The Grudge 3 Movie Review–A Colossal Waste On All Fronts

When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. The curse gathers in that place of death. Those who encounter it will be consumed by its fury. Those who survive will carry the curse with them…until it is reborn.
If that sounds familiar, especially to horror buffs, there’s a good reason—it’s pretty much the plotline of the last two Grudge titles, and now, thanks to Sam Raimi and the crew at Ghost House, there’s a third. I bucked convention with this series, with the belief that the second was, in a limited way, just as good as the first one. I felt it was a lot more authentic, and not having Sarah Michelle Gellar around for long to Buffy her way through really perked things up, making them a whole lot less “action hero”.
This time around, we’ll be back in the apartment complex we left in the second installment. The young survivor of the last installment managed to get locked up in an insane asylum, where he was promptly and messily killed by unknown forces. Of course, we know EXACTLY what those forces were—homicidal wackjob ghost extraordinaire Kayako and her squatting harbinger, son Toshio.
Meanwhile, the young survivor’s doctor (played halfassedly by Shawnee Smith) has gone to Chicago in search of answers, and that’s when the killing starts up again.
Frankly, watching this thing was a disaster. They took all the worst parts of the first two—shoddy explanations, some for-no-clear-reason style killing, plot elements they clearly just pulled out of their asses—and introduced them all into one. The Grudge 3 isn’t as atmospherically scary as the first one, nor is it as implicitly scary as the second. All The Grudge 3 can do is do a whole lot of killing of characters we really don’t care about because we barely know who they are.

Bride Wars Movie Review–Guys, It’s Not That Bad. Really. You’ve Seen Worse.

I take my chances today, folks, as there’s a pretty solid likelihood my membership in the International Fraternity of Guys is going to get at least censured and possibly revoked, because I’m willingly going to cover a movie called Bride Wars, just recently released to DVD.
And in this one, nigh-permanent BFFs Liv (played by Kate Hudson) and Emma (played by Anne Hathaway) have been—like most women, apparently—planning their dream wedding since they were little girls, and as they grow up, it soon becomes time to make those dreams a reality. And both has longed for just one thing—a wedding at New York’s magnificent Plaza Hotel.

With a little judicious planning, both manage to save a date there. But a clerical error soon causes trouble as both weddings are slated for the same date. Who will walk away with all the marbles? Who will have her dream wedding while the other is forced to attempt a likely disastrous date switching procedure? Will the duo even emerge friends afterward?
Now, when I slapped this sucker in, I confess my expectations were wide and varied. Was this going to emphasize the “bride”…or the “wars”? The trailers certainly suggested both would be possible, but which would come out ahead? As it turns out, it’s both.

Lakeview Terrace Movie Review–Like A House Afire

I’ll kick this one off with a little warning: I’m extremely biased in favor of Samuel L. Jackson. Sam Jack is good in pretty much anything, one of only a handful of actors who can say the same, at least as far as I’m concerned. So when I laid hands on a copy of Lakeview Terrace, I was expecting him to bring a solid performance. How was the rest of the movie around him? More on that directly—but first, plot recap time.
When a young interracial couple moves into the neighborhood on Lakeview Terrace in sunny California, they think they’re really moving up in the world. At least until they run afoul of their next-door neighbor, a racist cop who doesn’t approve of their relationship. He’s also a stern disciplinarian of a single father, and the police precinct at which he works has a whole host of question marks on his record. So when this unstable cop goes up against this young couple, in the midst of wildfire season, no less, it’s only a question of who will survive the encounter.
After all…when your psycho neighbor’s a cop…it’s hard to call the cops on him.

End of the Line Movie Review–A Long Awaited Hit

This one’s actually very interesting for me, folks—it represents something that’s been a long time in the making, and only recently managed to show up. Today I’m talking Maurice Devereaux’s newest, End of the Line, and what’s special about this is how long it took between his efforts.
Particular horror buffs among you may already know what I’m about to discuss, so for you, please bear with me so I can fill everyone else in. See, way, way back in the depths of 2001, Maurice Devereaux came out with a movie called $la$her$. And no, that’s not a typo—the S’s have all been replaced with dollar signs to reflect its nature as being about a killer game show. And it was a terrific movie, despite its clearly ultra-low-budget nature, there was a lot of action in the horror and was a move well worth repeating that had not been done often. So finally, he’s released another one after a long string of delays, and it’s called End of the Line.
End of the Line features a young nurse working in a psychiatric ward who’s starting to have some deeply unpleasant visions. But just when she thinks she’s about to head home for the night and sleep off said visions, she boards the last subway car home…and it stops in the middle of a tunnel.

Dark Secrets Movie Review–Threadbare And Ragged

I love MTI, I really do—they try harder than pretty much anyone in the business. It’s really only too bad that when they try, they just can’t get a lot of results.
Every time I pick up a new MTI title (and I stick with them because I always hope they’ll manage to pull off improvement) , like today’s little pick, Dark Secrets, (which will be available for you folks to pick up April 7th) I’m always a little impressed and I get me a nice shot of hope injected like adrenaline directly into my heart. Yeah, just like in Pulp Fiction. But anyway…like I said—I take a look at that creepy box art and that well put together back of the box description and I usually end up thinking, wow, this could REALLY be awesome.
Sadly, the actual movie never seems to live up to the incredible promise that MTI puts out. And I’ll sum up why.
In Dark Secrets, there’s trouble afoot for celebrity A-listers Darryl and Lori Van Dyke, whose daughter has just recently disappeared under what can really only be called mysterious circumstances. Two detectives are put on the very high-profile case, but neither can shake the feeling that they’ve seen this somewhere before. In fact, the kidnapping of the Van Dykes’ daughter looks oddly like the work of a serial kidnapper who has struck twice before, but with noticeable differences. With no clues, no ransom note and no motive, the detectives race against time to find the kidnapper and his victims before it’s too late.

The Mist Movie Review–Creepy Fun On Several Levels

I’ll admit right off the top of the bat this time around that I’m very fond of the work of Stephen King. Generally King knows how to craft a good, horrific story and his movies, under normal circumstances, reflect this. In fact, when they first announced that his novella The Mist would be hitting theaters I was really excited to see it hit.
And after seeing it, my excitement was no less dimmed for the experience.
Basically, The Mist deals with a thunderstorm in New England. This by itself wouldn’t mean so much, except for the fact that the storm has done a real number on the power lines, and also brought a hefty quantity of thick white mist into the area. And even this wouldn’t be so much of a problem except for what’s in the mist; namely, gigantic bugs. That’s what’s in the mist–gigantic bugs. Gigantic person eating bugs that easily out mass a human being by a factor of at least fifty to one. So you can imagine the kind of panic disorder this creates to a bunch of townsfolk left stranded in the local supermarket surrounded by this midst containing the giant person eating bugs. No one knows exactly where they came from. No one knows exactly when they’ll leave. No one knows exactly how to stop them… but what everyone does know is…not much. And when human beings don’t know much about a disaster that’s facing them they’ll tend to lean defend their own explanations which may or may not resemble the truth. This is exactly the case with The Mist.
The key thing to note about The Mist, is that strange tendency people have to fill in the blanks when they don’t know much about a situation that might kill them. When a situation contains as many blanks as a giant wall of opaque mist, then the explanations become suitably outlandish. And yet in this case those explanations may well wind up getting as many people killed as a giant person eating bugs do.

Midnight Meat Train Movie Review–I Can’t Believe I’m Saying This.

I have to admit…I’ve never liked Clive Barker movies much. Historically, I’ve found them incomprehensible, gore-soaked pieces of garbage that didn’t deserve to exist. From my earliest horror days, I counted the Hellraiser series as a test of endurance—how much bloodstained misery could I take before jamming my finger on the eject button in frustration and getting out of it entirely? Turns out, I could take a lot.
But then…then I got my hands on a copy of Midnight Meat Train—you know, that lesser-known, even lesser-seen movie that most horror fans are still venting their collective spleen over? And I began to wonder, was this it? Was this the exception that proved the rule? Was this, heaven help me, a GOOD Clive Barker movie?
More on that directly, but first, the plot: It’s basically about a photographer chasing what he believes to be a butcher who happens to be, in his off hours, an immortal serial killer who’s been hard at work for the last hundred years or more. No one’s ever found that out, of course, because this immortal serial killer butcher is functioning as a delivery service for a race of humanoid creatures that just love the taste of people. The immortal serial killer butcher, who goes by the name of Mahogany, renders his victims into usable cuts which are offloaded on a regular basis, and all on a subway car.

Twilight: The Broodening Online Review–A Much Better Version

There are days when I really love Newgrounds. Especially on those days when I, just after releasing a review about Twilight, come out with an uproarious parody video called Twilight: The Broodening that explains clearly the numerous ways in which the book and movie were both wrong and / or just plain idiotic.
And as it turns out, there are many–of course, we all know that Twilight just DESTROYED every known convention about vampires in favor of doing things that would attract twelve year old girls (Sparkly vampires? Are you out of your mind??), and there’s plenty of problems IN the movie itself that really haven’t been considered because we were all too busy recovering from the psychic shock presented to pick it cleanly apart.
No one really wants to analyze a nuclear reactor when the coolant rods are out and the plutonium’s on fire, you know.
Call it troll bait for the Rob Pattinson forum, call it sheer fun for everyone who had to sit through this dreck, call it whatever you like–it’s The Broodening.

Repo! The Genetic Opera Movie Review–Sold Short and Repossessed Early

In retrospect, it should have been painfully obvious that Repo! The Genetic Opera was going to be a failure of catastrophic and epic dimensions. It had a poor, almost self-destructive release (it opened in SIX CITIES, four of which were in the United States), a gruesome premise, and appeal so limited that even calling it niche would’ve been a bit of a stretch. It had virtually no star power–outside of some fair horror names like Bill Moseley (who packs ‘em in on every direct to video release he’s involved with) and Anthony Stewart Head (still big with the Buffy crowd), the closest thing to star power was Paris Hilton, and that turned into more of a backlash than a draw. And indeed, Repo! turned out to be a gold-plated flop of spectacular magnitude, making back around a fifth of its shooting budget in theatres and going on to at least help out the score with the video sales.
The sad part about this is that, for the most part, Repo! did not actually DESERVE its fate.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Movie Review–A Big Box of Stories

I have to admit, when I finally managed to lay hands on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I really wasn’t all that sure what to expect from it. Of course, the plot was obvious enough…everyone had been talking about it since its Oscar bid. But what I found when I watched it was unusual enough to make it worth talking about.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is about life in its most primal form, reversed—for most, life can only be lived forwards and understood backwards. But for Benjamin Button, it’s lived backwards, and strangely, understood forwards. Born in his eighties due to a bizarre condition that ages him in reverse, we follow Benjamin Button throughout his life, his loves, and his own inevitable end.
It’s a strange movie, this one—similar to titles like Forrest Gump, focusing on the unusual life of an unusual person, it’s a deep and rich epic with lots of stories to tell, both heartwarming and horrifying in their ways. It’s told from the perspective of a woman dying in a hospital, her granddaughter reading the diary of the man that meant so much to her over the years—specifically, Benjamin Button. There’s so much to see here that it’s a lot like being with an elderly person. It has all the stories of a lifetime. Not all of them are interesting, and some of them are downright sad, but some of them are beautiful.
And that’s exactly what this movie is, almost three straight hours of stories. Benjamin Button will find love, find loss, find war, find peace, find hope and charity and everything in between. You’ve got to really want a movie like this, because a movie like this is an undertaking. It’s a project. You’ve got to block out nearly three hours if you want to see this one, and three hours is not easy to come by these days.
But if you put the three hours into it, what you’ll get is a story of shocking depth for Hollywood. You’ll get great performances—those who said that this is some of Brad Pitt’s greatest work were not kidding—and you’ll get some beautiful images. Even when Benjamin went to war, they managed to make it look beautiful in a way.
And as I grew to realize, fumbling along through this…this enormous brick edifice of a movie…I began to wonder, maybe this was too much. Maybe there’s too much going on here. Maybe it’s made itself downright inaccessible to just about everybody by requiring so much of its audience. And in a way, I’m happy that they thought enough of me to subject me to this monster, knowing that I could take it or leave it, but if I wanted to take it, I would have to EARN it.

The Tale of Despereaux Movie Review–This Is Good For Pretty Much Everybody

I admit that I didn’t have a whole lot of hope going in to The Tale of Despereaux, a strange little fairy tale involving mice that were entirely too brave for their own good, and royalty whose headgear featured spoons in mass quantities, and needles used as swords.
And yet, when I settled in to watch it, and watched this impressive little animated story that was almost nominated for an Oscar unfold, I was just amazed by it, especially by how it managed to keep so many disparate plot threads straight at once.
What do I mean, you wonder? Simple—there’s a LOT going on in this plot, and it truly is a wonder how they managed to keep it all together. For instance, a rat manages to inadvertently kill the queen of the land of Dor, a land whose specialty is soup. Dorians love soup. It’s their primary industry, conversation topic, commercial product AND art form. Their royalty has soup spoons featured prominently in their crowns. Anyway, as a result of this accidental death, the king of Dor declares both soup AND rats to be illegal, as he blames both for killing his wife. The land goes gray and bleak, and enters a multiple-year drought. Meanwhile, the mice, whose primary export, import, ideology and entire way of life appears to revolve around fear, are hiding out in the walls, as is normal for mice. One mouse, Despereaux, isn’t satisfied with this life, and is thus thrown out of the mouse world to live with the rats. And thus, a quest is born for both Despereaux and the rat that accidentally killed a queen.
There’s actually more to the plot than this—doing a complete synopsis would actually take a lot more room, because like I said, there’s a LOT going on in here. And at first, it will actually seem like they’re jumping around from plot point to plot point with little or no regard for coherence. It’ll seem like that because that’s exactly what they’re doing, but it won’t take long for the whole thing to coalesce into a greater whole. It’s almost like watching a loom or something, where all these threads come together while you watch, and out the other side pops this greater whole. How does this happen? I’m not sure. But I’m sure that I like it, and that’s strange enough.

Role Models Movie Review–It’s Funny. That’s What Counts.

It’s not hard to see why people might have a monster hate-on over something like Role Models—on its surface, it looks to be yet another crass comedy featuring a pair of losers whose lives suck almost as hard as the careers of the actors portraying them. And yet, despite the fact that both Paul Rudd AND Seann William Scott are involved, Role Models will manage to do the impossible and be a good movie.
Buddies straitlaced, bitter Danny and freewheeling ladies’ man Wheeler (whom we later find out is actually named Anson) work together pitching an energy drink to kids called Minotaur. Wheeler wears a minotaur costume, Danny wears a suit, and together they drive around from school to school in a pickup truck shaped a lot like a minotaur for the twofold purpose of keeping kids off drugs and hawking energy drink, sufficient quantities of which have been shown to turn urine a bright green. While Wheeler loves his job, Danny is beginning to hate life, wanting more from it. Eventually, Danny loses it under the strain and attempts to steal his truck back from a tow truck that was seizing it due to parking it in the wrong spot after his girlfriend dumped him. Danny soon after finds himself facing a bitter choice along with friend Wheeler—thirty days in jail, or a hundred and eighty hours of community service with a group called Sturdy Wings, a Big Brothers-esque sort of program run by a former crackhead.

'Protege’ Something of Value

American filmmakers most certainly can learn something of value from Asia filmmakers - let the story be told. Asian films are rich in story and character. Naysayers will argue that Asian films are over the top or too melodramatic, but I say nay.
For example, I popped the movie Protégéin my DVD player the other night. Directed by Tung-Shing Yee with a cast of Asian cinema superstars including Andy Lau (House of Flying Daggers), Daniel Wu (Legend of the Black Scorpion), Louis Koo (Flash Point) and Jingchu Zhang (Seven Swords), Protégé is the saga of a young cop infiltrating the deepest levels of a secret drug ring. He survives seven years of violent, nail-biting close calls, as he works his way from dealer to heir of the drug empire. Every step consolidates his power and reveals another piece of his boss’s operations, bringing him closer to destroying a brutal heroin empire…or inheriting it.
The story is complete bar any quick cuts to the next scene. Each scene is complete with the heart wrenching reality of heroin’s insidious end. Koo plays an abusive drug-addict husband whose pain and angst is only allowed by a director like Tung-Shing Yee, who is bold enough to “tell it like it is.”
One scene that comes to mind is where Wu’s character, and undercover cop, must confront his boss (Lau) whom he would have inherited his heroine empire if he wasn’t an undercover cop, and tell him the truth of his role in destroying the empire. The scene plays out completely with a slow suicidal death of Wu. The audience is able to experience the full emotion of the scene, brilliantly executed, no close ups but a three-quarter shot of both men in eternal pain.

Winner — ‘In Electric Mist’ Stars Tommy Lee Jones

I just finished watching In The Electric Mist, which is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray, based on the bestselling novel by James Lee Burke. In the Electric Mist features Tommy Lee Jones leading a talented cast through the Louisiana bayou and the New Orleans criminal underground investigating a series of horrific murders while uncovering long forgotten secrets of the prejudice south.
Jones plays veteran detective Dave Robicheaux, Dirty Harry hunts down a serial killer in the Deep South. Although the story line has obvious plot turns, I was engaged throughout the film. John Goodman is fun to watch as he plays a greasy, no-good-son-of-a…remarkably well. One of my favorite actresses, Mary Steenburgen, which we hardly ever see in films, effortlessly and smoothly plays Robicheaux’s wife, who draws out the kinder side of Jone’s character and you forget about Dirty Harry similarities.

The Night Before Movie Review–Keanu Reeves Will Really Surprise You

For those of you who happen to be limited Keanu Reeves fans, you’re going to be pretty surprised by the knowledge that he was in a whole lot more than Bill And Ted back in the eighties. One of the “whole lot more” is a movie featured in Lions Gate’s recent The Lost Collection called The Night Before, a movie that’ll show you what can happen when you start at the end and work your way backward.
Basically, Winston, vice-president of the Astronomy club and all-around doofus extraordinaire, wakes up late one night—or possibly very, very early one morning—in an alley with a semi truck about to run him over, and a series of unpleasant events both behind him already and about to happen. His father’s red convertible Mustang has been stolen, he’s sold his prom date (a cheerleader / teen model who’s lost a bet) for fifteen hundred dollars…and after a hilarious turn at a microphone in a sleazy night club / bar, a guy named Tito wants him dead at sunrise. Worse yet, the girl’s father is a police detective with a whole cabinet full of guns back at the house. Thus, it’s left to Winston to get the girl and get out alive before sunrise comes and either Tito or his prom date’s father comes to get him.
The thing that really makes The Night Before work, aside from an excellently written script, is the work of Keanu Reeves. I hadn’t expected Keanu to do much of anything after watching him “dude” his way through Bill And Ted, and snarl his way through The Matrix. But in The Night Before, Keanu manages to bring multiple levels to his character Winston, driving him alternately between a callow, scared little boy and a drug-addled wild man. Even better, Winston even manages to grow as a character during his tenure, becoming steadily more self-reliant from his prom night spent on the streets of what I’m guessing is Los Angeles from the sheer amount of time they spend talking about “Marina Del Rey” and the Pacific Coast Highway.
And, as if actual character development in a movie—a downright rarity any more—weren’t good enough for you, maybe you’ll be enthused by the bit of action and crime drama they slipped into the proceedings besides. That’s reason enough to get even the most skeptical parties interested. Sure got ME interested.

Repossessed Movie Review–Sinfully Fun

I’m going to say just four words that’ll strike a weird sort of comedic terror into your very soul. Those four words?
Father-Exorcist Leslie Nielsen.
You feel that? Yeah, I know—I’m scared too. But that’s what we’re looking at thanks to Lions Gate’s Lost Collection title Repossessed.
Basically, Repossessed takes a poor little girl named Nancy (an analogue of Regan from The Exorcist) and subjects her to demon possession. Leslie Nielsen serves as the exorcist this time as Father Mayii (Father, may I. get it?), courtesy of the unlikely-named church of Our Lady of the Blinding Vision, who ejects the demon from Nancy’s soul in a fierce battle. The demon swears revenge as it leaves.
Several years later, Nancy’s all grown up, with children, and a love of split pea soup. But it may not be the demon that’s the bad guy in this one—there’s a pair of televangelists (Ernest and Fanny Rae Weller, an almost too-clear analogue of Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker) who are looking to cash in on exorcisms, and find themselves taking on Nancy’s demon. Who will come out ahead in this battle for eternity: the demon, the money-grubbing televangelists or the valiant non-child-molesting Catholic father?

Yes Man Movie Review–You’ll Want To Say Yes To This One

They say that no is the first word you ever learn. And there are people out there who think that it’s the first word we should forget. And then, there are some people who stick to it like a three foot thick sheet of battleship armor. The word no can be a shield, a bludgeon, a razor wire fence that keeps the worst of the world at bay. And nowhere will that be so readily apparent as it is in recent release Yes Man.
Featuring Jim Carrey as Carl, a recent divorce who’s not taking it very well, he’s discovered the value of “no” to keep the slings and arrows of the world at bay. Risk? Not a good thing to Carl, who makes his living as a loan officer, and for whom saying no is an entire way of life. But when Carl finds himself at a seminar, convinced into making a “covenant” with himself where his answer to every offer he receives must be “yes”, his world quite literally turns upside down, and we discover that while “no” may protect you from the good in life just as much as the bad, “yes” can let in the exact same thing.
As the kind of person who sees the value in “no” himself, I really got kind of an eye opener on this one. It’s a great question—how many things do we say “no” to that may well be good for us? How often have we refused to go out into the world and do something that leaves a worthwhile memory in its place because we were afraid, or because we were tired or discomfited or otherwise uneager to leave the safety and peace and comfort of our houses, couches, and DVD players? And the same goes to the “yes” crowd—how many times have you walked into serious trouble because you said yes to something you shouldn’t have?

Bangkok Dangerous Movie Review–I’ve Been Shooting At Peeee-PUHHHLLL!

Ah, remakes. I love you so.
And when I first saw the trailers for the remake of Bangkok Dangerous, featuring no less than Nicholas Cage as hitman Joe, I confess that I had some serious reservations.
Why? Because that trailer looked about as dull as a burlap sack full of wet hair, that’s why. And when I watched the movie, I was pleasantly surprised…but not by very much.
Hitman Joe is the best there is—a fact that a whole lot of other fictional hitmen would LOVE to dispute via all manner of lethal hardware—and he’s on his way to his final job, four kills in Bangkok. He hires a local pickpocket to serve as his go-between between himself and his bosses, but eventually takes a liking to the pickpocket, training him in the art of killing as his student. Joe’s first three kills go off with varying levels of resistance, but his fourth kill, the Prime Minister of Thailand, isn’t so easy. The pickpocket Joe trained has made it abundantly clear to Joe that the Prime Minister really IS one of Thailand’s finest, and Joe’s trust in his pickpocket friend / student is getting in the way. Now, Joe’s on the run, and his pickpocket friend is now in danger from the syndicate that hired Joe in the first place.
When you compare this one to the original, there is almost no comparison at all—every line that comes out of Nicholas Cage’s mouth is a violation of the original canon. The original hitman Joe, you see, was deaf and mute. The comparisons only get worse from there.

Seven Pounds Movie Review–The Sheer Weight of Crap

So I have to admit, I was baffled by the recent release of Will Smith’s movie Seven Pounds. Why? Because I had no idea at all what relevance the title had to the rest of the movie. Normally the title tells you something about what’s going on, or maybe about a main character, but Seven Pounds? What did that have to do with anything?
Thankfully, over the course of the movie, we’ll get at least an idea of just what that whole “seven pounds” thing is. But that really doesn’t answer the main question here—is Seven Pounds worth perfectly good time and money to watch?
Describing the plot is impossible to do without spoilers, since so much of the plot isn’t actually revealed until the ending, so I’m going to have to REALLY pussyfoot around here—basically, an aeronautical engineer is looking for a way to make seven people’s lives better, by any means necessary and at any cost necessary.
There are a lot of choice words and phrases to apply to Seven Pounds. Most of them involve obscenities and a lot of screaming. Some of them involve the little vein on my forehead popping out so far it looks fit to burst. But some of them that are fit for family dinner table consumption are words like:

The Day The Earth Stood Still Movie Review–Surprisingly Watchable

You know, going in to see The Day the Earth Stood Still, now out on DVD, I confess that I was a bit concerned. Fifties-era science fiction getting a remake sounds like little more than a true sign of Hollywood’s deep desperation. And putting Keanu Reeves in at the lead, who isn’t exactly one of Hollywood’s best, left me even colder. So with all that working against it—a tired premise, a relatively obscure canon piece as foundation, a soap carving for a lead actor—you can just about imagine my shock when I discovered that the whole would actually be somewhat watchable, if just a smidge on the preachy side.
Basically, in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, Keanu Reeves appears as Klaatu, part of a group of races who’ve decided that humanity has become untenable on the planet Earth, and is thus risking the destruction of several million species. Thus, Klaatu has been dispatched to gather up representatives OF these several million species and tell humanity metaphorically where to stick it as the races Klaatu represents launches a full-on destructive sweep in the form of a massive cloud of nanotech.
Granted, the ending is less than satisfactory—anyone else remember Escape From L.A.? Yeah, it’s a lot like that, except nowhere NEAR as much fun. And yes, the whole couldn’t be much more preachy if Al Gore were playing Klaatu instead of Keanu Reeves; though it would be awesome to see this, there’s just no way the average human being could take exposure to that level of condescension and not set the theatre on fire, possibly taking him or her with it..

Fighting Movie Review–Not Quite A Knockout

You may have never heard of Channing Tatum, but you’ll be fairly surprised by his big excursion into the big screen with the release of Fighting.
Channing will be playing Shawn MacArthur, as a young street hustler from the wilds of…Birmingham, Alabama. Um, okay…anyway, he’s moved to New York, where he’s hawking ersatz Harry Potter books and occasionally discount umbrellas. Anyway, while selling his ersatz Harry Potter books, he gets in rolling three-way fistfight that draws the notice of former brawler turned agent / hustler Harvey Boarden. Harvey sees an opportunity in Shawn, and sets him up with a series of illegal underground bare-knuckle brawls, and Shawn steadily advances up through the ranks. Eventually, he gets set up with the fight of his life as a face from his past surfaces—can he stand up and face his own past or will he get knocked out by the strife?
For those of you making comparisons to Fight Club, you’re not alone. I got about fifteen minutes into this thing when I wound up saying that this was all just a huge Fight Club knockoff that had been heavily dumbed-down and stripped of all its pedagogery. Yeah, there aren’t any rants here about sleepless nights and IKEA and materialism—just guys beating the crap out of each other and the occasional appearance of hot chicks.

Into The Blue 2 Movie Review–I Can’t Believe This Exists

When I first saw a copy of Into the Blue 2 on video store shelves, I thought someone at my friendly neighborhood video store was having a good laugh at my expense. Someone with some sweet Photoshop skills and a wild imagination whomped up a cheesy premise and told us a really unpleasant story.
But no…it really exists. And it may well represent the most desperate excursion MGM has ever put on to date. So desperate, in fact, that it will actually put on a wet t-shirt contest with only a half-hour into the movie, and you know that’s pretty desperate.
Anyway, this time we’re off to Hawaii, to hunt up a missing piece of Saddam Hussein’s lost fortune, while pretending to look for the wreck of the San Cristobal, a massive Spanish treasure ship that was on its way to the Philippines when it went down. Featuring a pair of pretty much unknown actors as young divemasters up to their necks in hock, they’ll take on the quest to find Saddam’s lost fortune in the guise of the San Cristobal.

Giveaway — Best of ‘Will & Grace,’ 2 DVDs

On behalf of Lionsgate, Screenhead is pleased to announce the release of two “Best of” DVDs from the critically acclaimed comedy series, WILL & GRACE! Will & Grace: Best of Love & Marriage and Will & Grace: Best of Friends & Foes will be available on DVD May 5th!
Winner of 16 Emmy awards including Outstanding Comedy, “Will & Grace” has earned its place as one of the most adored sitcoms of all time, and now loving fans will be able to rekindle the magic with two new collectors’ additions - Will & Grace: Best of Love & Marriage and Will & Grace: Best of Friends & Foes. Each 2-disc DVD set features 16 favorite episodes packed with non-stop laughs!
Remember Rosario’s green card incident? And when Grace and Leo first met? The Will & Grace: Best of Love & Marriage collection captures those priceless moments and highlights other incredibly memorable relationship mishaps and make-ups from the series. Will & Grace: Best of Friends & Foes features favorite celebrity cameos by Jennifer Lopez, Kevin Bacon, Glenn Close, Britney Spears, Matt Damon, Madonna and more. The fabulous sets also include hysterical themed featurettes and special audio commentaries with the cast and crew.

The Uninvited Movie Review–Twisted Creepiness Par Excellence

I’m going to take this opening paragraph to just spit some kudos out at the folks who did The Uninvited, because they really whomped up a doozy of a suspense plot here.
Okay–that having been said, basically, the plot of The Uninvited is actually going to sound really, REALLY familiar. Like unsettlingly familiar. Like the kind of thing you’ve seen dozens of times before on Lifetime familiar. But basically, following the mysterious death of their mother, sisters Alex and Anna find themselves suspicious of their father’s new love, Rachel, the nurse who cared for their mother in the days leading up to her death in a fire.
Rachel’s past is full of questions, and Alex and Anna believe there’s more to this story than meets the eye. And Rachel’s showing a whole lot of interest in Alex and Anna’s writer father, a development that’s got the girls freaked out mightily. But when they find out the truth behind Rachel…will they act? Or will they find that even the truth they find isn’t so true after all?
That last sentence was so spectacularly convoluted for one very good reason—it matches the movie. See, this might surprise you, but The Uninvited is a remake of a 2003 Korean horror film. Now, Korean horror LOVES ghost stories—they comprise much of the entirety of Korean horror that I’ve encountered so far. So it won’t come as a surprise to any of you that this one is going to HEAVILY feature ghosts…or at least what LOOK like ghosts. That’s going to be the other really big thing about this movie—most of what you’ll see isn’t exactly what’s going on. All of this builds up to this really awesome ending that has to be seen to be believed. I’m not the only one who’s noticed this, either—it’s well worth watching.

“The Unborn” Available on Blu-Ray and DVD

For people who loved the horror movies like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, brace yourself for something along that niche in “The Unborn” that is now available on Blu-Ray and DVD.
From the co-writer of The Dark Knight and the producers who brought you The Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes a terrifying glimpse into the life of the undead in this chilling thriller that will haunt your soul. Writer and director David Goyer (The Dark Knight, Blade: Trinity) gives a terrifying glimpse into the life of the undead in The Unborn, a supernatural thriller that follows a young woman pulled into a world of nightmares when a demonic spirit haunts her and threatens everyone she loves.

100 Feet Movie Review–Better At Arm’s Length

I’ve been waiting for 100 Feet to appear on my video store shelves for a good long while now, folks—ever since I read about this one I knew, KNEW!, that it was going to be an intensely wild ride. And with a major name like Famke Janssen involved, well, it wasn’t like things could get much better!
I wondered how, at all, it could even be possible to not be enthused about this beyond all belief, and so, when I finally caught a glimpse of it on the shelves, I had to lay claim. I had to get my hands on a copy because I’d been waiting for it for MONTHS.
Sadly, it would not live up to my expectations.
First, the plot: it’s a simple enough sort of plot, with a woman recently convicted of murdering her own husband, who a surprisingly large body of evidence suggests beat her on a regular basis. Clearly, a jury went along with the self-defense idea because she’s sentenced to an entire year of home detention and placed on an ankle monitoring bracelet, the kind you saw in Disturbia. Now, when you can’t even go into the basement of your own home without setting off an alarm, you know you’ve got some serious problems. But things get worse when we discover that there’s plenty wrong with the house she’s required by law to remain inside. Power failures…a really poorly located mail slot…easily opened basement windows…these are just part of the list. Oh, yeah…and the flying crockery. It seems that our valiant widow is living in a haunted house—haunted by the ghost of her murdered husband.
And hubby ain’t happy.

Winner — ‘House’

Lionsgate Home Entertainment and Screenhead are excited to announce the DVD release of the highly anticipated terror tale, House, available on April 7, 2009.
Based on the best-selling novel by Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti, House tells the horrifying story of a young couple forced to stay at a bleak B&B when they become stranded in the middle of a deserted road. After meeting another couple upon their arrival, these four individuals become pawns in a psychopath’s torturous game that takes over the entire house. Although desperate to find a way out, the couples soon discover that it’s not so easy to follow house rules…
Starring Michael Madsen (Kill Bill), Bill Moseley (The Devil’s Reject) and Leslie Easterbrook (The Devil’s Reject, Halloween) and produced by Ralph Winter (producer of X-Men, Fantastic Four), House is a chilling thriller that cannot be missed.

Giveaway — ‘Never Surrender’ DVD

On behalf of Lionsgate Home Entertainment, we are excited to announce the DVD arrival of the action-packed film, Never Surrender, on April 28th!
Bringing together the absolute best talent on the Mixed Martial Arts circuit, Never Surrender follows the intensely dangerous journey of an MMA world champion through the illegal world of underground cage fighting.
George “Rush” St-Pierre (current UFC Welterweight Champion), BJ “The Prodigy” Penn (undisputed UFC Lightweight Champion), Quinton “Rampage” Jackson (former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion), Anderson “The Spider” Silva (current UFC Middleweight Champion) and heavyweight favorite Heath “The Texas Crazy Horse” Herring star in this controversial action-thriller. The DVD contains smashing special features including a “Making Of” featurette, Anatomy of a Fight, a music video and trailer gallery.

Hotels for Dogs on DVD

What can I say? I love dogs of all sizes, shapes, and breeds. Okay, I prefer them pocket-sized and cutesy, but beggars can’t be choosers … and I’ll happily pet, coddle, and smooch poodles and pugs alike. (No stinky bulldogs though … Sorry Duke!)
I’m a firm believer that most canines are way smarter than humans so I always love a good “if dogs could talk” movie. Plus, think about it … there’s something really adorable/funny about the idea of a hotel for dogs. (Oh, all the antics and sniffing and sneaking!)

Caprica DVD Review

Bruce here, your resident Battlestar Galactica reporter. After reporting on Battlestar Galactica (BSG) for the last few years, it seemed only natural that I continue my coverage of the mythos, with the prequel Caprica.
What Is Caprica About?
Caprica is about the rapidly evolving spheres of human and mechanical engineering that collide in the BSG universe. It focuses on two families are brought together by the tragedy of an explosive act of terrorism. These two families are led by powerful patriarchs, Joseph Adama played by Esai Morales (Jericho) and Daniel Greystone played by Eric Stoltz (The Butterfly Effect) who find themselves in a conflict of questionable ethics, corporate machinations and intense personal ambition as we watch the beginning of what we know will be the end for humanity. It’s brought to us by executive producers of Battlestar Galactica (Ronald D. Moore and David Eick), set in a time 58 years before the fall. Caprica is entirely its own world.
When I was asked to write something up, but with “No Spoilers,” I thought how the frak am I going to do this? I came into this hoping that they’d captured the essence of what I came to enjoy about BSG. This show brought me right along and actually took me way from what BSG was. I had forgotten that this was a prequel as I found myself wanting more of these characters as the show moved along.

Stormlord - The Battle of Quebec City: Live in Canada(2007 DVD)

"The Battle of Quebec City: Live in Canada 2006" has been recorded during the band's 15th anniversary Canadian tour and will include the complete show of Quebec City, plus 2 bootleg songs from Toronto and Montreal gigs, official videoclips, footage on the road and many more.
01. The Torchbearer 02. Dance Of Hecate03. Wurdulak04. I Am Legend05. The Oath Of The Legion06. Under The Boards (195, M.A.)07. The Gorgon Cult 08. Dimension: Hate09. Xanadu (A Vision In A Dream) 10. Where My Spirit Forever Shall Be11. The Curse Of Medusa12. Raining Blood (Slayer Cover)

Example DVD Movie: Conan The Destroyer

Synopsis: The Most Powerful Legend Of All Is Back In A New Adventure. In this second Conan epic, he is asked by the evil Queen Taramis to accompany a beautiful young princess to find a magic treasure. If he returns with the treasure and the virgin, the Queen promises to bring his beloved Valeria back from the dead. But little does he know that she plans to kill them both, or that the return of the treasure will mean the extinction of mankind.