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."

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.

Reporter

To be brief, Reporter follows New York Times columnist Nick Kristof as he searches for the perfect subject for his column regarding the genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

To say more, this film is about the failure and success of journalism in both documenting the horrific events in this world and inspiring a call to action. Nick Kristof, a two time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, attempts both of these with every column he writes. Director Eric Daniel Metzgar follows Kristof closely, only appearing a few times by audio to give observational comments on the bedlam spilling out before him.

Like an experience physician, Kristof appears immune while witnessing most horrible and tragic human events. We see him surveying a group of starving villagers. They appear to be not depressing enough, as he chooses not to make them the subject of his column. His methods may seem harsh, but in his mind he is doing the most good by writing about only the most heart-wrenching story he can find. We follow behind him until he finally locates his muse.

Playing alongside Kristof's search is another dizzying journey which takes him to the dinner table of General Nkunda, the warlord of the region. A charismatic host, Nkunda displays a subtle and ominous intensity with his words. Surrounded by soldiers with automatic weapons, he explains that he is fighting the government to free the country for the people of the Congo. Juxtaposed with the images of the starving and ravaged villagers, we see what are perhaps direct contradictions to Nkunda's claims.

Metzgar devotes a small section of the film to a phenomenon referred to as "psychic numbing." This phenomenon, he explains, is why it's so difficult to motivate the average citizen to donate to a cause. As he explains, studies were done to see how much a person would donate if shown a specific image (the example used was a photograph of a malnourished African girl). People would donate a certain amount based on seeing that image. However, if explanatory text was added showing that she was one of four million starving people, then the amount that people would donate went down. The larger the problem appeared to the average person, the more likely they would want to turn their minds off to it and not donate. This "psychic numbing" is what Kristof attempts to overcome with his writing.

We see a film like this, and we want to help. We open our wallets and say, "Take whatever you need. I can donate all the money you want." That's not enough, according to Kristof. The shortage doesn't come in the form of money, but in bodies. They need people in the Congo handing out food, educating the children, and healing the sick. That's the difficult commitment: for people to leave their lives behind and devote them to helping strangers in a completely foreign country. Donating money is easy. Making a real difference isn't.

Black Sheep

I looked around for a good copy of the poster of this film to display at the beginning of this review. When I found this image, however, I realized that it fully encapsulated everything one should expect when going to see this film. This is a film that successfully balances between horror and humor, making it a great film to enjoy with a few of your friends (provided you're all okay with seeing sheep disemboweling people).

Not to be confused with the iconic buddy comedy film of the same name, Black Sheep is a horror film about a flock of genetically altered sheep wreaking havoc on a New Zealand farm. Henry Oldfield, sheepophobic after an incident in his youth, heads home to the farm to collect his portion of an inheritance. He soon finds himself running for his life after the sheep are let loose by a cute but misguided environmentalist named Experience. Together, Henry and Experience must battle these mutant sheep and restore order to the farm.

Sound appealing? It is. Heavily borrowing from Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series, the violence is comical, over-the-top and comedic. Men are torn limb from limb, preachers are beheaded, and one villain is taken out by an explosion from ignited sheep farts. This is definitely one to add to your rental list.

The One Percent

The One Percent is an admirable effort by Jamie Johnson to expose the goals and intentions behind the richest 1 percent in America. Johnson uses his wealth and noteriety to gain access to some of the countries most powerful men, and in interviews they dance around the idea that their power and wealth has any negative affect on the country. As somewhat of a side story, Johnson continously confronts his father, a man who had the same mindset as Jamie when he was his age. His father avoids every attempt b his son to pry away at the exterior he has built up after many years.

Ultimately, Johnson's naivete hinders him from truly reaching something great with this film. Perhaps if he was armed with more knowledge about economic policy and income disparity, he would have been better equipped to debate a grumpy Milton Friedman. Without this, he comes across as a disaffected trust-fund baby rejecting his guaranteed wealth. Despite this, the film succeeds admirably in exposing the attitudes of those at the top. They reject any idea that their attempts to keep the wealth concentrated within their tiny circle does anything but good in the world. They feel that by creating their own wealth, they are helping the economy grow and ergo helping the common man. They ignore the reality of the growing income disparity in America.

Johnson's film is a tiny whistle blower being drowned out by families who own almost half of all the wealth in the country, so I feel that it will not be heard by many. I'd be interested to see Johnson's opinions on the current state of affairs following the huge change in American government since this film was produced (2006). With less of a capitalist government in power, he may feel more optimistic about the direction of the country.

This film is available free on Youtube.com, so please share it with who you can. Milton Friedman, in the film, said that congress is moved by the will of the people. As unlikely as this seems, if there is enough groundswell support maybe change can finally come.

Supermen of Malegaon

Supermen of Malegaon is a tribute to the joy of filmmaking. It is set in a small village in India, where men can scout the copyright laws of the United States and make exact copies of films without much fear of retribution. The poverty-stricken village, like most villages in India, uses film as an escape from the toils of daily living. When a small business owner, Shaikh Nasir, decides to adapt the story of Superman set in his village, the residents leap at the opportunity to contribute. The end results is nothing short of heartwarming and hilarious. Using only the most basic of filmmaking tools, the crew not only utilizes such advanced technologies as a green screen, but also records their own soundtrack (a staple in Indian film). Operating on a minimal budget, the crew innovates to get their perfect shots. Superman is strapped to a bicycle with his arms out, while Nasir trails him tied to the front of a donkey cart. Although their end product is Z-grade in quality, watching the journey was extremely fulfilling.

Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall

When this 13 minute film ended, I wanted more, so much more. There were too many films I'd seen at the Full Frame Film Festival that seemed to drag on forever, and Utopia, Part 3 was like taking a bite out of a ribeye steak. It's delicious, but now your stomach is waiting for the rest of the beef. With quiet shots of empty escalators, yawning employees, and wandering mascots, we are taken on a journey through a failed experiment: To build the world's largest mall in southern China. Having few customers and a handful of stores, the mall sits in it's record-sized lot collecting dust. The film is brilliantly shot, and the humor is drawn through the opposition between gluttony and loneliness. There are a few lines of dialogue, which I hesitated to ask the director about during the Q & A (I didn't want to get thrown out that early!). In my opinion, the film functions much more effectively in silence, letting us draw our own conclusions about this empty space.

Sons of Cuba

I have seen many horrific and saddening events in films. I have seen true loss and heartbreak. I have seen events in some films that would make most people bawl their eyes out, use up a full box of tissues, and be forced to leave the theater. I have seen all of these things, and I've never cried.

Sons of Cuba made me cry.

I've been struggling for the past few days to figure out what exactly I wanted to say about this film ever since it's world premiere on Thursday at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. It's safe to say that I enjoyed every minute of it. Sons of Cuba follows the journeys of three preteen males who are part of a prestigious boxing academy in Havana, Cuba: Cristian, Santos, and Junior. The students all have ridiculously regimented schedules, getting up at 4am, meticulously maintained meals and weight, and above all enormous pressures from both their coach, their families, and their government to becomes champions for Cuba. The students who make the cut go on to the national championships and compete for a trophy, one that was taken last year by a rival academy. Cristian, the undisputed star of the film, lost in the finals last year and is working hard to be victorious this year.

The film is richly shot, giving us a glimpse into the life at the school as well as the city of Havana. The genuine thoughts and emotions of the boys spill out onto the screen. They complain, innocently, that the biggest problem is getting up early or having to eat rice. We see them roughhousing. In reality, the coach is one of the few who is aware of the pressures put upon them by the entire Socialist nation to produce Olympic champions. He pushes the boys with a stern hand, but he occasionally lets through how much he truly loves them as sons.

I had a long conversation with the editor of the film, Simon Rose, a day after the screening. He was eager to hear my opinion of the film. We had been discussing the difficulties in critiquing a documentary film. He realized that sometimes it can be difficult to separate the actions of the characters within the film from the actions of the director. If a director simply films what is a brilliant real-life story, is that a good documentary even if no real filmmaking skill was involved? Can a brilliant director take an awfully boring story and make a mesmerizing film? (I would argue yes) He thought that good documentary films should have a nuanced message to them, one that can be read between the lines and isn't used to beat the audience over the head mercilessly. I told him of the nuanced message I read in Sons of Cuba. In a Socialist country like Cuba, citizens are homogenized, and their glory is said to be only in reverence to the fatherland and not for themselves. Sons of Cuba, I told him, appeared to be about youths breaking free from that and attaining glory for themselves and their families. Simon appeared surprised at this revelation. He said that wasn't something they had intended, but it was always good to find new discoveries within your own films. He added that they had tried to remove most of the politics from the film and make it a story about the three boxers. I told him that must have been difficult, because Cuba appeared to be a politically charged environment. He didn't seem to agree. Our conversation ended at that point (not because we disagreed, but he had to catch a film), but I found myself surprised by his confession that they had tried to remove politics from the film. From my own observations, the film began with a reference to Castro's influence over Cuban citizens, and it ended with a note about his well-being. It was, quite literally, surrounded by politics. Perhaps removing the politics from the daily life of Cubans was more difficult than Simon thought.

Politics aside, this film is a champion of the human spirit, and a wonderful story of sportsmanship. Havana and it's rival trash talk each other throughout the film on the way to the championships, but it's all for the sake of competition. It's this love of the competition of boxing which is the heart of the message in Sons of Cuba. Cristian's father Luis, a former champion boxer, watches his son fight his way to the championships. After a match, he embraces his son. Tears swell on the eyes of the former champion and father. For the first time, he is truly proud of his son. For the first time, I found myself in a theater with tears in my eyes. Maybe it was connecting with my own issues of yearning for pride and acceptance from my father. Maybe it was just a great moment of documentary filmmaking.

Mechanical Love

My first film that I saw at the Full Frame Film Festival, and currently my favorite, Mechanical Love is an ambient film from director Phie Ambo about the humanization of mechanical objects. We follow two dual narratives: Hiroshi Ishiguro, an inventor working to create a most realistic robotic version of himself and his family, and Frau Körner, a nursing home patient who receives a theraputic robotic seal named Paro. In these two narratives, we see the drastic differences in human reactions and emotions to robotics.

I absolutely adored the tone with which the director approaches the material. The camera is simply an observer, watching the humans in the film interact with the robots. We notice their facial expressions, their body language, and it's more telling than anything they reveal to us through spoken word. In a particularly telling scene, Frau Körner has her Paro taken away after it becomes too distracting during choir practice. Almost instantaneously, the happiness shown by her throughout the film is gone. She sits quietly through the practice with a sullen look, eagerly awaiting the moment she can spend time with her Paro again. Once she picks up the robot, she nurtures it as if it genuinely missed the time it was gone from her. Although she says nothing during this, it's what she doesn't say that's most important. With Ishiguro, the director takes the same approach. Letting Ishiguro babble on with long-winded dialogue about his endeavor, Ambo allows Ishiguro to reveal his detachment from humanity. Ishiguro jokes, somewhat seriously, about how he wishes his robot could be realistic enough that it could replace his mundane duties at his house where he's "required" to spend time with his family. In a later scene, his wife admits that she would prefer the robot to her husband provided it operated well enough. This quiet, observing camera is accompanied by a barely audible ambient soundtrack. Like these two characters and their relationship to humanity, it is detached, only floating in every few minutes with a few electronic notes, reminding is it's there.

In Ishiguro's vision, we see how having a goal of complete realism can impede the emotional attachment that humans can place on robots. Ishiguro's Gemenoid (as he calls it) is incredibly realistic in it's movement, frighteningly so, and his daughter reveals this by her refusal to interact with it during Ishiguro's test run. He's confused, a testament to his loss of his own connection to his family and by extension humanity while on his obsessive quest. The reason for his lack of success is demonstrated through the Paro narrative. The designer of the Paro, Takanori Shibata, is shown speaking at a conference of his successes and failures when designing the Paro. He originally designed a realistic cat, but it was a commercial failure. Users, already familiar with the actions of a cat, had too many expectations of the robot. They wanted realistic cat behavior and were disappointed when the robot couldn't deliver. Shibata took his design in a new direction, and he created a robot creature that one couldn't have any expectations for: a seal. Since users were unfamiliar with it's behavior, they didn't have any expectations, and were then only seeing the present interactivity of the robot. This was Ishiguro's failure. His Gemenoid was, in fact, too human-looking but not human-acting enough. It was so realistic looking that when it's actions didn't deliver it simply became an uncanny and horrifying likeness of Ishiguro. The Paro, with it's generic movement and vague squeaks, allowed the user to project their own emotions upon the robot. When the Paro is squealing, is it doing it with delight? Is it hungry? Is it yearning for the warmth of it's mother? It's whatever Frau Körner wanted. She pet the robot as it squealed, giving it all the genuine love she had to give. This open-ended action allows the user to identify with Paro in their own way, and this is how it became much more human than the Gemenoid would ever be. It's the reason we all love R2-D2.

Seed

There's very few films that have made me feel physically ill when the end credits roll. This sort of physical reaction is reserved for such films that are so powerful and uncompromising they drain me of emotion and cause me physical pain. I consider that an achievement for a film, and I tend to give films due credit for doing so. Funny Games (1997) and Irreversible (2002) are two films bestowed with such an achievement. I would like to add another film to that list, and that film is Seed.

Congratulations, Uwe Boll, your film made me physically sick after watching it.

You still suck as a director, and here's why.

Seed is a horror film about a serial killer in the late seventies in the United States. Caught after a series of grizzly murders, he is sentenced to death by electrocution. Having miraculously survived two electrocutions in a row, the prison warden fears that they will have to release him if he survives a third (a popular urban legend). They decide to bury him alive in a cemetery. Seed (the name of the killer) escapes and wreaks a path of revenge upon those who sentenced him to death.

This movie starts out surprisingly well. The dark, barely lit atmosphere hearkens back to the fear brought about in such classics as Alien or Halloween, where what you didn't see was just as important as what you did. The fear of the unknown and what lurks in the darkness can be a wonderful device. We see glimpses of Seed as he grabs his victims out of the darkness, and it's genuinely scary. Boll carries this for about 25 minutes before abandoning that concept completely. Shooting the villain from a wide angle in broad daylight may work for an action film, but it tanks a slasher film. Once Boll pulls the curtain away and exposes Seed as what he truly is, a man who looks like an overweight professional wrestler with a potato sack on his head, there's no more fear. This is one of the most basic concepts of horror cinema, and Boll misses the point completely.

In fact, this entire film is one missed point. Boll has been interviewed before as saying that to be a successful filmmaker, one has to be edgy. Whether it's a violent edge, a sexual edge, any sort of edge. You have to be edgy to get your name out there. Apparently, this means utilizing actual animal torture footage (obtained by PETA for the film) and having, most notably, a 10 minute shot of Seed torturing a woman to death with a hammer. I say woman, because frankly I have no idea who she was. It wasn't anyone I recognized from anywhere else in the film. Boll could have completely cut the scene out of the film, and the audience would have just chugged on oblivious to the missing scene (and would have been better off). This occurs with most of the deaths in the film. There's very little introduction into any of the "main" characters, and the protagonist's family only gets a few minutes of screen time. Why should we care if anything happens to them? If Boll's appealing to our basic human instincts then, sure, I don't want to see a little girl get tortured to death. But that's way too easy. Anyone can put a faceless puppy in front of an oncoming train, shoot it with a movie camera and proclaim, "See! You want this dog to live, but I will not do it! Ahaha, notice how I play with your emotions. I am such a skilled director!"

Why include such a disgusting and unsettling scenes in the film? Why include such obvious torture porn? I mentioned the two films, Funny Games and Irreversible, at the beginning of this review for a reason: both feature grisly scenes, both feature long unbearable takes. The difference between those two works of art and this rotting turd is that they're included with a purpose. Haneke indicts the audience in Funny Games, exposing us as just as guilty as the two kidnappers for having a lust for violence and entertainment. Boll may claim such, but to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, "if you gave him an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox." There's no deeper message here. There's no entertainment. No one is scared, no one is frightened. They're just disgusted. Anyone can set up a camera, torture someone to death, and then burn it onto a DVD. That doesn't make them a good filmmaker. Uwe Boll succeeded at failing to do anything but turn my stomach. Was that your intention? Great. I look forward to your next release of "Maggots and Shit" or something as equally vapid.

I am Omega

I Am Omega is a 2007 straight to DVD release by the now infamous film producers The Asylum. Released one month before it's blockbuster counterpart, I Am Omega chronicles the adventures of a man named Renchard who believes he is the last man on Earth after a zombie infection wipes out civilization (I found out after checking the IMDB credits that his name is in fact "Renchard" and not "Richard," and I was going to comment about the strange nasal inflections heard from people in the film). As you can imagine, he soon finds out that he is not alone in this world, and he has to leave his fortress of solitude to rescue Brianna, a woman trapped in the nearby city. Like most post-apocalyptic films, this film has a problem straddling the fence between realism and convenience. If the character has an electric-powered home and drives around in a gas-powered vehicle, we have to have an explanation for how this is possible. There is a willingness by the audience to overlook some minute details, but when Renchard receives an "incoming video transmission" on his Macbook... come on. You're saying the Internet still works after a zombie apocalypse? Awesome.

Glaring technical errors, like the zombie infection, plague this entire film. I realize it's challenging to shoot a scene in a city where civilization has been eradicated, but could you at least do a re-shoot if a pickup truck drives into the scene at the last moment? The icing on the cake was a horrible nuit américaine scene towards the end which looked like someone had spent five minutes in Adobe After Effects applying a dark haze around the cast in the center of the frame. This was compounded by cuts to the cast standing in an area where it actually was night, seemingly seconds later.

As expected, the acting was mediocre and the dialogue was annoying. One character would not stop using the word "compadre" at the end of every sentence. The relationship between the leading man and leading lady was as scorching hot as the surface of Pluto. The villain's motives for his actions were at best mind-numbingly stupid, plus he makes the bone-headed (yet strangely oft-repeated in cinema) mistake of kidnapping someone he repeatedly states he just wants to kill. Why didn't you just kill them when you were standing right next to them with a loaded weapon in your hands? Am I the only one who picks up on this?

Sharks in Venice

I never thought that I would run into a film worse than Alien vs. Hunter. Today, I have been proven wrong. Sharks in Venice is a completely awful direct to DVD horror film starring Stephen Baldwin. Sharks in Venice is a film about a diving professor (???) who travels to Venice after his father (also a diver) goes missing while on a diving expedition in the canals of Venice. "The Man" says it was a propeller blade that killed the diving team, but Stephen Baldwin knows better: It was a fucking shark, and he's going to find the bastard. Like most horrible films, this film fails on all fronts. I will attempt to break this down into categories to ease your suffering.

Cinematography: Instead of taking us to Venice, the director of this film decides to use stock footage of Venice (or perhaps some other city with canals) and then "strategically" cut to interior shots of the characters inside buildings. When outside, the characters are shot from an extreme low angle, so you can't see where they are. On the few shots where we actually see the characters "in Vienna," they are obviously standing in front of a green screen.

Editing: There was no shark used in this film. I'm just going to say it right now. And Jesus Christ, it just looks awful. The first shark attack is edited as such:

1. Shot of a diver in the water.
2. Stock footage of a shark, probably taken from The Discover Channel.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 with rapid cuts.
4. Shot of the diver moving forward out from a rock.
5. Shot of, and I'm not kidding, the same shot as #4, but played in reverse to give the appearance of the diver being pulled back behind the rock.
6. Close up shot of the diver's face, while "blood" appears around him.

Almost* every shark attack in this film is shown the exact same way. It's almost as if the director learned about building tension by repeatedly watching those black and white Western films where the bad guy tied the damsel in distress to the railroad tracks, and the train quickly made it's way towards her doom.

*I say almost, because one man dies in a spectacular fashion from a CGI shark. Sadly, this is the only occurrence in the film. If the director had continued this vision to apply to the rest of the film, I might have reviewed this film differently today.

Acting/Dialogue: If you've seen any straight to DVD Stephen Baldwin film, you've seen them all. Baldwin stumbles through this film, collecting his paycheck as the one "big name" actor in the film. The rest of the actors deliver their lines with incredibly transparent attempts at Italian accents, all while offering opinions of the most idiotic caliber.

At one point, Stephen Baldwin is diving in the water, complete with a full breathing apparatus, and continuously communicates with the boat using spoken word. This includes times when the camera is showing close up shots of his face, lips tightly wrapped around the plastic. Bravo, director. Bravo.

Even though this movie was purchased by Viacom and played on the Sci-Fi Network, I'm not tagging this as a Sci-Fi Original. That would do a disservice to the fine men and women who produce the genuine Sci-Fi Original films.

Except for those who made Alien vs. Hunter. Those men and women can die.

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

Lloyd Kaufman's Troma films are notorious for their over the top sex, graphic violence, and juvenile comedy. Kaufman spares no expense with this film, one he had to draw into his own personal savings to fund the production. Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead is a horror comedy musical about a geeky virgin named Arbie who works at a fast-food restaurant on an ancient burial ground. The chickens begin coming back from the dead, and it's up to Arbie to save the customers and Wendy, the love of his life, from the coming chicken apocalypse.

The violence, sex, and fart jokes are non-stop in this film, and they work like perfect portions of the classic American pie recipe. You smell the aroma as it's cooking, and once you take the first bite you know you've got something delicious on your hands. This film is not for the faint of heart, and if you dislike masturbation, lesbians, explosive diarrhea, beheading, fisting or any combination of any of these at the same time, then you may want to skip this movie. For those of you who can stomach the film, enjoy it. Kaufman designs these films to have over the top gross out violence, and it's meant to be read as comedy. Did I mention this film was a musical? The songs are hilarious and surprisingly well-written. They form the meat of the film; the binding between all of scat and blood that holds the film together.

Find some friends who you know would enjoy a nice night of low-brow graphic comedy, and you will have an enjoyable evening.

Mega Snake

This promotional image is lying to you. There are no tumbling skyscrapers, no jet fighters, and no helicopters in Mega Snake. The snake is not 500 feet tall. Feedback is, in fact, not "featured" in the film, but he only makes an appearance for 5 minutes. What do we have then? A Sci-Fi Original movie that succeeds in being entertaining.

We're introduced to two brothers from a family of religious snake handlers in a small town. Ambulance driver Les Daniels has grown up with a fear of snakes ever since his father was killed at a church while snake handling. His older brother Duff Daniels has followed the family tradition of snake handling and constantly berates Les about his fear of snakes. In need of new deadly snakes for his church, Duff visits Cherokee snake salesman Screaming Hawk. The salesman refuses to sell him a mysterious snake encased in a jar, telling him that it's a mythical snake that killed his ancestors and must never be released. Screaming Hawk tells him that there are three rules for the snake, "Don't let it out. Don't feed it. Don't fear the heart of the snake." Duff decides to steal the snake, and accidentally releases it once he gets home. As all three of Screaming Hawk's rules are broken throughout the rest of the film, the snake begins feeding on the citizens of the town, growing from a mere 12 inches to a gargantuan size, and wreaking havoc upon the town.

There's some conflict points in the film that it attempts to address. Les and Duff have the usual brother issues over the death of their father. Les is in a love triangle with his girlfriend Erin and a controlling cop named Bo. And as usual, once Les and Erin figure out that a snake is on the lose, the authority in the town doesn't believe them until "it is too late." These really take a backseat, though, to the main focus of the film: The Mega Snake.

The snake is sloppily rendered in CGI, looking like a monster out of a big budget Hollywood film from 1999. This works to the benefit of the film. This hearkens back to such films as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, where the protagonists are stabbing at something that clearly was put into the film post-production. Regardless of it's authenticity, we're privy to the snakes mayhem. And trust me, no one is spared. We cheer for the little guy as he grows into a behemoth and an audience favorite. During the course of the film, entire families are eaten, including children. Dogs and cats are gobbled up like snacks. And in an amusing turn of events, an entire section of people on an amusement park ride are beheaded in one swoop. Most of the violence in the film is comically over the top, and this makes it an enjoyable movie to watch with friends. As a straight to video release, this is definitely a good rental film to sit down with some popcorn and enjoy.

La Maison en Petits Cubes

It's amazing to see how such a short film can contain so much emotion by being so subtle. At a running time of 12 minutes, La Maison en Petits Cubes introduces us to an old man who lives in a tower. It's difficult to describe the plot of this film without spoiling what it's about, since it's a very short film. I think it best to go into this film completely surprised.

This film beautifully explores, through metaphor, the idea of forgotten memories and loss. The animation is a wonderful accompaniment to the story. Whereas most of the other films nominated this year feature slick computer-generated animation, La Maison en Petits Cubes' hand-drawn and colored scenes present the story the way we'd remember times of long ago. With animation that is softened, deep, and expressive, director Kunio Katô takes us on quite a journey. We see each grumble on the old man's face, and although he says nothing, his facial expressions, each perfectly animated, show us all we need to know. The music, composed by Kenji Kondô, sets the mood, and although it quietly plays in the background, without it the film wouldn't have the same effect. All of the elements come together to make this a memorable short film.

Alien vs. Hunter

This movie is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really bad. One of the worst films I have ever seen, and I've seen some awful films in my lifetime. I generally try to compile a list of reasons during the film, things I can write about, and I am not kidding when I say that I lost count 15 minutes into this horrible piece of shit.

Alien vs. Hunter was most likely the brainchild of a seventh grader at a local junior high school. The kid was reading some comic books, and he decided that he wanted to write a cool story for a school assignment:

Billy

7th Grade


Some aliens land in a small mountain town. There's a hunter who has this huge rifle, and he shoots stuff with it but he misses a lot. The alien is half alien from the movie aliens and the other half is a spider. There is a man who writes for the papers and he and this girl run from the aliens with some other people. The hunter with the huge rifle chases the people around and he shoots at them also at the alien. Some of the people die because they get shot and also the alien eats them a lot. Then the people find the alien ship and they find one of his guns and they shoot the alien and it dies. The end.

And after Billy finishes this, he shows it to his father. His father is a broken down director who is desperately trying to feed his cocaine and hooker habit. He sees dollar signs after reading Billy's assignment, and pats him on the head. "Good job, son," he says, dreaming of the drug-fueled sex binge he's going to go on after he directs this straight to video shitter. The dad asks him what the hunter is supposed to look like. Billy draws him a picture of a scuba diver in a samurai outfit.


"Thanks, son!" the father says. The father then directs the film straight from the handwritten essay, without developing it into a feature length screenplay.

There are three locations in this film: Rooms in someone's house, the forest, and the sewers. The same identical sets and shots are repeatedly used. The hunter, the samurai scuba diver, is the worst shot I have ever seen. He frequently misses everyone with his laser rifle (which actually goes "pew-pew"), not to mention he appears in about five total minutes of the film. When he does, repeated stock footage of the alien is shown through his "hunter vision," he runs off, and we're taken back to the main cast of humans.

And oh god, the humans. The progenitors of the most hackneyed, contradictory, and suicide-inducing prose ever spoken in modern cinema. I rarely literally cringe during a film, but this film had me clutching my stomach and desperately reaching for something to stab myself in the throat. It became more than a film-watching experience. It was like getting a cramp during the middle of a marathon. Every muscle in my body was telling me to quit, but I just had to see if I could make it through. And I did. I made it through to the anti-climatic, twist-attempting, incredibly demented ending. Had I a handgun at the ready, I would not be alive to write this review today.

Outlander

Sympathy plays an important role in character development in films. Without sympathy, why do we care about the protagonist? Sympathy can be used to make us cry when a character dies, it can be used to make us cheer when they emerge victorious, and it can be used to pull the rug out from under us when a character turns out to be evil. If sympathy can make or break a film, consider Outlander broken.

Outlander is one of those films that, after reading the plot, you think that it's going to be the most bad ass film of all time. Outlander is the story of Kainen, a space marine who crash lands on planet Earth during the time of the Vikings. He is pursued by a giant space creature called a Morwen, and he must band together with a kingdom of Vikings to destroy the creature. Did I mention that the role of Kainen is played by Jim Caviezel, a.k.a. Jesus Christ? After reading a plot description like this, I walked into the theatre fully erect. I left it, not with priapism, but with erectile dysfunction.

There were so many things I wanted to complain about during this movie that I realized I needed a notepad to keep track of them. I'll start with what I mentioned in the opening paragraph. The biggest problem with this film is it's lack of sympathy development. Kainen is obviously the protagonist in the film. He crash lands on the planet and is taken hostage by a local group of Vikings. The Vikings think he may be part of a rival village, and they interrogate him with their fists. So, being a standard audience member, I should now feel sympathy for Kainen's plight and dislike the Vikings who just beat the shit out of him. Immediately following this scene, the film decides that now would be the time for the Morwen (the evil space creature) to attack the village. We're shown scenes of the brake Vikings falling in battle... but wait... why do we care? Weren't these the people that we were just shown beating the shit out of our hero, Kainen? Aren't they the bad guys?

With a skilled director, this sort of back and forth sympathy play could be used as a tool to make more dynamic characters and play with the audience's emotions, but fear not: These characters are as one sided as ever. The problem is that the director (the film, the producer, who do I blame here?) just seems to forget which side the characters are on. At the beginning of the film, we're introduced to some of the Viking characters that will play a larger role in the tale. Rothgar, the leader of the tribe, his (not) surprisingly well groomed and attractive daughter, Freya, and the hot-headed commander Wulfric. (Guess which one of those three gets taken hostage by the Morwen?) Wulfric is set to ascend to the throne on the death of Rothgar, and it is shown early in the film that he has strong feelings for Freya. One would suspect, as Kainen and Freya grow closer, that a love triangle would develop. Surprisingly, Wulfric seems to completely forget that he has feelings for Freya after the first ten minutes of the film, and Kainen and he become best buddies. And finally, the star of the show, the Morwen. The Morwen is a CGI monster with the upper body of a Hell Knight from Doom 3 and the rear of Godzilla from the horrible Matthew Broderick film. To be honest, it does look wicked, and the graphics are well done for such a low budget movie. It's unfortunate that the sounds it makes are "generic demonic monster sound taken from Doom 3" (so much so that iD software should probably contact their lawyers). Oh, there's also a Viking in this film named Boromir. Someone should contact the Tolkein family about that.

There's a lot of forgetfulness in this film, and I often wondered whether there was some underling dementia that had been written into the script. After the first attack on the village by the Morwen, the Viking men band together with Kainen to go hunt the creature. They find a cave that houses a giant bear, and they all work together to slay the animal. Cheer, drinks, and celebration ensue, because the Vikings all think that they've slain the creature that attacked their village. Kainen is well-aware that the creature that was killed was not the Morwen, yet he neglects to mention this small, but important, detail to anyone during the party. Maybe he just wanted to enjoy the free booze, or maybe he was still pissed that the Vikings had just beaten the crap out of him the day before. There are numerous plot holes in this film that revolve around characters and entities forgetting obvious facts, most of which would spoil the movie, but just be warned. There are some "are you kidding me?!" moments towards the bitter end.

But, back to sympathy. I mentioned earlier that sympathy was a large reason for why this film fails. The main conflict driving this film is that Kainen is being pursued by this horrific creature, and he needs to defend himself and the Vikings from destruction. Great, so we're supposed to care about his survival, right? Well, about that... Kainen decides to take a moment in the middle of the film to give us more insight into the backstory. We learn what his actual duties were, and why he was crash landing with a Morwen stowed aboard his ship. I'm not going to spoil anything, but let me just say that it doesn't paint him in a positive light. In fact, he sounds like a real douchebag after telling us the story. Again, in the hands of a skilled director, this could have been used to develop a dynamic and conflicted character. This never happens. Kainen is a one-dimensional hero that we're supposed to cheer for because he's fighting a monster.

The positive in this film is that Ron Perlman plays a dual hammer wielding bad ass Viking named Gunnar.

Splinter

The Body Horror genre has long been a niche with one dominating force: David Cronenberg. He firmly established himself as the figurehead of body horror with such films as Rabid, The Fly, and Videodrome. The reason that Cronenberg's films work so masterfully in this genre is due to the focus on the paristitic infection, the invading alien element, as the main antagonist in the film. The fear that is brought about when someone is transformed against their will into something inhuman, when someone is violated (and definitely with sexual metaphors in many of Cronenberg's films) and their body is taken over. Cronenberg's success in this genre has, in a large way, laid the framework for how a successful body horror film must be written.

Splinter is a film about a group of four people that end up being trapped in a gas station in the middle of nowhere. The attacking force originally appears to be a reanimated corpse of a gas station attendant, covered from head to toe in strange splinters. The splinters reveal their true nature early on in the film, as a parisitic force that takes control of its infected host.

The “splinter” effects in the film, or when a character in the film is taken over by the parasite, are done remarkably well for the budget. The antagonists, the infected "splinter" bodies, move with a series of jerky, primal movements, captured with quick handheld shots. We don't see much of the monster, but we see enough that it works well as an agent of fear. This is a notable but common tactic that has worked well in other successful horror films, most notably Alien (I should mention that Alien is one of the few non-Cronenberg films that is championed in the Body Horror genre). When we don't see the monster in it's entirety, our imagination tends to fill in the rest of the horrific details. The shots in the film are done in an extremely shallow depth of field, and this adds to the claustrophobic feel as the characters are trapped in a 20ft square room for most of the film.

This film fails on two fronts. When a script limits itself to a handful of characters for the majority of the film, the film is shouldered upon these few characters. They have to be strong in order to bear this burden. This comes in the form of strong acting, strong dialogue, and strong character development. If this doesn’t happen, it definitely gets noticed. In Splinter, we meet a cast of stereotypes and hypocrisies. The initial ineptness of the city-folk couple is expected, but they seem to grow a surprisingly large pair by the end of the film. And the convict who hides a heart of gold? Strangely enough, the couple he kidnapped must have realized that fact before the audience, because they seemed quite willing to save his life immediately after having a gun pointed at their face.

Like the fates of most horror films, this one rises and falls on the success of the monster. As I mentioned earlier, the fear in Body Horror films is on the infection; the invasion of the body by a mysterious and deadly force. This film barely touches the surface of what could have been explored on this subject. One character finds themselves “splintered,” and this fact seems to stay quiet for most of the film. The director chooses, instead, to have the fear be directed outwardly towards an antagonist keeping the group trapped inside the gas station. The problem, in this case, is that the director isn’t presenting the horror for what it is: a parasitic infection. If you keep the infection at bay for the entire film, and you don’t present it as an invading force within the protagonists, then you’re ignoring the fear that a body horror film can bring to the audience. Had the director explored this more, Splinter could have been much more successful. This isn’t a bad film, but an enjoyable scary flick that reminds you of what it could have been.