Prometheus

Prometheus is a sort of maybe prequel to the Alien saga.  The creators hedged their bets and sort of made it somewhat of a reboot as well so that no one can really yell at them for not being slavish to the original series.  They could and did yell at them for asking questions and not answering them.  That doesn't bother me so much.  What bothers me is that it pretends to be an intelligent and thoughtful film but it has a crew vastly unable to face up to the dramatic challenge of the piece.

First the good news.  This is a beautiful film.  Even when it is on an ass ugly piece of rock, it is just shot so perfect that it carries an unearthly beauty.  The futuristic designs are beautiful and it's a good  thing this is something of a reboot because it would be hard to believe that the computers in "Alien" were suppose to be made after this, though to be fair maybe that's like saying a truck doesn't have the classic lines of a '56 Ford.  Something to think about.

So, a bunch of ancient civilizations have a picture of some dots.   Two ardent scientists figure that dots equal starmap equal invitation by aliens that obviously created us and not just came by for tea.  That is a LOT of assumptions to be the basis of a trillion dollar expedition.  I want to see these two write a grant!  Also, they assume that all languages come from one base and that base is what the aliens (called Engineers) speak and  that THEIR language hasn't changed at all in 35,000 years and that their handsome android can figure from our languages what this root tongue is, learn it and speak it like a pro.

Me?  I'd put stock in some rail guns and roses.  Only way to be sure.

So they find the rock get down and find that there is some weird installation there is black slime in a can.  Black slime is bad, really really bad.  It infects some people, makes little snakes that slide into people, give other people surprises, and just seems to do whatever the screen writers want to make you jump at that moment.  Now here is where the crew falls down.  First there are like three different agendas.  There is the ardent scientist camp that is there for pure science.  Then there is the merc crew of scientists and support personal who don't seem to give two damns and a fig.  Then there is the android wonderfully played by Michael Fassbender and the Suit in a dress played coldly by Charlize Theron who represent the company, the money and the madness behind the expedition.  Now those two I don't have a problem with since they dramatic purpose, but really for a trillion dollars, A TRILLION DOLLARS, expedition can't you find a better crew than apathetic pot smoking in their space suit idiots?  This isn't the equivalent of a space truck being waylaid by some beacon.  This was supposedly a PLANNED affair.  Maybe I wouldn't have minded so much if they were 10% more interesting as people but on the whole they are just blanks with props being manipulated by the screen writers. 

As to the Engineers.  Our example, isn't a stellar example of alien intelligence.  Actually in looks and actions he reminds me of the original carrot monster in "The Thing."  Maybe we should give a bit of lee way, I'm sure being  frozen for thousands of years can't be good for you or your attitude.  Still it says a lot that we root for the vagina squid over our supposed creators. 

Difinitely worth a watch and I'd love to see them do a sequel to address the question of the Engineer's relationship to the Predators.  That could be very interesting indeed.

Battleship

Battleship deserved to fail not on its merits but from its genesis.  Once again we have a serviceable idea taken to an extreme where it becomes both a joke and an insult.  Now I generally loath the "Transformers" movies but it was based on a solid idea; let's take a bit of childhood nostalgia and update it and bring it to the screen as a blockbuster.  Unfortunately, someone misread that simple concept as "toys" and then decided well if "toys" work why not games.  So a host of boardgames from Candyland to Batttleship was sold (prostituted) to the screen.  Halfway through the process various people behind the scenes suddenly became awarre they were doing something inanely stupid.  Unfortunately, their attempts at sanity did nothing but add to the costs of the production.  Finally, when Battleship came out it had a pricetag supposedly around two hundred million dollars, like "John Carter," and like that film it failed at the box office by only doing medium business for a Tiffany bill.

The strange thing is that it wasn't that bad of a film.  Oh, it's no great shakes even by blockbuster standards but I liked it better than the last two "Transformers" movies.  I think what happened that the concept was so silly that those making the movie basically ignored it and did what they wanted which some how slipped under the studio radar.  The plot has that maverick character who's about to get drummed out of the navy given his big chance to be the hero.  In this case it is because spiny bearded aliens land near Hawaii and set up a force field as they try to get reenforcements.  First using a destroyer and then and old navy battle ship our hero must stop these high tech party poopers.

Now I said this isn't great shakes.  The script is cliche-o-rama ville.  The science is bupkiss.  For instance no way our radio signal would reach theirr planet for at least decades if not centuries.  Also the alien weapons are surprisingly badly aimed.  We do better with our drones.  On the other hand the cast is game and enthusiastic.  The action is clearly done and you can understand what's happening unlike the Transformers movie which fall into just ugly CGI.  The aliens are visually well realized though they admittedly look similar to the aliens in "The Avengers."

Truly if this film was budgeted at say a realistic sixty million dollars it would have been considered something of a hit.  A lesson my friends of what happens when one's mouth is far bigger than one's hands.

Garvity Falls

I love this cartoon. It has the vibe of "Eerie Indiana" and a teen "X-Files."  Brother and sister Dipper and Mabel find themselves with their Uncle Stan who runs a gift shop at Gravity Falls.  It seems to be one of those places where all the weirdness in the universe collides and the kids try to keep up.

It's just fun.  There's some real wit here.  I love the characters.  The animation is simple but lovely and fluid.  This is certainly the sort of cartoon I'd have my kids watching.... at least til there are reruns of "Animaniacs."

Detention

Ok, sometimes you just have to get slapped in the face with the proverbial fish to get out of a funk.  This month has been rather lacking in films of the OMG variety.  There's been some nice films to be sure, but sometimes you aren't in the mood for nice.  You want the extreme, you want the crazy, you want a film that will fish slap you silly.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you..... "Detention."

This is just brilliant.  The creators must have watched every teen film from "The Breakfast Club," to "Heathers."  Then they watched every slasher film, and then topped it off with "The Back to the Future" films.  Then I am fairly sure they took more than their share of drugs and probably my share and the state of Kansas' as well.  Then after they woke up from their coma they went and made this film.

To talk about the plot really wouldn't convey just how crazed this film is.  Let's just say it does involve the following:  detention, prom, slasher, explosions, datings dos and don't, and a stuffed time travelling bear.  Every film should have one of those.  The amazing thing is that they managed to be so original while uprooting whole scenes from other films.  You will be watching and you'll just about say "Hey that's from "The Breakfast Club."  Before you can finish your thought though you get fish slapped with something just from the left field of absurdia.

Definitely go see this, and bring friends.  Bring strangers.  Bring strange friends!

Broken Blade

A fairly standard anime mecha series that is well animated and has some nice things going for it.  Sometime in the future humans can control quartz mentally.  From this odd little skill a whole new  technology is formed that they call magic.  Using flexible alloys peppered with quartz they've created mecha robots.  Our hero is genetically incapable of manipulating quartz so he can't use all this cool technology.  They do find out that he's the only that can control the incredibly ancient mecha that they found so he becomes the typically reluctant pacifist hero often seen in anime.  He only fights because he has personal feelings for the royal family and if they lose they will be executed.  Things are further complicated by having a friend on the other side and a team mate he doesn't trust because he's three gallons crazy in a two gallon bucket.  The series itself does a good job in humanizing characters on all side of the conflict and there are various side plots to keep things interesting.

The animation is good and smooth.  The story, while nothing special, moves along well.  If there is any problem it is that there is some unneeded "fan service."  Really we don't need scenes like, "excuse me if I take off my clothes before we eat dinner."  It just dumbs everything down.  Other than that it's a perfectly fine mecha anime.

Redshirts by John Scalzi

"Redshirts" is an excellent, thoughtful and funny novel. It's based on the old saw that in "Star Trek" if you were wearing a red shirt and was next to the Captain on some planet you were going to buy the farm. On the good ship Intrepid a bunch of new ensigns are confused and puzzle by the crew's reaction to senior staff and away trips. Soon they figure out that it's not just certain death that awaits them but a certain, stupid death.

The genius of Redshirts is not that the characters find themselves in television show but that they are in a badly written science fiction show with horrid pseudo science.  Also they aren't always "on" that is they are controlled only when they are in an episode.  When that's not happening they are free to act as they will.  This freedom gives them hope.  First they must understand the rules (even if they are dumb rules) and then try to figure out a way to leverage them to their advantage.  Scalzi is very intelligent in dealing with stupid situations and his characters work out a way to attack the source of the problem.

This is a fun quick read two thirds of the way then something special happens.  The novel becomes a more emotional read as it goes through three endings or codas.  In each characters deal with the philosophical implications of what happened.  It was definitely a surprise change of tone but it really worked and made what have just would have been a romp into something a tad more deeper.

Definitely read it!

John Carter

So is John Carter, which has been called the biggest flop of the year, worth viewing to anyone interested in science fiction? I can say truthfully that the answer is "Yes," and "Hell Yes." So if its good why did it flop. Good question, first let me be honest this a good film but not top tier. No one is going to list it in the ten best films category. So it doesn't have that extra umph it really needed to overcome it's biggest hurdle. See John Carter is only a flop by degree. It has a budget of two hundred and fifty million dollars. Now Hollywood math is flexible and strange (specially if you are waiting for you money it's amazing how many popular films don't make a profit on paper at any rate), but by most estimates John Carter needed about seven hundred million to break even. By those novel the regular size box office of John Carter was like spitting into the grand canyon.

The big reason though why it failed is that the folks in the front office didn't know what to do with it. You can see this in the title snafu. First they decided that the original title "A Princess of Mars," wouldn't work because "Princess" is too girlie and they needed that all male action movie demographic. So then they went with "John Carter, Warlord of Mars." A decent title. It tells you who the hero is, what he is doing and where he's doing it. But then the front office remembered that last year's biggest flop was "Mars Needs Moms." It's obvious that people don't like Mars. So that's when they cut it down to "John Carter." Why they didn't choose "The Warlord," I'll never know. At least that has some excitement to it.

At any rate, you can see they had no idea what to do. In Hollywood when this happens you do two things: desperation advertising and pretending the film doesn't exist and waiting for the heads to roll.  Amazingly, though going in two different directions, both strategies are often used at the same time.  All this gives the whiff of the stinkeroo and that's blood in the water to film critics.  So the film gets released and the story is how bad it is failing not whether the film is good or bad.  The heads do roll, and then Disney dumps it into DVD faster than it takes type this sentence.  Now that we are done with all this business chit chat let's actually talk about the movie.

I can say I enjoyed it from it's third beginning.  Yes this film starts with three beginnings which is never a good idea.  The first beginning takes place on Mars/Barsoom and we instantly get a narrator going on about how this is not the Mars you know.  Frankly, we don't need this, I believe the audiences are smart enough to figure they are on another planet and, for those who don't read reviews or anything, there's no NEED for them to know they are on Mars.  Save it for a nice surprise.  That aside we are in the middle of a thrilling air battle.  The air ships of Mars are beautiful and alien but not so alien that the audience can't suss out the structure like the steering wheel.  One fellow is clearly beating on everyone else and so three bald dudes pop by and give him a super weapon that gives a pretty blue glow that makes your enemies go away.  They strongly hint he should use the super weapon to take over what's left of Mars.  Now here is where the title of "The Warlord" would have really worked.  Audiences might ask themselves is he the Warlord?  Keep 'em guessing I say.

The second beginning is back on Earth and has a young Edgar Rice Burroughs (here throughout now ERB) taking his inheritence of the John Carter estate.  Now I know in the books ERB used this structure to tell the story of John Carter, but here we didn't need it.  I know they wanted to set up what a mystery man John Carter was going everywhere digging up strange artifacts but it's totally a wrong move here.  This is not something we need to know about John Carter now, that he later in life was doing a little Indiana Jones action.  We specially don't need to know this because it is something of a spoiler.  Not only do we know now that John Carter survived his Martian adventures but that he came back to Earth.  This is information that should have been saved for the end of the film.  Have ERB show up at the end to receive Carter's journal and we the audience knows that his story will be spread.

Now finally we get to the good stuff.  John Carter in little over ten minutes fights off robbing bullies, tries to escape from the US Calvary four times and tries to stop a battle between Native Americans and said Calvary.  We also get a flashback that shows he's lost his wife and family.  What we get here is that John Carter is very much of a reluctant warrior, but when he has to he can get the job done.  He's smart, agile, good with a gun, and is still emotionally vulnerable.  Despite not wanting to deal with people he will still when he has to do the good thing.  These are very important things to know about our main character and the ease to which we slip into his world is just gratifying.

Once this is done he finds a mysterious cave.  Inside he must have accidentally set off some alarm because one of the bald guys from beginning number one pops in and manages to do an "O" face and attacks John.  Bad move, one baldy dead but not before he manages to activate the teleporter.  Boomo my friends John meet Mars, Mars meet John.  It's not a good meeting at first because John can't figure out why every time he takes a step he throws himself ten feet into the air.  Eventually he gets the hang of it and discovers he's Mar's version of early Superman.  He can leap incredible distances and is strong.  Good thing he finds all this out before the Green Martians capture him.

The Green Martians are in ERB's term a "savage" race.  You can't argue that point as they shoot their own young who aren't strong enough.  After seeing John's leaping the leader claims him as his own.  He's treated half slave and half as a young one and he begins to get an understanding of where he is.  The Green Martians are pretty interesting both visually and culturally.  I love when the two males literally lock horns when they have a conflict. 

At this point the plots all converge when an over head battle between the Red Martians (who look human but lays egg) introduce John Carter to the once titular Princess and the Warlord wanna be with the blue ray.  It's a stirring battle and it was fun watching the Green Martians betting on the outcome since they don't believe the battle concerns them.

Now the rest of the film you can basically guess.  There's a romantic chemistry between the smart, gutsy Princess and John Carter.  But this has to be on hold since first they have to figure out 1) how did John Carter get here, 2) who are the Bald dudes, 3) how to stop the blue ray warlord from taking over Mars.  The rest of the film has some stirring battles, a lot of good action scenes, some incredible visuals.  It's just fun to watch.  So go watch it!

Descendents

Well here's a nice change of pace.  This is a zombie apocalypse that tries to be a little different.  The zombies are everywhere and the zombie virus responsible is even worse than usual.  It's air borne so anyone not wearing breathing equipment zombs out fairly quickly.  Well....not everyone.  Some young kids develop and immunity to the virus.  They can be spotted because of bloody slits on their necks.  Even better there is something about these kids so that full fledge zombies won't attack them.  This becomes something of a super power as the military first tries to capture and test the kids and then later try to kill them.  It helps your odds of survival if you can lead the armed men running after you into a zombie ambush.

Our little heroine is one of these special children.  The film goes backwards and forwards telling her tale.  Backwards showing what happened to her mother and her being captured by doctors for testing.  The forward part is her alone trying to survive.  She finds other children like her and together they all go to the sea because that is where her mother will be.  The film itself is mostly desaturated so it looks mostly black and white except for blood.

Over all its a pretty good film that tries just a bit too hard to be arty.  I mean really the whole "Let's use children to show that war really, really sucks" has been played out for years.  Still, it's suspensful and surprising, specially the ending.  I won't give it away save that it invokes a certain "Lovecraftian" perspective.

Rock And Rule

When I was in college we would on occassion take on a midnight movie. Besides "Rocky Horror," the one that got the most replay was "Heavy Metal." Heavy Metal was a deeply flawed film. It has all the story telling sense of a pithed hamster. But it has four things that made it fun. 1) It was a cartoon with boobies. 2) It had John Candy. 3) It had awesome music. 4) It dropped a car from space and that invalidates all other arguments.

It's a shame that I wasn't introduced to "Rock and Rule," at that time it would have made an interesting battle of the movies to see the two films back to back. Both try to be more adult animation, both are infused by the spirit of rock and roll, and both have a inbuilt cult feel. Rock and Rule is better at story telling but I think its not as strong musically. Both have problems with characters and pacing. I liked the animation of Rock and Rule a bit better. So really it would be a close call except Rock and Rule did not drop a car from space. Sorry Charlie.

The Story takes place in the deep future. Like in "Wizards" mankind has killed himself off. The Earth is now the home of mutated cats, dogs and rats. This works real well cause the studio that made this film is Nelvana and funny animals is sort of their house style. In this world there is Mok who may be an animal but certainly isn't funny. Mok is the world's greatest rocker but that's not enough for him. He's studied real magic and now he's getting ready to release the mother of all demons. All he needs is a special voice.

That voice belongs to Angel (singing voice from Deborah Harry) who's in a local band with annoying boyfriend Omar and two dweebs. Omar and Angel are always fighting over who's song should be song. Mylar the rat tries to horn in as their manager when he gets wind of Mok's interest but he's easily blown away. Omar is not so easy and has to have his mind screwed with with magic holograms to get him and his posse out of the way. That just leaves Angel, Mok and Mok's goon who are basically Beagle boys on skates to go to Nuke York City and raise up a demon.

It's this section where you can really see Nelvana is trying hard with this picture. The back grounds are great and the animation has a great fluidity. The Character designs are strong, specially Mok who has some of that beautiful ugliness of Mick Jagger mixed in with a sphinx. The story is a bit of a hack and the main characters are either no personality (Angel) or completely insufferable (Omar). Not surprisingly from a company that dealt more with comedy the best characters are the comic ones. The Beagle boys and Omar's posse are both just great fun.

The second part sort of wanders a bit. It tries to be a little darker as they are trying to be an adult animation. The film couldn't bring itself to do the full monty, and it is really an afront that the majority of panty shots come from Cinderella the Beagle boy's "little" sister. It's like looking at panties on a linebacker. Despite that Cindy is a great character and oddly reminds me a lot of Harley Quinn. I kept almost waiting for a Mr. J shout out. Meanwhile Omar and the gang are trying to find Angel. Angel tries to escape. Mok screws with all their heads giving Omar a magical lobotomy and sending him on his smiley way.

Good thing that. Turns out demon raising isn't so easy and much of Nuke York is destroyed. Never a quitter though Mok figures he just needs to get more power and so goes back to his home town which has power to spare. His computer also warns that a true song and a true heart can reverse the summoning but no ONE can sing it. Not knowing an loop hole when he hears one Mok blows his computer off and starts the grand summoning. This somehow brings the boys back from lala ville so they all go to save Angel. Now I have to say I'm quite impressed with the demon raising. It's sort of like seeing the hello kitty people do their best to show Cthulhu. So turns out when Omar and Angel sing together they can put a lid on the super demon and Mok and most everyone lives happily ever after.

But they still didn't drop a car from space.
Dammit.

Chronicle

This is a pretty durn good film.  I had my doubts at first.  It follows the "Found Footage" blueprint which means lots of shaky cam and ugly jump cuts.  Despite that, it turned into what is as close to what an American Akira would look like.

Three teens find a mysterious hole.  They explore it and find a glowy.  They touch the glowy and everything goes shaky and stumply then black.  Cut to some time later and it turns out that the three teens have been gifted with telekinesis.  At first it's only good for small things and You Tube style "funny" videos.  But like working out your muscles they begin to get quickly very scary in what they can do.  The scariest is the quiet one who's under a lot of pressure with a dying mother and abusive father.  Not only is he the strongest, but he begins to get out of control.  They try to take care of this by making up rules, but you can tell where this is going to go.  Eventually it turns into a full scale battle in Seattle with people throwing buses at each other.

This is a great exciting film with many good "Small" scenes as well big budget numbers.  I like the scene where the loner kid first shows how good he is by turning a bunch of legos into the Space Needle.  I also loved the scene where the kids teach themselves how to fly.  Their honest exhileration is just too contageous and soon you are mentally egging them on to fly higher and faster.  Definitely worth a watch.

Torchwood: Children of Earth

Torchwood is a spinoff of the current incarnation of Dr. Who.  It basically answers the question of what do Earthlings do with aliens when the Doctor is out being charming and odd in some other corner of the galaxy.  They act along the same lines as the Men In Black but with less sass and jokes.  The head member is Captain Jack who is a curious figure.  He's basically the literalization of the metaphorical qualities of Captain Kirk.  Whereas it only seems that Kirk was unkillable our Captain Jack really can't die.  While some might say that Captain Kirk would sleep with anything Captain Jack puts it into policy.  Gender is not an issue.

Captain Jack's immortality is put the test in "The Children of Earth."  An alien race known only as the "456" have somehow managed to take control of the world's children.  First they show off their power and have the kids stand around saying all at the same time, "We are coming back."  Thing is the 456 have been here before and had a deal with the British government.  The British government realizes that with every kid intoning "We are coming back," certain embarrassing questions are going to be asked.  So they decide t o tidy things up.  One of those things is Captain Jack.  So, the one organization that is specifically good at dealing with aliens is being destroyed by its own government.  

When the 456 do finally come they certain add even more fun to the party.  They have simple terms; give them ten percent of the world's children and they'll go away, or else.  In this case, "or else" means human extinction.  Now we are taught to believe our leaders wouldn't kowtow to the likes of the 456, but this series takes a really dark road.  Not only do they consider it, but they try to figure out how to make it work for them.  Their plan is that the 456 want quantity not quality, so why not give them all the poor, badly educated kids.  Less hooligans to worry about in the future.  Can Captain Jack and company save the Earth from itself?  What is Captain Jack's involvement in the first visit of the 456?  What price will he pay to fix  things? 

Definitely watch and find out.  This is a fine science fiction mini series.  The character of Captain Jack is fascinating, you know he's the type that hears his own theme song in his head.  But below that there's some deep pain as Captain Jack is already suffering from Immortal's Lament (the condition where you know everyone you love you are going to watch die.  The 456 are amazing aliens.  We don't see much of them, but that adds to the mystery.  Trying to talk with them is like waltzing in a mine field.  The ambassador will ask a simple question like, "Is quarters to your liking."  Silence.  Silence.  Then suddenly an animal screaming and the glass walls are attacked by heads (?) stingers (?) and green slime is every where.  Then more silence then finally a Hal voice will say from speakers, "Yes, we find it....good."

The Mutant Beast (AKA The Milpitas Monster)

Now if you must see a bad film, this is the type you should support.  Made somewhere between 1974 and 76, this is truly a labor of love.  It was made originally my Milpitas high school students (Milpitas is a small town about an hour away from San Francisco) and then the whole town took up the banner.  If you live in Milpitas you will see a lot of local personalities from radio and TV.  Even if you've never been there, the love for the town comes through.  Specially in the beginning narrated section. 

The story is basically a giant monster story.  Pollution has caused something (never clear what it was) to mutate into a giant moth man with what looks like a gas mask.  The special effects are bad, but by high school standards are what you would expect.  The acting is bad but energetic and enthusiastic.  Everyone is thrilled for their one minute of fame.  There's nothing new here, but the whole thing flows fast so all in all by bad film standards it's positively painless.

American Warships

Oh Syfy, syfy syfy.....
sigh.....
Look it's not even that "Battleship" had a chance in hell of being a good film.  It was a lazy film that ripped of all the rotten parts of the "Transformers" series like pack of hyenas on crack.  So did you and the Asylum have to go and rip off the bad parts of "Battleship?"  Is this the new auto-cannibalism of Hollywood today?

Anyway, look if you've seen the preview for "Battleship," you basically know the plot for the underwear stain.  An old warship is chugging around when there's a sudden attack that knocks out the electrical equipment of all the other ships and planes.  So now our only hope is Mario Van Peebles on an old ship looking for invisible alien ships.

By the way.  The special (ha!) effects can barely handlle INVISIBLE ships.  Think about that, let it set in.  Ok, then they have to do aliens.  Oh lord, they are the worst CGI I've seen.  Clunky and confusing and yet meaningless...oh wait I was just describing the acting. 

Sigh....

Assault Girls

Nice title.  Sounds exciting.
It.
Was.
Not.
There's some interesting things here.  It plays sort of like "The Matrix" except with no real stakes.  In the future there's a boring narrator who's way to into the different economic systems of the 20th century.  The upshot is folks now live in substainable misery and now play a game in a virtual world to make life better.  The world doesn't look all that better though.  It's basic desert on desert with sand wormy things armed with rockets.  Hooo ray.

Our unlikely, and unlikeable, band of heroes are coax together by some overarching dungeon master and together they learn to work together.  Each character looks cool and has a cool code name.  Unfortunately they are as dull as ditch water.  Seriously, they should be called the novacaine mob.

So we have a very pretty movie that's essentially about nothing starring folks we couldn't give a tinker's cuss about, and around here boyos we take our tinker's cuss purty durn serious.  So if you like Japanese films or a rabid sf fan well it might give you some costume ideas for the next con.

The Divide

Michael Biehn has always been a better actor than he's been given credit for, and certainly deserved more successes in his career.  He shines here as a loner who has made his own bomb shelter in the basement of an apartment building in "The Divide."

Someone, we never learn who, has shot a nuclear bomb into the city and a small group of apartment dwellers manage to force their way into Biehn's shelter.  He's not a gracious host but he gives them food and shelter which is actually pretty decent given circumstances.  Unfortunately, circumstances go from bad to worse.  Soldiers come but they have no interest in rescue and after a fire fight they actually weld the iron door to the shelter shut.  Now we get some serious cabin fever going on and as food runs low you can guess that the milk of human kindness runs dry.

This is not an easy film to watch.  I'm an optimist and I like to think in the worst of times that people would work together so it hurts seeing people becoming bestial.  On the other hand the acting is good and the story never flags so its compelling viewing.

Nazis at the Center of the Earth

We've talked about the Asylum before. A company bucking for both the consistently worse film company today and the film company that most consistently considers its viewers to be morons.  Both of these honors are combined in their strategy of "mockbusters" where they make a rip off of a film and release it direct to DVD while the film is still playing so some grandma gets confused and thinks "The Transmorphers" is "The Transformer." 

Basically, they are professional ass holes.

Every now and then though every doggy has its day.  Now I'm not saying "Nazis at the Center of the Earth," is a good film.  Please, this is the Asylum.  It is herky jerky with film production values that would shame a porno set.  What this film is, is fairly audacious and interesting.  That goes along way when you are picking through the bone yard of bad films.

First off we have Jake Busey, the heir to Busey line of bug eyed, buck teeth craziness.  He's a little restrained here, but it actually works for him here.  The Nazis are good villains here, living under the ice of Antartica.  They've been doing a lot of body swapping surgery so they look like frankenstein/zombie/nazis and that's only to the good.  Things get good and crazy when super Hitler Head in a Jar (which should be trademarked) pops out and starts doing speeches and ripping people in two with his retro robot body.  Oh, and then there is the nazi saucer that pops up in the last act.

Best line of the show:

Air Control:  "Are they hostile?"
Pilot:  It's covered in swastikas, so I'd say they're hostile!"

Anyway, if you are willing to put up with some nonsense and a bit of a slow early pace, you will be rewarded by some massive weirdness.  That's about the best you can hope for here so enjoy it if you can.  No doubt the Asylum already has "The Revengers" ready to go into the red box on May 4th.

Yakuza Weapon

Well this is another one of those Japanese are weird shows.  It's the type of show that when someone gets offed while talking on the phone pink gore splashes the listeners half a town away.  Now that's 4g!  Directed by the same insane fellow who did "Versus," "Tokyo Gore Police," and "Mutant Girl Squad."  Normal is not in this man's vocabulary. 

The Yakuza are basically the Japanese mafia.  They tend to run things by being rude and loud.  Which tends to screw with typical Japanese person's sense of civility.  When they have to, they can also get violent specially among each other.  Generally if you see a guy in loud clothes, covered in tattoos and swaggering like a drunken samurai you are probably looking at some low level Yakuza goon.

Our story involves the crazy son of one of the heads of Yakuza family.  He's raw and rude and so father basically told him to get out of town.  So we see sonny boy having fun in a war zone with some of his friends/toadies.  A government agent comes by and tells him daddy is dead.  Son of course wants vengeance even if Daddy was a son of a bitch so he comes back to Tokyo.  There he finds there's a new head of the Yakuza who ordered Daddy dead and is three shades of slime.  He also meets the girl he had promised to marry and forgot about doing a "Blues Brothers' retreat."  She's not so easily cowed and hits him with a boat and puts the moves on him till she is kidnapped by slimey and forced to wear a Japanese school girl uniform.

This is basically the half time show and it's brilliant.  The villain has put a fighter on each of the 38 levels of his building between the main lobby and him.  No way this kid can beat them all.  In a serious case of mad lateral thinking though our hero takes a page from Wile E. Coyote and uses enough dynamite sticks to wipe out the 38 levels between them.  Beating a hasty retreat our villain takes out our hero with a gunship.  Luckily the government agent is around and they can rebuild him.  They can make him louder, ruder, and more obnoxious than ever.  He's now cyber Yakuza.

The rest is insane gun play at level 12.  It's certainly not a perfect film, but it moves in such a blur that it's hard not to get carried away by it.  Certainly fun for any person that values weird cinema.

In Time

So some genius figures out how to stop human aging at age 25. So now every human is potentially immortal. The problem of course is potential over population. So maybe we should give everyone the snip when their born. Let the state control the amount of new babies each year. Problem with that is that it is so against our natures that there would be instant revolt. What is needed is some system where it seems that every sucker has a chance. Oh sure there would still be grumbling, but hope (even if a faint hope) should mitigate it. What is needed then is to turn life into a currency and life is time.

That is the world of "In Time." If you are a down and outer like Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) you might be lucky to have a day left on the timer on your arm. Better go to work and earn more hours, or if the timer zeros out you die. Trouble is prices keep rising. A cup of coffee costs an hour today but two hours tomorrow. If you are rich you can have a century on your arm and live practically forever.

If you want to.

One night after work Will meets a man with a century on his arm in a place where people get killed for hours. The man knows this. He wants to die. Will saves him anyway and in return as Will sleeps the man gave him all his time. Of course now he has the same trouble of having a century in an hour world. He tries to help his friends and family and then he goes to rich people world. He wants to do good with his time, but at first he doesn't have a plan. He does have a pursuer. Timekeepers are basically cops and they aren't buying that someone just happened to give him a century.

It all builds up into a rich drama with a nice science fiction background. Director and writer Andrew Niccol does a phenomenal job here. This is exciting, thought provoking and just a really good film. Definitely worth a watch for those who want something a little more than a popcorn muncher.

Carnasaur

No doubt you've seen Carnasaur if you are a horror fan.  You probably also blotted out the memory of it, or at least you probably should.  It was Roger Corman's stab at all that good Jurassic Park money.  No doubt a good and noble cause, but the script went completely off the trolly tracks and the film itself is dark, dank, and slow.

Basically a crazy doctor is working in a chicken farm.  Well, that's natural.  She loves dinosaurs.  I mean really, really loves them.   She hates people.  So naturally she plans to release a virus that will cause women to give birth to dinosaurs.  Already a little dino is out and growing fast.  People get eaten.  People walk around.  People get eaten.  People look concern.  And Corman gets a check. 

I can't even get up the energy to want to remake this sucker.  It's just bad in a bag.  Besides being boring it's just hard to watch.  Not for violence or anything like that but there is just a dour mood to the whole affair.  Weirdly it was the feeling I was getting in "Redneck Zombies" in its weirder sections.

Attack of the Giant Monsters

In the nineties they went and remade the Gamera series to great success.  It's hard to believe the mileage you can get from a giant, flame throwing turtle but there you go.  Still as good as the later films are, they don't have the incredible fun badness of the original Gamera films.  Attack of the Giant Monsters AKA Gamera Vs. Gyaos which is the very best of a very bad lot.

After a series of volcanic eruptions Gamera returns to Japan to sup up on good ol' geo thermal energy (Gamera is green dudes!)  Kid in short pants everywhere in Japan are happy that their favorite mascoto is back.  Scientists being scientists want to prod so they go in a toy helicopter to see what they can see.  They are surprised though when a volcano throws energy beams at them splitting the copter in two.  No worries, no one seems to care much.

Meanawhile, a road is being built dang it.  It will be built whether there are volcanic eruptions, or giant turtles dang it.  So it is willed in Tokyo.  So the guy on site and his two boobs get to work.  Farmers though are hating.  So they say you no build the road unless we get maximum green.  Greedy farmers.  Short pants kid doesn't care and would rather explore the strange green glow in the mountains.  He is joined by a less than heroic journalist.  There they discover Gyaos. 

Gyaos is like a big bat.  A big bat with an old fashion iron for a head.  A big bat that shoots out laser like beams.  A big bat that eats little journalists.  Bye journalist.  You won't be missed.  Gamera though pops up before Gyaos can eat the kid.  Gyaos doesn't like Gamera's fire but has a built in fire extinguisher system.  Gamera doesn't have an anti laser system.  Gamera loses in a really bloody fight.

Luckily scientist listen to Short Pants Kid who knows EVERYTHING about monsters.  Turns out that Gyaos likes long walks in the park, drinking blood, but doesn't like the sun.  With these facts in hand they come up with the silliest trap invented since the days of scooby doo.  They fill a big (REALLY BIG) bowl full of blood and put it on a merry go round.  They hope to make Gyaos too dizzy to fly.

Luckily Gamera heals himself and comes back and kicks Gyaos butt.  The farmers and the road crew become friends.  Everyone loves the Short Pants Kid.  Scientists are smug.  The world is good.  A perfect Gamera film.