Three Films Make A Post: From a dimension beyond the living, a terror to scare you to death.

Ghoulies II (1988): The first Ghoulies us the sort of take it or leave it post-Gremlins proposition I’d rather leave than take, but this sequel, directed by producer Charles Band’s father (and veteran low budget director) Albert is rather more entertaining. It does help that it takes place on a carnival – supposed soon to be reorganized by a malevolent money man – and really puts out all the stops when it comes to the positive carny clichés. The film is full of fun (and silly) performances like the one of Phil Fondacaro as small Shakespearean thespian (at least that’s what he says) Sir Nigel Penneyweight that could be cruel and unpleasant but turn out loving and fun. Plus, there aren’t too many horror films in which the demons threatening the heroes are beaten by conjuring up a bigger (adorable) one, or the traditional “last monster nobody manages to kill” hides away in a toilet.

The Gift (2015): This small, LA-set thriller directed by Joel Edgerton (who also plays one of the main characters, together with Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall) is pretty much a perfect example of its genre: it is clever, twisty, ambiguous and often truly disquieting without ever needing to show the worst things going on in it. Thanks to a wonderful script (also by Edgerton), acting and direction, it does manage the particularly fascinating trick of being character-driven while keeping the motivations and true nature of said characters at least partially hidden. I’d say more about it but this one of those films where telling much about anything going on in it really could spoil the first impression needlessly.


Body Parts (1991): Eric Red’s horror film about body part transplantation, mad science, pointless murders, and the question if evil (whatever that may be) sits in the serial killer arm transplanted onto psychologist Jeff Fahey is as entertaining as its basic idea is silly. For most of its running time, it even manages to treat its rather absurd set-up with the utmost seriousness, doing its best to avoid turning out like Oliver Stone’s The Hand. Fahey’s performance is a fine bit of middle class paranoia, and his descent into what we’re actually pretty sure from the outset isn’t madness works particularly well because Red does manage to actually make the family unit threatened this time around sympathetic without getting treacly about it. As a bonus, there’s a bonkers ending and Brad Dourif for once is not playing the killer.

SyFy vs. the Mynd: Trycentennyal

Alien Tornado aka Tornado Warning (2012): Aliens decide to start an invasion attempt with (rather beautiful looking) special tornadoes slowly working their way from the boons to the big cities. Some decidedly incompetent men in black attempt to suppress the tornado attacks, and public knowledge of them. Farmer and worst dad ever Judd Walker (Jeff Fahey with frightening hobo facial hair and hair and a baseball cap glued to his head), his future scientist teenage daughter (Stacey Asaro), storm-chasing blogger Gail Curtis (Kari Wuhrer), and a sheriff who couldn't cut in Chicago (Willard E. Pugh) try to get the word out and solve their family crises. Alas, the script by John A. Burkett who also signed responsible for the equally meh Haunted High and Arachnoquake lets them and the audience down rather painfully. Alien Tornado is more boring than it is dumb (not usually a SyFy Channel movie problem - say what you will against the Channel's output, but "boring" is never what these films try to be), and generally lacks in the kind of entertaining cheesiness you'd hope for from something with such a title.

Monsterwolf (2010): Speaking of things that aren't usually SyFy Channel problems, Todor Chapkanov's Monsterwolf suffers from a case of excessive blandness. All the elements for an entertaining SyFy-style monster movie are there and accounted for - the family problems, the salt-of-the-Earth working class people, an evil oil magnate played by Robert Picardo, Louisiana, and a monster(wolf) - but not a single one of them is developed enough to actually become entertaining to watch.

There is a sense of bored professionalism surrounding everything about this that makes it impossible to care, so I won't.

Seeds of Destruction aka The Terror Below (2011): At its core, this is a typical Paul Ziller SyFy movie - much better made than its silly basic idea (giant roots from the Garden of Eden run amok)  suggests, with a real hand for distracting the audience from the fact that its view on a global apocalypse can't be anything other than locally limited, tight pacing, and some fun conspiracy thriller elements. Unfortunately, I couldn't enjoy any of it this time around, for the film's "converting the unbeliever" aspect is just pretty darn offensive to me once it gets as Christian as here, particularly in a film where the whole "Garden of Eden" bit is perfectly unnecessary. If you have the stomach for that sort of thing, this will probably the best film about roots threating the world you'll ever see.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,american tv,sf,horror,disaster,thriller,jeff fahey,kari wuhrer,todor chapkanov,robert picardo,paul ziller,adrian pasdar

Three Films Make A Post: They Thought They Were Alone

Iron Man 2 (2010): No wonder mainstream critics looked less favourably on Jon Favreau's second Iron Man movie than they did on the first one. Instead of going in the direction of the serious and the dark (and we all know only the serious and the dark can be good, unless your making comedies about neurotic New Yorkers not featuring any explosions), Favreau goes on an all-out binge of the silly and the slightly to heavily ridiculous while trying to tell about half a dozen stories at once without including much of an actual plot holding them together. Not surprisingly, this leads to a highly distractible film that is lacking in coherence and dramatic power and prefers spending its time on play and having (often dumb) fun with whatever it can get its hands on.

Fortunately, I do like the silly and the ridiculous parts of superhero fiction as much as I do the more serious interpretations of the concept, and approve of a director spending ridiculous amounts of big company media money on playing around, so I had just about as much fun with the film as Favreau, Downey and the gang seem to have had.

Machete (2010): I know, as someone mostly specializing in cult movies, I am required by law to look down on the efforts of people like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino mining everyone's favourite cult movies for fun, art and profit, and to mumble some stuff about "stealing" from "my genre" that has nothing whatsoever to do with my understanding of the way cultural products feed on other cultural products or - more specifically - the way classic exploitation movies themselves have been built from other people's ideas and the lust for money (which of course doesn't say anything about their qualities as art or entertainment).

Fortunately, I don't care about that law, and have enjoyed nearly anything Rodriguez (or Tarantino) has ever made. Machete is no exception to that rule. As in Favreau's movie, there's a lot of wallowing in silliness on screen here too, but also a whole bunch of silly/cool pretend violence, a bit of sledgehammer political satire, Steven Seagal actually moving and speaking his own lines (though he does both with the expected problems), mainstream Hollywood actresses not daring to undress, and Danny Trejo doing what Danny Trejo does best. It's all in good fun; most of the time, Machete is a lot of fun.

Spirited Killer 3 (or whatever it is actually called, though this might actually be the spiritual sequel to what usually goes under the name of Spirited Killer 2; 199x): Two groups of people (one Japanese, the other Chinese) are tromping through a well-known patch of Thai jungle in search of a black crane's egg. Alas, an evil shaman played by Panna Rittikrai (who else?), has called dibs on the egg and sets his undead servants (including two ninjas who just love to shout "Nin-nin-nin-nin-ja!") on them. Only when the Japanese, the Chinese and the Thai people of a nearby village unite and team-up with a girl with demonic blood (don't ask) can they hinder the bad guy from using the egg for world domination.

Unfortunately, what sounds like a perfectly awesome piece of weird fu cinema gets dragged down into that very particular brand of Thai slapstick humour that makes me want to bash my own head in when I have to witness it. Not even the ninja or a gut-munching old woman are enough to alleviate the pain of dozens of sped-up chase scenes and pratfalling. Of course, not everyone is as allergic to this sort of thing as I am, so you (yes, YOU!) might well like it.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,thai movies,superheroes,action,martial arts,comedy,horror,jon favreau,robert downey jr,mickey rourke,robert rodriguez,danny trejo,michelle rodriguez,jeff fahey,jessica alba,panna rittikrai,in short