The days of Siegfried is at an end....

I've decided to move on to a more professional blog. Blogspot was always temporary, and now I've got my own domain with a nice and lean Wordpress blog. You can now find me at mattgronke.com. The blog format will stay the same, but I'm abandoning the moniker of Siegfried. Farewell!

Looking for suggestions....

If anyone knows of any interesting or provocative films out there, I'm looking. I'm feeling stagnant at the moment, and I need to write about a film that catches my eye.

Bonus points for films that are available for free online (not pirate, but freely distributed) or streaming on Netflix Instant Watch.

Retrograde

Retrograde is an awful film starring Dolph Lundgren. Dolph, seeming to be barely conscious throughout the film, stars as John Foster, a man from the 24th century sent into the past to stop a horrible virus from eradicating humanity. See, what happened was this horrible virus eradicated most of humanity, but somehow, civilization, even while battling off the worst plague in the history of mankind, was able to advance themselves enough to invent not just spaceships but time-traveling spaceships as well. Foster takes advantage of this technology to travel back in time to the turn of the 21st century. While he's there, some other guys who went back in time with him change their mind about wanting to save humanity, and instead they decide to have some vague goal about "controlling the past to control the future." They try to kill Foster.

While avoiding bullets from futuristic guns, Foster meets up with the crew of a research ship in Antarctica. See, the research ship was the original discoverers of the plague, and Foster is apparently supposed to stop them or blow them up or something. Anyway, he becomes friends with the crew, and together they plan to stop the bad guys that flew in with Foster from doing whatever they were planning on doing. Somewhere in here there's something about a virus, but I think the filmmaker forgot to include it.

There are some pretend fight scenes, some awful sound effects, and some really bad space CGI. Also, the following exchange (which actually occured in the film), which I believe mirrors the conversation between the producer and the director after they looked at their finished product:

Man #1: "Oh my god..."

Man #2: "Months of work.... fucked."

It appears I took a leave of absence.

It's over now. Updates will resume tomorrow.

Street Figher: The Legend of Chun-Li

This horrible video game adaption stars Kristin Kreuk as Chun-Li, who--

I can't even write a serious breakdown of the many facets of this film. It's just plain mediocre. It doesn't bear any resemblance to the series, sans the names. It has plot holes throughout the entire film. I will say that Chris Klein's puts out the performance of his career as Charlie Nash. I still haven't figured out if his portrayal was comedic or serious, because it comes across as both. If comedic, his Kaufmanesque performance should be promptly awarded with a supporting actor nomination at the next general film awards.

Klein aside, even in the notoriously bad video game adaptation category, this film fails. The original adaptation, Street Fighter (1994), faired much better. It hit all the points a video game adaptation needs to: It gave small nods to all of the characters in the game, and it didn't take itself too seriously. It's enjoyable as camp, especially for those of us who grew up with fighting games in our early video-game years.

SF:TLOCL is just a hunk of shit.

Terminator Salvation

This franchise was on life support after Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and I had high hopes for this film after seeing the bleak post-apocalyptic and Nine Inch Nails scored theatrical trailer. Sadly, I was disappointed. This franchise is now dead.

Let's imagine that, a year ago, McG (yes, that's the director's actual name) had approached me to fashion for him a moneymaking sequel to this franchise. If I was to think of ways to fuck up this franchise before this film was created, I would have suggested the following:

- We need to sell as many tickets as possible. This film is the fourth in a series of all R-Rated films, but we should still make it PG-13. This way, kids under 18 will be able to see it. Let's ignore the fact that they would have had to see three R-Rated films beforehand. This will also allow us to get rid of all the horrible things in the previous films like gratuitous violence and intense action sequences. I don't think anyone enjoyed those.

- There was too much focus on character development in the previous films. For example, in Terminator there were only 3 characters: Sarah Conner, Kyle Reese, and the Terminator. This allowed for way too much character development and puts too much demand on quality story telling. We need a solution to this. You know what's all the rage today? Large rag-tag groups of people from all different backgrounds. This is what made films like Resident Evil and Doom such a great success. We can have one Black guy, one butt-kicking girl, one devoted wife, hell... we'll think of some others. The point is that with all these people we won't have to focus on character development at all!

And thus this film would be written. Hopefully in twenty years Skynet can send a terminator back in time to kill me so this film will never be made (and I will never have to see it).

Everything that's wrong with this film is the fault of it being put in the hands of the MTV generation. The director's previous credits include such ADHD-fests as Charlies Angels (and the sequel) and numerous music videos. Because of his idiocy, this film is all over the place. One minute it's chugging along as a great post-apocalyptic action film (the first third is genuinely good). The next minute the film plays like a generic summer action movie, complete with "the rag-tag group of people from many backgrounds" and a music score perfect for the next Will Smith release. With such a large cast of characters, the story is all over the place and never really gets developed.

The film could have been redeemed by upping the action to ultra-violent levels, but alas... PG-13. That isn't to say that the action sequences were all bad. There were some enjoyable moments in between the banal conversation, including an awesome cameo at the end. But it came short, partially due to the rating restriction, partially due to the MTV director, and partially due to the complete lack of care I had for the undeveloped characters.

Wrestlemaniac

We're introduced to six companions traveling south to the beaches of Mexico. Their intent is to film a pornographic movie. They stop at a rest station so one of the girls can use the restroom and so the camera can get a gratuitous butt shot as she runs to the facilities. There, they meet Irwin Keyes, who you might remember as "that weird guy who played that weird guy." He gives them directions, but warns them that they'll be traveling through "Sangre de Dios," which one of the characters mistranslates as "The Blood of Christ." He says they need to avoid it at all costs. Instead, they find themselves being chased around by a fat old Mexican wrestler when they decide to film their movie in this abandoned village.

This film had potential, but man did they blow it. First off, the homocidal wrestler is played by none other than Rey Mysterio, Sr. That's right, for the last half of the film we get to see the cast murdered by an overweight retired wrestler in a lucha libre mask. It takes a small bit away from the realism when a muscle-bound 20-something is overpowered by a 51 year old fat guy.

The film attempts to redeem itself by showing us exactly three breasts, multiple chase cams behind girls in panties (including a girl who miraculously gets her daisy dukes stuck on a door handle while being chased by El Fatso and has to rip them off to escape) and a surprisingly unconventional horror ending. All of this fails to account for absolutely no suspense, excitement, or actual "horror" anywhere in the film.