wouldn't.

Second warning: Getaway might have annoyed me so much I'm going to suggest there would be little difference between director Courtney Solomon's efforts and that of a stuffed monkey.

The wife (Rebecca Budig) of former race car and later escape car driver Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke, who needed the money, one hopes) is kidnapped by an evil nameless mastermind (a role so difficult, the film has to use unpleasant close-ups of Jon Voight's face and the voice of Paul Freeman to embody him, because a single actor could not be clichéd yet boring enough for this particular masterpiece of filmmaking). Mastermind then has Brent race all around Sofia in a stolen car as part of a loud, car-crashing fiendish evil plan. Because our villain is especially cruel, he also has Brent pick up the actual owner of the car, a girl without a name (played by Selena Gomez who probably has youth as her excuse) who just happens to be the most annoying person who ever lived; also, she's of course a car freak and computer wiz and the daughter of the boss of a very large investment bank.

Lots of car crashes ensue; stupidity never stops.

Generally, I'd love to be the one to say that Getaway, despite what everyone else on the Internet says, is actually a misunderstood hidden gem. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep a straight face for a lie this huge for very long.

As you probably understand, Getaway is stupid on a level that makes even the worst of Luc Besson's Europa Corp productions look well thought out and intelligent. The big difference is that Besson's movies generally show some (sometimes even more) imagination sandwiched between the idiocies - though it's often a very stupid kind of imagination - whereas Getaway's imagination stops at "car crash fun, hurr hurr".

Which, you know, still could result in an entertaining movie if the director responsible (and I mean responsible), Courtney Solomon, who just happens to also carry the blame for the first Dungeons & Dragons film, would even demonstrate the faintest idea of how to film car chases in an exciting, possibly even varied manner, seeing that about ninety percent of his movie consist of…wait for it…car chases. Clearly, he doesn't, so we get a lot of fast cuts between unexciting shots, and the sort of action choreography which not just doesn't bother to clearly show what's going on but is so misguided I'm pretty convinced nobody involved in the staging of these scenes knows what's supposed to be going on in them themselves. What's even worse: nothing on screen suggests any ideas about any other aspect of filmmaking either.

I'm not usually somebody to say you could probably have replaced a director with a stuffed monkey, but really, how could the resulting film be worse than what Solomon's Getaway delivers?

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In short: The Lords of Salem (2012)

I've never had any other reaction than annoyance to the movies of Rob Zombie; the man may be clearly as big a horror fan as Quentin Tarantino is a fan of all movies, but where Tarantino uses the bits and pieces of past movies he loves to make films very much his own, Zombie produces crap, overlong metal videos that impress through their stupidity, a propensity to demonstrate their director's research quite independent of the necessity of said demonstration (personally, I don't give a shit about how "authentic" a movie's occult elements are, and rather more about their use to make for an interesting film) and depress through the waste of talent in front of the camera. It's a neat demonstration of the difference between a director who has seen a lot of movies and some random guy who has seen a lot of movies and gets money for his films because he was in a (crappy) rock band behind the camera.

In a sense, Lords of Salem actually is an improvement on Zombie's previous efforts, seeing as it does contain at least twenty minutes that are actually pretty good, proves that Sheri Moon Zombie can be a better actress than is generally thought, and even gets sympathy points for its realization that yes, Dorothy, people - even women! - older than twenty-five do in fact exist.

Unfortunately, Lords of Salem regularly had me laughing tears whenever Zombie attempted one of his horror set pieces, all of them looking like a fan's idea of what's horrific and disturbing, unfiltered by any artistic talent. Unless you're making a horror comedy (and after this one, I'd actually pay good money to see a conscious comedy by Zombie), it's the death knell for your film if scenes like the dream-flashback sequence showing a the witch burning, or the witches promising nasty, nasty things to a baby, are as funny as the ones here, all over-earnestness and crap metal video style.

But hey, if you ever wanted to see how the ending of 2001 must look through the eyes of a twelve-year-old White Zombie or Marilyn Manson fan, The Lords of Salem has you covered with its climax (or rather "climax"), a sequence of scenes effortlessly combining the virtues of utter stupidity and visual cluelessness.

Also, Mister Zombie, hands off The Velvet Underground next time around.

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In short: Birds of Prey (1987)

aka Beaks: The Movie

Original title: El ataque de los pájaros

Welcome to the beautiful world of René Cardona Jr., groping belatedly for that sweet, sweet "nature strikes back" money and possibly a bit of Hitchcocksploitation (duMauriersploitation?) money! Thrill to the least believable pair of TV reporters known to mankind (Michelle Johnson and Christopher Atkins) jet around the world to hold very very long and very very boring interviews about the developing series of bird attacks happening all around the world! That is, if you're lucky, otherwise, thrill to said pair interviewing random people about birds instead of bird attacks! Be astonished by the apathetic way Cardona interrupts what may or may not be meant to be a main narrative (full disclosure: the word "narrative" generally implies things like plot and character development, dramatic escalation and so on, none of which applies to the movie at hand) with said bird attacks, a mix of library footage of birds, hot slow motion action (without the hot and the action), sudden bouts of gloopy gore and eye mutilation that are missing from a lot of versions of the movie because we can't keep the only entertaining bits in, now can we, and the director slaughtering real life birds for the audience's pleasure (or vomiting)!

Cry for mankind about the obvious, yet unexamined disconnect between making a movie with a plot (however dishonest) about nature striking back at humanity for our destructive influence, and slaughtering lots of animals for it! Feel somewhat grimy for having watched this thing and follow it with a helpful cup of tea and a slightly less unpleasant and sleazy movie like some piece of Japanese ninja soft porn!

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In short: Zombie 108 (2012)

aka Z108
(Warning: I may have to curse a bit during the course of this write-up, because this film is way too fucking horrible not to)

The good news: this is supposed to be Taiwan's first zombie movie. Good for you, Taiwan! It can only get better from here.

The bad news: Everything else, for Taiwan's first zombie movie just happens to be utter shite.

But let's begin with the film's plot, which would be easier if director and writer Joe Chie Jen-Hao had deigned to include one. As it stands, we're witness to another zombie outbreak, this time around caused by a scientist (the fiend!) "inventing a new gene". Zombie 108 takes place in one of the rougher districts of Taipei. Various gangsters and SWAT members run circles through it, fleeing zombies in an attempt to, um, you got me there. From time to time, their running around is intercut with the adventures of a guy wearing what I think is supposed to be a mask made of human skin like Leatherface, lovingly called Pervert (Joe Chie Jen-Hao himself - oh the irony!), who keeps a bunch of women who - like all the actresses in the movie - look as if they rose from the same model clone tank in his cellar for easy rape and torture access, or rather, so that the camera can leer at them in just about the only shots in the film that aren't filmed by a director of photography with the shakes. After a lot of running around and getting killed, the cops and robbers survivors land in Pervert's apartment. And that's supposed to be the plot.

Apart from that whole not actually having a plot angle, and being sleazy in a manner unpleasant yet not very interesting, Zombie 108 also recommends itself for the garbage heap by not including any characterisation to speak of. The film clearly prefers to spend its time showing off all of the most unpleasant stylistic tics of contemporary cinema (while leaving its strengths out, of course), so there's the usual desaturated look where all colours have been replaced with urine yellow and vomit green, editing and camerawork so nervous and hyperactive it's usually impossible to make out what's going on on screen - doubly so in action sequences, of course, because if the audience could see what the fuck is going on, there the production would actually have to put an effort into choreographing them, employ stuntmen or equally insane things like that -, "comedy" that's closer to a lobotomy than humour (oh look, Pervert uses zombies doing the Conan wheel bit in miniature to create electricity, hurr, hurr), and various mildly tasteless attempts to shock the audience by breaking so-called taboos that could work if the film ever bothered to actually create any emotional connection between what's happening on screen and its audience. Or if this didn't look like a second-grade Marilyn Manson video clip. That, again, would of course take an actual effort by the filmmakers beyond shaking the camera and shouting, and we surely can't have that.

In other words, this piece of shit is the worst fucking thing I've seen this year; yes, even worse than Nazis at the Centre of the Earth.

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Things That Went Through My Poor Head While Watching Nazis At The Center Of The Earth (2012)

Before we come to the fun and games (which will turn out not to be all that fun and game-y), one preliminary thought: while I have no problem (except that their films suck) with The Asylum sponging off large Hollywood productions, it's quite a different thing for them to try and capitalize on a quirky low budget production like Iron Sky. Where the former has a certain rogue-ish charm, the latter leaves me with an even lower opinion of the production house than I already had. And don't even get me started about how low my opinion was after watching this piece of shit.

• Oh Cthulhu please eat me now, this has the same "writer" as tA's Sherlock Holmes!
• Wurzberg, Germany? Did a metal band attack tA's offices (also known as the toilet of Dave's Bar 'n' Grille), steal the umlaut, and turn a castle into a mountain?
• The single digital tank of the US army attacks!
• Look, I've got a sense of humour about these things, but did they really have to use fucking Mengele here? [oh, how hopeful and innocent I was here when I didn't know what would be coming. -cynical ed.]
• Antarctica is the new frontier for medical research!
• Nazi gasmasks come with their own Darth Vader voice sound.
• "What is this?" - "Vibrio vulnificus." - "I know what it is. I wanna know what it's doing here?". Ladies and gents, meet our hero.
• Even today, all people with German last names are evil.
• Ah, good old tA CGI; ignoring sizes and proportions of things so that they are smaller on the inside than on the outside. This snow vehicle thing is like the anti-TARDIS.
• An incision along the hairline is enough to then cleanly rip off a person's facial skin. Too bad nobody ever taught that trick to Leatherface.
• Secret Nazi base security may be so bad prisoners can just stroll out of their cells, but at least they have a room reserved for corpses and body parts.
• Now new at Disney World: centre of the Earth entrance ice slide!
• Answering a short monologue about Antarctica crackpot theories with "I'm sorry, how do you know all this?" clearly demonstrates the Internet doesn't exist on planet tA.
• What's the first thing the Nazis built at the centre of the Earth? A warehouse, of course.
• Does Mengele's evil genius monologue ever end?
• Apparently not.
• Dear piece of crap movie, please don't pretend to have something to say.
• As a Nazi collaborator, you only get the absolute uniform dregs.
• Oh gawd, Mengele's doing another very…slow…monologue. I know the guy is old, but can't he just shut up?
• Really, a suspense scene based on "are these really showers or gas chambers?" with lots of crying in slow-motion? Don't worry, though, it's just the rape room. Classy like an Ilsa movie, this is.
• Pro tip for b-movie Nazis: if you're so desperate to get help from the scientists you kidnapped, it's probably a good idea not to murder and rape them before they are through with their work. Unless your writer suddenly decides the whole needing scientific help angle bores him. Of course, then there was not much reason for you to kidnap the scientists at all except as skin providers, and the film's plot doesn't work anymore, but hey, you are in a tA movie.
• You know, I generally don't have problems with movies being nasty, but this one's nasty, dumb, and way too smug about itself to get anything but derision from me.
• Of course the woman who complains about nausea is pregnant; it's a movie after all.
• And now comes the abortion scene. If you go into this one, expect less a rip-off of Iron Sky and more of an extended homage to the nazisploitation genre.
• It's also totally tone deaf: you can't follow a non-consensual abortion with CGI Robo-Hitler. It's as if the film was written by two people - one going for a fun, gory pulp movie with Robo-Hitler, the other one somebody who thinks making references to Auschwitz is funny and should be punched in the face.
• Robo-Hitler has a very non-Germanic accent. Just sayin'.
• "Jetzt herunter!" does not mean "Take it down!", by the way, but rather "Down now!". Robo-Hitler confuses flying saucers and dogs.
• This long, long sequence of people running through corridors nearly makes me wish for the film to turn nasty again. But only nearly.
• Ironically, on a technical level, this just may be the best tA production I've seen; at least direction, practical effects and editing are competent for most of the time. CGI and acting still suck like a hoover, though. And I think I've already made quite clear what I think of the script.
• "Come on you bubble-headed Nazi son of a bitch!"

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In short: Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2010)

Dylan Dog (Brandon "I'm not here" Routh), the former investigator and conciliator for the population of supernatural creatures of New Orleans turned first monster vigilante, then normal private investigator after his woman got refrigerator-ed. Though his former monster friends don't like him anymore, Dog gets back into the paranormal investigation business when something kills his comic relief sidekick (Sam "I'm not funny" Huntington). It all has something to do with a case Dog didn't want to take concerning the murder of the father of personality-deprived Elizabeth (Anita "I'm not here either" Briem). Daddy died because he smuggled a much coveted McGuffin into New Orleans, and now every monster faction in the city tries to get the thing, which leads to Dog having particularly unexciting fights and confrontations with vampires, werewolves and zombies while randomly walking around, ahem, "investigating".

Oh, and the comic relief sidekick returns as a - still painfully unfunny - zombie. If you've ever seen a movie, you can imagine the rest yourself, and will probably come up with a more entertaining plot than the movie at hand has.

Whatever could go wrong with an adaptation of Tiziano Sclavi's long-running comic series into a Urban Fantasy movie featuring that guy who was already horrible as Superman, a role not exactly known for its emotional depth or breadth? Basically, everything else, too. The script is a plainly stupid assortment of badly realized clichés, painfully unfunny humour and dialogue (plus - see me shudder - off-screen monologues by our titular hero) so wooden and dumb it'll make your brain bleed, and a plot built with the Script-O-Tron-2000 (dumber edition). Obviously, the film doesn't make much use of its New Orleans setting either, and might just as well take place in Generic US City for most of its running time.

Director Kevin Munroe is exactly as good as the script he's working from, so don't expect any reprieve from the pain from him. While the camera stays in focus all the way through, and the film's basically professionally shot, there's not a second of visual imagination on screen throughout the whole film. To make matters even worse, Munroe also doesn't manage to balance the (supposedly) humorous elements with the (supposedly) more exciting parts at all - it's all a big, boring stew of scenes that seem randomly strung together, starting for no good reason and ending in the same way.

The actors don't want the people behind the camera to get all the blame for the catastrophe that's supposed to be a movie, though, and so each and every one of them delivers an atrocious performance. And it's not even the kind of atrocious performance a viewer could have fun with. There's an unpleasant odour of nobody giving a toss for the fact that people will actually pay money to watch this abomination surrounding everything here I find at once depressing, infuriating and undignified.

Usually, I have no trouble finding something worthy of praise even in the most dire of films, but even if there were something praiseworthy to be found if I'd just dig deep enough, Dylan Dog's air of disinterest and apathy robs me of all inclination to look for it any further.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,comedy,crap

Things That Went Through My Mind While Watching The Asylum's "The Almighty Thor" (2011)

 

• In Asgard (or Ess-Guard, or Esger, as it's pronounced here by varying characters), no one can hear you scream.
• Unlike real lava, digital lava has no need to follow the laws of physics.
• Oh look, it's Skeletor, but with Richard Grieco's face! Well, what's left of it since Mickey Rourke's plastic surgeon began his work on it.
• The Norse invented Monument Valley.
• Not being able to speak properly is no hindrance to a starring role in an Asylum movie.
• I can't even make a joke about the Norns (or Nerns, as some of the actors call 'em), seeing as I already made one about "actors" unable to speak.
• Is Wahalla close to Waikiki?
• Remember colour? The director sure didn't.
• The Norse Gods in this movie are less competent than your usual slasher victim.
• Talking of Norse Gods, why the hell does Odin have two eyes and no ravens? You'd think even a writer for this house of pain could afford a minute with Google. Or with some of the Marvel comics whose adaptation this is supposed to rip off.
• If you fuck with the mythology, why not do it in an interesting or clever or entertaining way? Yeah, I know, The Asylum.
• Thor has been eaten by a grue.
• Hot legwarmer action!
• Never film a fight scene in slow motion when you can't afford an action choreographer.
• Alas, Thor has not been eaten by a grue.
• "And your tree of life is finished!"
• Stuff Thor really shouldn't be saying: "I don't believe in fate."
• Come to think of it, why is Thor whining and complaining all the time?
• "YESSSS!!! NOOOOO!!!!"
• The modern world is very blue.
• Guns? Really?
• Hot Richard Grieco walking around slowly action!
• Most boring swordfight between two dual-wielding guys ever?
• Glad to see the tree from The Fountain is still getting work.
• So, this Hammer of Invincibility? Why are its owners always getting beaten in a fight? Sure it's not the Hammer of Incompetence?
• "Why is everything I do on my own wrong!?". Because you're an idiot, Thor.
• Thor, please, please, die.
• I'd love it if the film turned into torture porn for its last thirty minutes and Thor would be slowly hacked into little pieces. That would be the only way to make the "hero" of this thing less annoying, hateful and stupid.
• Didn't we have this discussion already four times before? Well, The Asylum had to bring the "film" above ninety minutes of running time somehow.
• And here I was complaining about the Clash of the Titans remake.
• The way Grieco's talking, you might think "Muspelheim" is pronounced "Moss Pellet".
• Oh great, it's another scene of Thor whining.
• "The US military is doing their best to respond to the threat." Oh yes, they're attacking with all three of their CGI fighter jets and a helicopter!
• "Ragnarök!" (or, yanno, "Ragna-RAWK!") is Loki's new catchphrase, it seems.
• As dear Roky Erikson says, "I never have the bloody hammer! I never have the bloody hammer!"

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,crap,fantasy,in short,adventures in masochism

I Watched The Asylum's Sherlock Holmes (2010). I Took Notes.

• Elderly Watson (who looks quite un-wrinkled for the eighty years plus he must be old) prefers to watch the Blitz from his lighted second story window; blackouts are for the weak.
• So wait, Holmes's least known case is one that had dinosaurs cavorting through London and the city attacked by a mechanical fire-breathing dragon? I blame marmite for Londoners' bad memories.
• Producing CGI tentacles that move like bad stop motion tentacles must be some sort of achievement, I'm sure.
• Ten minutes in, and I already wish for Matt Frewer as the superior Sherlock Holmes actor; at least that guy's a professional actor. Of course, even good old wooden uncharismatic Ianto from Torchwood aka Watson looks like an actor of immense presence and talent in comparison to today's Holmes.
• What's with his voice? No, honestly, what's with his voice? And his line delivery? He's reading all of his lines off a teleprompter, isn't he?
• Remember Sherlock's brother? Thorpe? The one who was Lestrade's "partner" (stop crying!) at Scotland Yard?
• Remember how Sherlock always leaves the physically dangerous jobs to Watson in the books while smirking like an imbecile? Nope, me neither.
• The john's name is John! Soooo funny! Looking forward to someone stepping on a banana peel next.
• Who knew that Watson would be the junkie's favourite doctor?
• Holmes declines the application of drugs. What's next, a big speech about his hatred of cocaine?
• "Show us your search warrant, then" is surely a sentence every shady working class man in Victorian London uttered dozens of times.
• "Is your workforce made of illegal immigrants?" - wait, am I watching Machete again? Can't be, that one did not generate the wish to be blind and deaf in me.
• Flashbacks to something that just happened the scene before are so useful. If your assumed audience has the short term memory of a fly. Which would also explain how much this film stinks.
• Thorpe Holmes is Iron Man!
• So, Sherlock's real first name is Robert. This Holmes really is more of a Robert, too. Bob Holmes, consulting detective, yeah, that has a special sound to it. Or is this film the story of a guy named Robert pretending to be Sherlock Holmes for fun and profit and making a very bad impression on the world? I'd rather watch that.
• Come to think of it, what's Thorpe's real name then? Dick?
• Isn't a robot assassin girl bomb and a mechanical dragon a bit of overkill when your plan is…what is our bad guy's plan anyway, except exploding Buckingham Palace? Come to think of it, why does the mechanical dragon roar?
• Holmes is a bit like Batman in that he doesn't use guns. Well, except in anything featuring him not "written" by the genius responsible here.
• Machine gun airship versus mechanical dragon should be awesome, shouldn't it? Too bad that it's in this film and realized accordingly.
• Elderly Watson is so ashamed of the crapness of his story that he dies right after telling it. I sympathise.
• 58 years later, and robot assassin girl bomb hasn't had a change of clothes.
• It's frightening to realize this isn't the worst movie produced by the Asylum I've seen. These people are responsible for altogether too many dead brain cells. Someone should sic dinosaurs on 'em.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,british movies,in short,fantasy,crap

In short: The Strange Case Of Doctor Rx (1942)

A mysterious murderer calling himself Dr. Rx (whatever that means) goes around killing gangsters who have slipped through the legal net. Yup, the trope is that old.

Might by any chance Lionel Atwill be the mysterious vigilante, or is he just randomly flashing his glasses into the camera?

Genius private eye Jerry Church (Patric Knowles) is on the case, or at least talking a lot about it while still finding time for a random off-screen marriage to a certain Kit (Anne Gwynne), girl crime writer. Will our hero persist in his dogged pursuit (aka sitting around talking) even when the evil Doctor threatens his life?

By 1942, all appearance of class (and a lot of the talent behind the camera) had left the Universal studios, and they were churning out dire little numbers like this one, directed by long-time Monogram director William Nigh. Nigh probably still had a lot more money to work with than he was used to from his Poverty Row endeavours, but unfortunately didn't have much talent to put that money to good use.

If your ideal mystery is one in which no actual detective work is taking place and nothing at all happens, and if your perfect film is one showing nothing worth looking at, you will find The Strange Case of Doctor Rx to be the best film ever. Otherwise, you'll probably just wish for the pain to stop.

To add insult to injury, the movie's victims/viewers also have to survive the soft attentions of one of the Three Stooges (I honestly don't give a toss which of them the guy is) and Mantan Moreland's usual racist stick, both probably added to drag the film from "boring" into the seldom reached circle of hell reserved for the completely unwatchable.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,in short,mystery,crap,lionel atwill

In short: My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)

This one's really not worth the effort of writing a plot synopsis or wasting too many words on. Let's just say the plot ignores everything subtle or interesting about the original and replaces it with the usual slasher by numbers fare with an additional coat of utter vapidness.

Seen as a tits and gore transmission utility, the film could be serviceable. Too bad it is painfully stupid and over the top in a most annoying way - so much so that I had my difficulties to make up my mind if the whole thing was just written by a bunch of morons or is also supposed to be a decidedly unfunny spoof of the slasher genre (and still written by a bunch of morons).

It's also less than helpful for having any productive (that is, not containing fantasies of violence against the director, writers and producers) thoughts about this abomination that the combination of mediocre to terrible acting, crap direction, sub-TV show look (what's composition and framing?) and the tedious and badly written melodrama which fills the scenes between the kills drains every possible bit of tension or interest from the proceedings.

Which of course leads me to the same question just about every horror remake in the last couple of years led me to - why the hell am I wasting my time on this shitty little excuse for a film when I could watch the actually worthwhile original?

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,horror,slasher,in short,crap