I'm still trying to figure out Cabin Fever. Was it a horror film or a comedy? Someone explain this to me. The film has some great horror visuals, yet doesn't take itself seriously at all to the point that it seems like a parody film within itself leading to a dreadful experience that is more camp than horror.
Going through the movie you get a ton of homages to previous horror films. By a ton I mean a shitload. These winks into the past are OK occasionally, but when you stockpile them one like sale toilet paper it also gives the feel of a parody film. The plot is that five friends go into the woods to a cabin (Evil Dead). They stop by a rustic convenience store with odd owners (Texas Chainsaw Massacre). They encounter an odd child sitting in a swing (Deliverance) and eventually wind up fighting off a flesh easting something that slowly eats their skin away (insert any Romero film title here).
Of course this is done very tongue in cheek. Or is it. It's hard to tell because some scenes are very good from a horror genre standpoint, but others are so campy it's like something from an Ed Wood film. If Ed Wood was alive today he would have made Cabin Fever. The characters are all stereotypical horror film stock, even the local yokels who are low rent Deliverance rejects. There are a few interesting plot twists that you don't see coming, but those are drowned out by scenes like the "Pancakes!" scene that is probably the stupidest scene I have seen in a film in a very long time. It's so out of place it looks like an out take. The main problem with the film is that it's full of these scenes. Just when you're getting into the movie for what it should be you get hit from some insanely idiotic scene that ruins it. Pancakes is the epitome of those scenes.
There are parts of Cabin Fever that I really enjoyed. I really did. The thing is that the stupid portions of the film overshadow what was actually good about it. I don't know if the filmmakers were afraid they would be called an Evil Dead rip off if they didn't do something different. I hate to sound like a fuddy duddy but different isn't always better. I was contemplating give this zero stars, but it still had those glimmers during the film and I feel generous. If you enjoy a nice C-grade horror film that will give you the WTF face then enjoy Cabin Fever. It may still have a bit of a pulse because of it.
Marmaduke follows in the in the fine traditions of comic strip films such as Garfield. Yes, it sucks. It really sucks. Drunken falls down a flight of stairs are more enjoyable than this horrible film. It's true. It's true.
The film is narrated by our title character Marmaduke (Owen Wilson). He's a big, pain in the ass dog. Wait! Owen Wilson in a movie about a big, pain in the ass dog? Never seen that one before. His family moves to California and Marmaduke hangs out at a dog park, becomes a big shot, falls, has a party, and ends up bringing everything together in the end.
Now dog movies are usually not good to begin with. Marmaduke takes the definition of bad and re creates it into something that was never intended by man or machine. I know it's a kids movie, but come on. The plot is just terrible. There is a surfing competition AND dogs playing a dancing video game. And where are all the other owners? The only people in this dog park appear to be Marmadukes owner and William H. Macy. Why did you do it William H. Macy!?!?! They have a garage filled with electronics equipment? It's seems as if they just took pieces of ideas and pasted them all together. With dung.
If you are into brainlessly staring at the screen for 88 minutes this is the film for you. Any film would be the film for you. In closing, it sucks.
Cemetery Junction is a coming of age tale that has this weird, slight hint of Stand By Me and another weird hint of A Clockwork Orange. Three friends (Tom Hughes, Christian Cooke, and Jack Doolan) cavort throughout a small English town raising hell and trying to get laid on a nightly basis. Each has a distinctly different personality: one is a rebel with a cause, namely rebelling against his fathers passiveness, another is obsessed with working a starting a future that has no future, and the third is the nerdy guy who can't compute around the female of the species. The thing about the three is that while each one of them is taking different paths they really don't know where they're going. They're basically identities that don't have an identity yet.
This is a well made film from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant that while it has some funny moments isn't really a comedy. There's some movie cliches in the film, but it's executed in a fresh way by the creators and the actors in the film. The message in the film outweighs some of the typical movie moments. A very good film from across the Atlantic.
Movies are filled with people who are pushed over the edge. They've been through one hell or another and finally, through some event beyond their control they ultimately snap. The good guy ends up doing bad things and the audience loves every minute of it. It can be done well, such as with The Outlaw Josey Wales or Death Wish. It can be done poorly as in *gulp* I Spit On Your Grave. Once again, another name goes on the list of movie characters that aren't going to take anymore shit.
Harry Brown stars Michael Caine as the title character who lives in a crime infested estate in London. Crime dictates life. It is something to be avoided in the neighborhood because when it gets right in your face it's never a pretty sight. Harry has just lost his wife to illness and his best friend (David Bradley) is murdered by thugs in a pedestrian walkway. The old adage rises: never cross a man who has nothing to lose. Harry begins to pick off the perpetrators in a professional, yet sadistic matter that he learned as a Royal Marine in Ireland. Inspector Frampton (Emily Mortimer) is the on Harry's trail, yet the support she gets is nil because, let's face it, Harry's an old man.
When you look at the basic plot of Harry Brown the first thing that will pop in your head is Death Wish 3. On the surface it is basically the same plot of a guy whose friend is killed by thugs and said guy does what he does best in eliminate the scum in the tenement. When you dig deeper than the trailers and the initial presumptions of the film the differences between the two become abundantly clear. Death Wish 3 is a comic book film where Charles Bronson is a perfect shot, a perfect killing machine with over the top villains and over the top weapons. Bronson, an aging man moves like a man in his thirties (not this man, but I digress). Harry Brown is a grittier film where our protagonist is flawed. Age has caught up with him and his ailments are his weaknesses. He's not perfect, but experience has allowed him to cruise out of a situation as opposed to being perfect all the time unless it helps forward the script. The thugs are kids who act like wild west gunman and the cops are just there except for Mortimer's character who is a righteous entity throughout the film.
Michael Caine delivers a great performance. Early in the film he exhibits his pain over the two deaths he has to deal with and the contemplation over what to do next. He never planned on any of this and shows what the character would be feeling at any given moment , including the cold, calculating bastion of vengeance as the film carries on. Yes, Caine is a bit old for a film of this sort, but he pulls it off perfectly because he doesn't try to be that vengeful gun slinger on earth. Just as Clint Eastwood did in Gran Torino, Caine understands that a man of his age has to know his limitation and shows them on screen.
I have been looking forward to seeing Harry Brown ever since seeing the initial trailers months ago, but never made it to theater because a foreign film never plays around here. Hell, The Departed on played here for a week and it was an Oscar winner. Harry Brown delivers as a film without being unrealistic and too preachy. A good action piece that actually features great acting and a plot that has been used before buy told from a point of view that is fresh on the screen.
I was looking at some trivia for Furry Vengeance and noticed that Steve Carell was attached to this film at one time, but stepped away to do something else. Steve, you are one lucky bastard. You missed out on what is easily on of the worst films of the year. This is a movie so awful it deserves to be sent to either the bottom of some sea trench, never to be seen again or shot into the sun, burned in amazing flames as it draws nearer and nearer. We can forget that this ever happened and gain something to watch that would be much more enjoyable than the film itself. If they handed out statues of just Oscar's ass then this would win top prize.
The plot: a developer (Brendan Fraser) heads out to the sticks to destroy a forest and replace it with a sub division. The animals get pissed and go to war, the end. Simple plot. Something we've seen before. How can you screw this up? Oh, ladies and gentlemen, you can screw this up. You can bathe it in toilet water. You can pour gasoline on it and pray that in some small way nature will do the rest so that you don't have that responsibility hanging over your head.
So how do you screw this up? This is a kids film? How can you blow a kids film? The way you screw up a film like this is the animals are not very approachable. You never root for the animals because they appear as sadistic as they act. Think about Bugs Bunny for a minute. He does some sick things to people, heinous things that would have him locked up with Hannibal Lecter and Paris Hilton. The thing is that he gets away with it because he's Bugs Bunny. He's likable. You can root for Bugs to cause Yosemite Sam to shoot himself in the head. The animals in Furry Vengeance do not have that going for them. They almost looked diseased in a way, like they're dead inside. Hell, maybe it's bad CGI but when you lose the audiences sympathy to the animals plight you might as well be making a You Tube video. It's a failure.
I wish that I could say that at least kids will like this one, but they don't. There are more interesting things for children available, like Civil War documentaries and watching the grass clippings turn brown. I started this film with five people and I was the only one left either in the room or awake by the earth shattering climax of this film. This is a crap film that is a pure, dismal failure. Enjoy.
Let's face it. The only redeeming thing about this film is what I can do with the title. "Hey, I'm writing a review about Group Sex!" "I saw Group Sex at the video store!" "I watched the Fonz and Tom Arnold involved in Group Sex!" Other than making cheesy sentences using the title like a 13 year old boy there is nothing really worth noting in Group Sex.
The first thing that should be a dead give away that a film is going to be crap is when you're watching the credits and see the name Tom Arnold on the screen. That belief holds true throughout this horrible film about a guy that sees a beautiful singer at a bar, stalks her to a group meeting for sex addicts. This is your typical recipe with out hero being a nice guy, his roommate who is a sex maniac, and all of the typical horned up people you would expect at a sex addicts support group, such as the fun with foods woman and while we're on the food topic, there's the chronic masterbater who uses everything from relish to white out to work his mojo. The problem is that it's not funny. There isn't one laugh in this film other than myself laughing because I saw this piece of shit for free. I feel bad for you suckers out there that actually paid to see this movie. This film is a waste of time and wear and tear on your viewing equipment. Let me just say that if this film was released on VHS I would leave it laying out in the car on a hot summer day to put it out of its misery. You can do better than this flick. Make a flip book out of a post it note pad or something. Stick people are more entertaining than this.
The Rizzo household is full of secrets. Vince (Andy Garcia) is out "playing poker", but he's actually too embarrassed to admit that he's taking an acting class. His wife Joyce (Julianna Margulies)thinks he's having an affair and lets it drive her crazy. Vince's daughter Vivian (Dominik Garcia-Lorido) is home from school on break, not alerting her parents that she had been suspended and was saving up for her tuition by stripping. Their son Vince, Jr. (Ezra Miller) is into looking at chicks on the internet. Sounds normal? Well, he likes looking at overweight girls being fed. Add on top of all this the con Tony (Steven Strait) that Vince brings home on an early release that he feels is his duty due to something way back in his past. You know that this many secrets are going to unravel at some point.
The other star in the film is City Island itself, a small fishing village that sits between Manhattan and the Bronx.It's like Martha's Vineyard between these two great seas of humanity. You get a closed in feeling as the characters keep running into each other, almost spilling the secretes each one bears. The cast is particularly good with Andy Garcia deliver one of his best performances in years (yes, better than Pink Panther 2) playing the prison guard/struggling actor. City Island is another one of those ensemble comedies that hinges on its cast. The cast in one of these films can either make or break it and City Island scores because of its cast and a nice little story that isn't preachy, isn't too ridiculous, and can be moving at times without being a total sap fest. It's one of those little films out there that outshines the schlock Hollywood is deliver in brown paper bags every Friday.
Let's journey back 25 years ago. It's an era where every action movie had a (insert geographic location here) dictator was ruthlessly dictating people who couldn't defend themselves. So it came down to big, muscular good guys to swoop down there and kick the living hell out of the dictator and his cronies. What would follow is an orgy of violence and mayhem for about an hour and forty minutes the likes you had never seen before. Aah, those were the days.
Now we'll return to today and a film called The Expendables that returns to those glorious days of yesteryear in which small, forgotten countries who have become overrun with political failures and ruthless governing are once again getting their ass kicked. The main difference is that instead of one guy, as was the case in the 1980's, you have a team of bad asses. The Expendables are led by Barney Ross (played by '80's one man army Sylvester Stallone). They're mercenaries that pull off jobs for the bread, if the bread is right. The remainder of the team is filled out with an action film who's who: Jason Stratham, Jet Li, Steve Austin, the legendary Dolph Lundgdren, and who can forget the cameos by Bruce Willis and a certain governator we know from back in those days. They're main objective is to take out a third world dictator (David Zayas) and the agency man that controls this puppet (Eric Roberts). Explosions ensue.
The Expendables is not going to be up for any Oscars or Golden Globes or anything like that. It's an action piece- an old school action piece that has very little in the way of plot, yet is entertaining as hell. It's nice to get an action film in this day that doesn't involve either a gimmick or some kind of plot twist during the film. Every '80's action movie film cliche is in this movie so you won't be surprised if you have ever spent any time wading through that decade. This is a movie that doesn't make you think, it's a movie that will mesmerize you like an infant with its loud noises and numerous colors and explosions. It is an orgy of violence. I've used that term to describe A Clockwork Orange, so let me elaborate. Clockwork uses violence like a surgeon uses a scalpel, perfectly placed where needed. This film uses it like making a margarita in a blender- just hit the button and let it be.
So while it's not the greatest film out there The Expendables is a nice piece of entertainment that succeeds in what it promises to deliver. No more and no less.
