Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Directed by: Martin McDonagh

Starring: Collin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walkin, Woody Harrelson

Other Actors of Note: Tom Waits, Harry Dean Stanton, Kevin Corrigan, Gabourey Sidibe

 Plot: "A struggling screenwriter inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends kidnap a gangster's beloved Shih Tzu." Taken from www.imdb.com.

Collin Farrell is forced to watch "S.W.A.T."

Hey, remember "In Bruges?"  I did a review of it way back in 2008 when I was just a young boy with a song in his heart and a skip in his step.  A youth of 20 with no wife, no baby, no job, no cancer, and all the time in the world to sit on his ass and just update blogs that nobody reads.  Oh those were truly the salad days when shitty reviews, like the one I have just linked, were things I looked at with pride and said "I am a professional."  Anyway I have not come here merely to wax nostalgic and discuss what lessons I have learned toward becoming a better reviewer (doing second drafts is not one of those things) but about the second feature film by writer/director Martin McDonagh.  That film, is "Seven Psychopaths."

This movie is a bit hard to pin down plot-wise but I will none-the-less try.  Collin Farrell plays Marty, an Irish screenwriter and self-insertion wish fulfillment character who is writing a screenplay that he has only come up with the basic idea of, that script is called "Seven Psychopaths."  I will get to that in a minute.

Marty's friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) is trying to help Billy write his movie, but also help his friend Hans (Christopher Walken) in paying for his wife's cancer treatment.  Billy and Hans do this by kidnapping peoples' dogs and then returning them weeks later for reward money.  Unfortunately Billy has kidnapped the dog of a crazy asshole mob boss (Woody Harrelson) who is more than willing to murder everyone in his path toward getting the dog back.

Marty has a drinking problem, there's a masked vigilante killing off mobsters, Tom Waits is holding a bunny, a Vietnamese Catholic priest is still fighting the Vietnamese war, it's all very complicated.  As all this is going on Marty is getting ideas for his screenplay and fleshing these seven psychopaths out as they present themselves in the real world.

So let's get this out of the way.  This movie is VERY meta, like a lot.  This will of course draw the ire of a lot of film snobs and average movie-goers everywhere.  Because self-referential movies are pretentious and stupid and... whatever the fuck.  THIS IS NOT "SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK!"  The meta elements aren't "the point" of the movie.  Shut your fuck holes, I don't know why I even read comments on imdb.  I hate you all.

Anyway.

This is not a movie still.  It's just Tom Waits sitting in his living room.

Collin Farrell was the stand-out of "In Bruges" by far.  I'm glad to see that McDonagh brought him back, though he doesn't play off any of the other leads nearly as well as he played off of Brendan Gleeson.  He turns in another great performance here but of the four leads of this movie he stands out the least.  This isn't Farrell's fault as you'll come to understand in further paragraphs.

Christopher Walkin is getting really old you guys, like really old.  He plays a fairly innocent bumbling old man very well, but as with pretty much everything in this movie there are layers to his character.  Hans is a very complex man who deals with life a bit differently than anyone else, he's dark and brooding but always seems to have this bizarre cheerfulness about him.  At times it seems like all the good acting has run out of Walken but then he steps up to the plate and reminds us all that he's not Al Pacino and fuck you he's one of the greatest goddamn actors that ever lived.  Hans is a very funny and tragic character and I would be hard-pressed to think of any other actor who could pull the part off the way Walken has here.

Woody Harrelson doesn't have a lot of villain roles in his wheelhouse, aside from "Natural Born Killers" (Now there is a pretentious and dumb movie.)  So it's pretty jarring to see him as the heavy for this movie.  Charlie is a very manic character: he goes from funny to menacing seemingly at the drop of a hat and Harrelson pulls it off in the most perfect manner possible.  It's probably the best role the man has had in over a decade.  He's not really a super complex villain (he is, after all, just a really crazy angry guy) but he's memorable and reminiscent of Anton Chigur of "No Country For Old Men" at times.

Sam Rockwell gives the best performance of his career.  Billy is such a delightfully unhinged and twitchy character reminiscent at times of Brad Pitt's role in "12 Monkeys."   I have long been a fan of Rockwell but this is really just the best thing he has ever done and and I can't begin to rave about it.  In a case of Colin Farrell, Christopher Walkin, and Woody Harrelson it's Sam Rockwell that stands out by a wide margin.  If this man doesn't get an Oscar nod this year it's a crime.

Tom Waits plays Tom Waits and that's fucking delightful as always, goddammit!

Sam Rockwell explains the merits of "Gentlemen Broncos"

Upon leaving the theater with my wife she turned to me and said "That was really good, but I couldn't even begin to tell somebody what it was about."  And that is very true, this movie doesn't really have a straight narrative, it's not a 3-act story, the climax isn't really a climax and the characters don't so much grow as they change and mutate.  And you know what?  There's not a damn thing wrong with that.

There's an often unspoken belief that stories which don't follow a common narrative structure are somehow inferior from those that do but I disagree, it's usually those that don't which end up being the best.  Look at "No Country For Old Men", "Pulp Fiction", or "Once Upon a Time in the West."  These are all movies that don't have an overarching message except in the very vaguest sense, they play on emotions, thoughts, ideas.

The best movies are movies that put thoughts into your head and tug at your emotions like marionette strings.  Some of the funniest scenes in "Seven Psychopaths" involve brutal murder, laughs come immediately following sad or tense scenes.  You'll feel happy, sad, scared, horrified, relieved, and mirthful and all these changing and contrary feelings come within seconds of each other.  The movie doesn't rely on cheap twists to keep you going, most of the twists are cleared up by the 1 hour mark.  But I can honestly say I had no idea where the movie was going by the time it reached my conclusion.

I walked out of the theater filled with energy and zeal and a very pleasant feeling inside of me.  That's the magic of movies, just like how a good song sends you off into its own little world a good movie leaves you feeling excited and re-energized.  I've enjoyed a lot of movies this year but only a couple have given me this feeling and this one more than any.  This is a good movie and my nod for best movie of the year.

Sam Rockwell impersonates Nicolas Cage.

"Seven Psychopaths" is on a fairly limited release and you're likely to only find it at bigger movie-houses that have 20 or more screens.  I urge everyone very strongly to check it out.

I give this movie a 5 out of 5.

The Expendables 2 (2012)

 

Directed by: Simon West

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Nan Yu, Liam Hemsworth, Jean-Claude Van Damme

Other Actors of Note: Dolph Lundgreen, Randy Couture, Chuck Norris, Scott Adkins, Terry Crews, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Bruce Willis, Jet Li, Charisma Carpenter

Plot: Mr. Church reunites the Expendables for what should be an easy paycheck, but when one of their men is murdered on the job, their quest for revenge puts them deep in enemy territory and up against an unexpected threat... Sylvester Stallone's past film career.

"You shut your whore mouth.  'Over the Top' was a goddamn cinematic masterpiece."

Come, take my hand and travel with me back in time to that long ago year of 2010 when a little movie called "The Expendables" premiered.  It was a representation of everything we've all wanted in an action movie since we were kids: it had Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, and a bunch of action heroes all in one movie and it was incredibly violent and bloody.

Unfortunately it was also boring, and dull, and Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzeneggar were barely in it.  And where the fuck was Van-Damme?! Or Chuck Norris?!  Why do I care about Jason Statham's relationship with Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer".  Eric Roberts is the villain?  How did Stallone just come off the awesomeness that was "Rambo" and then crank out this shit?! 

Well, I am here to tell you that the movie you wanted when you first heard about "The Expendables" is here, you just had to wait a couple more years.  The Expendables are back and we start the movie off with a ridiculously violent and ballsy cold open that ends with a body count of at least 200 and leaves everyone in the audience (including women) with big angry erections that can only be sated with the taste of blood.

Shortly after this, Church (Bruce Willis) calls Barney (Sylvester Stallone) and tells him he owes him a favor for cocking everything up in the first movie.  So they head to some backwater country in Eastern Europe with newjack Maggie (Nan Yu) in tow to help them recover a special device.  Upon collecting it ONE OF THEM IS KILLED.

I would say spoiler alert, but you're not stupid.  We have Stallone, Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, and Liam Hemsworth in this ragtag group.  It's like that "In Living Colour" sketch where Captain Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and "Ensign Ricky" are beamed down to the planet.  I wonder who's gonna die?  If that doesn't give it away, Hemsworth's long speeches about "getting out of this business" to go live with his girlfriend in a happy little house with a white picket fence starts a countdown above his head pretty early on.

So after Jean Vilain (Jean-Claude VanDamme as the villain with the greatest name in the history of movies) reverse snap-kicks a knife held by henchman Hector (Scott Adkins) into Hemsworth's heart and departs on his helicopter most evilly Stallone drops to his knees and shouts to the heavens "IT SHOULD'VE BEEN COUTURE!!!!!"

And then we go into the most simplistic action plot ever.  Bad Guys want plutonium, kill Good Guys, remaining Good Guys want revenge, go after Bad Guys, kill Bad Guys, get Plutonium, save day.  This may seem like a bad thing, but it's not because the first movie showed us that plots get in the way of scenes where people die bloody bullety deaths.

"You guys liked 'Over the Top', right?"

This is an action movie, so I'm really not going to dwell on acting much more than to say it was never intrusively bad by anyone.

Stallone is Stallone, he's never been a great actor but he's always been decent.  At times the Stallone slur make him sound like Scooby Doo but he does a serviceable enough job.  Though if you're looking for any sort of nuance or complexity from Barney Ross you're looking in the wrong place.

Dolph Lundgren (possibly in an attempt to make up for Jet Li's reduced roll) has a much bigger part in this one.  Gunnar's turncoat behavior is all forgotten and never brought up, which is good because that bullshit was stupid to begin with.  Unfortunately his role as the comedic relief stretches a bit thin at times, which is a shame because out of all the old ass action stars in the movie he's one of few that's actually a pretty good actor.

Jason Statham is back, and so's his girlfriend, but she's only in one scene and keeps annoyingly calling him at the beginning of the movie.  This is all forgotten later in the movie and never brought up again.  I guess we're just supposed to know that his relationship is going okay now.  There's a lot of awesome Statham-fu.

Terry Crews and Randy Couture play two large men who shoot things and otherwise beat people.  It's a step down for Crews, but for Couture it's a step up from his annoyingly bad performance in the first one.  I still didn't much care for ole' Cauliflower Ear, but I wasn't aggressively wishing for his death this time around.

Jet Li only appears in the beginning of a movie, and his one scene makes you wish he were in the rest of it.  Watching Li punch blood out of a man's head for 3 seconds cements him as an awesome part of the movie and makes you wish he hadn't got treated so shitty in the first one so he'd actually want to come back.

Up-and-comer Scott Adkins gets the Gary Daniels role in this one as the villains main henchman/heavy.  He seems to be affecting some sort of Russian accent but he has a badass beard and a cool looking knife.  I still don't know how I feel about him being the lead in the new "Universal Soldier" movie, though.

Motherfucking Van Damme!  I now realize the mistake that his entire film career is, he's always played the hero and sucked when instead he should've been playing villains.  Everything about VanDamme that doesn't work for heroic roles works as a villain: his outrageous accent, his leathery hangdog face from years of alcoholism and drug abuse, his line delivery.  Van Damme is one of the better things about this movie and definitely an improvement on Eric Roberts' scumbag CIA agent from part 1.

Chuck Norris' strengths have never been in acting, that doesn't change one little bit here.  He's still better than Randy Couture.

Nan Yu sure is in this movie.  She sure is.

"When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way.  From your first cigarette to your last dyin' day"

As I said above, the plot to this movie is ludicrously simple, but that's one of its strengths.  The first movie tried to weave some big grandiose story when all we wanted to see was bullets going into people and dirty brawling fist fights.  Fortunately we have Simon "Con Air" West direction and not Simon "Tomb Raider/When a Stranger Calls" West, and he gives us those things in spades.

The opening of the movie just gets your blood pumping and you're ready for carnage and West barely makes you wait 30 minutes before getting some more.  After the mid-way point of the movie there's gunfights every 5 minutes until everything is dead, culminating in a massive 20-minute gun orgy where everyone (except Jet Li) wrecks everything in sight until they run out of bullets... and then we proceed with a montage of gratuitous knife-fucking until more guns happen.

Now, I want to address Chuck Norris.  Chuck is in the movie all of like 10 minutes, if that.  His character "Booker", who may or may not be the same character from "Good Guys Wear Black", is a bit of a "Lone Wolf", (get it?) so he remains out of the movie and even when he's in it he doesn't move around a lot.  This is likely because Chuck Norris is 72 years old and is starting to look and sound like Clu Gulager these days.  Still he gets a couple good moments and his character wrecks some shit up, just don't expect any spin kicks out of the senior citizen.

The final fight between Vilain and Ross is fucking phenomenal and probably one of the best of Van Damme or Stallone's careers.  It plays to their strengths with Stallone showing his boxing moves and Van Damme showing he can still do that high-jump spin-kick he's so famous for.  (Though he can apparently only do it once as the second time he does it I swear it was the footage of him doing it the first time.)  The fight between Jason Statham and mini-boss Scott Adkins is less impressive, but it does involve a helicopter so you know it's gonna be good.

Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzeneggar finally get in on the action here in a silly little scene involving a smart car that's memorable and funny.  Unfortunately Arnold is as terrible and actor as he's ever been and he really stretches the audience's patience with his trade-mark terrible one liners. (He uses a play on "I'll be back/I'm back at least 3 times")  The following is an actual exchance from the movie:

Schwarzenegger: "I'll be back"
Willis: "You're always back, this time I'll be back."
Schwarzeneggar: "Yippi Ki Yay"

then Chuck Norris walks up

Schwarzenegger: <Looks at Norris> Who's next, Rambo?

Also: Stallone has easily the worst line in anything ever.  "We keep it light until we have to go dark, and then we go pitch black."  I'm getting that tattooed on my arm AND put on my tombstone.  I wish I could graduate all over again so I could put that bitch in the year book.

The only real honest complaint I have here is that Jet Li didn't feel compelled to return for longer.  At very least the movie could have benefited from him coming in in the final hour and adding some more violence to an already absurdly violent scene.

And this isn't so much a gripe, but I found it weird that Mickey Rourke's character Tool was never mentioned.  I get why he wasn't in it as Rourke has become a bit of a prima-doma after having his career rescued by Robert Rodriguez after throwing it away by doing this exact thing years ago (Mickey Rourke is a Kenny Powers-like figure if ever there was one) but the fact that they pretend he never existed, like they found out he was a pedophile between that movie and this one, was kind of odd.

Van Damme stops the movie mid-way to try and sell the cast knives so he can keep his electricity on this month.

Ultimately, if you're looking for a deep intelligent movie you'll need to look elsewhere.  There's nothing deep and thoughtful here.  However, if you enjoy the violent spectacle of action movies from the 70s/80s/90s then "The Expendables 2" is definitely a movie you need in your life.  It exceeds the things it pays homage to in many ways and is just a lot of fun.  This is the movie that finally made me forgive Simon West for "Tomb Raider." 

Here's hoping that part 3 might feature Kurt Russell, Mark Singer, Olivier Gruner, Vin Diesel, Dwanyne Johnson, Chow Yon Fat, Donnie Yen, Tony Jaa, or Danny Trejo.

FUCK Steven Seagal.

I give "The Expendables 2" a 5 out of 5.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)


Directed by: Rupert Wyatt (maker of nothing you've seen)

Starring: Andy Serkis, James Franco, Freida Pinto

Other Actors of Note: John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tyler Labine, Tom Felton

Plot: An origin story set in present day San Francisco, where man's own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.

Imagine the crazy world where we NEED another "Planet of the Apes" remake. People act like the original quintology wasn't flawless or easy to understand. I mean it's simple: an astronaut going to the ends of the universe gets sucked into a wormhole or something and gets spit out on another planet where humans are dumb mute cattle and three types of apes are some manner of ruling society. After the human proves that he's just as good as those damn dirty apes he rides off into the desert and sings "Oh my God I was wrong, it was Earth all along. Well you finally made a monkey, yes you finally made a monkey out of me!" Then chills out with some subteranean telekinetic mutants until the rescue ship (that literally must have been sent like a week after his; NASA does not trust Charlton Heston) shows up whereupon he blows up the whole planet, the maniac. Ah God damn him, damn him all to Hell.

Then the only two apes that weren't complete dickbags go back in time using his same "irreparable" rocket where the tables turned and it is the apes who are the minority, wherein they're killed but their super-spawn is adopted by Ricardo Montelban and is groomed to become che guevera to a majority population of intelligent apes that have become a staple of every home because they were the only natural progression after that crazy space flu killed off all the cats and dogs.

The apes lead a revolution, and then they decide not to, but then they decide to go ahead later anyway and greatly reduce the human population so that in 2000 years all humans are either inexplicably non-vocal sheep or super-powered psychic CHUDs that worship nuclear weapons. I mean really, what's so hard to understand about that?

Well apparently SOMEBODY decided that the answer was "most of it" because we have a reboot of the entire franchise that is a prequel to the original movie, a remake of "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes", and a sequel all at the same time.

So James Franco and Tyler Labine are scientists; I honestly think they intentionally cast the two actors most associated with simpletons and stoners on purpose. They're developing a gene therapy that causes the brain to grow new cells that cures Alzheimers which is what makes the apes smart to beging with, or in laymen's terms "SCIENCE MOTHERFUCKERS!"

But an ape goes completely nuts-shit in the building and for some reason they shut down the entire project in spite of promising results because a wild animal behaved like a wild animal. This makes total sense. So Labine is told to euthanize all the monkeys because the head of the project is a grade a dickhole, but he saves a newborn which he pawns off on James Franco to take home.

Franco takes the baby ape to his humble gigantic three story house with spiral staircases and he and his Alzheimers afflicted father John Lithgow grow attached to the baby Caeser. Unfortunately is getting worse, so bad that his at-home-nurse quits her job when he has a bad spell because she is apparently terrible at her job and just a horrible human being in general.

Caeser grows and gets smarter until Franco's fuckwad neighbor (who has, count em, 3 encounters with bad things in this movie and can't be arsed to act like anything other than a complete bag of dicks) gets him thrown into a primate habitat for protecting Lithgow from this monster of person who's going to call the police on a man obviously suffering from advanced Alzheimers because he tore up his fucking corvette that he inexplicably left unlocked with the keys in it on the street.

Caeser is in the most evil of primate habitats; we know this because it's run by Draco Malfoy and Hannibal Lektor (no I did not spell that wrong, watch Manhunter you uneducated bastard) but it's cool because he uses magic science gas to make all the other monkeys super smart and then runs amok around San Francisco wrecking shit up until they can make it to the redwood forest where I assume they'll make their way to the coast to rendezvous with the sharks from "Deep Blue Sea" to take over the world.

"I gave that bitch an ape hug. Bitches love ape hugs."

This movie has plot inconsistencies, but as you'll see from my outline of the series at large, it's got a whole lot less plot-holes than the original one. It actually gives valid reasons for apes being smarter and magic science gas makes a lot more sense than "My distant descendants came back from the future and gave birth to me."

There's a reason given for how the apes could take over the world even though they're outnumbered, there's even a seed that could easily explain telekinetic morlocks in the future, and even the Mars mission that disappears mysteriously into thin air gets mentioned very briefly. Also somebody totally says "Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!"

And subtext! Oh this one throws out everything it can from commentaries on race relations, the feelings of putting a loved one with Alzheimer's in a home, animal testing, capitalism. This movie makes social commentaries all over the place and it never makes any one too prominent or heavy handed so they all mesh together and work.

"And we'd give the dog shifty eyes, that way you'd know it was evil."

I'm sure some will complain about the shift to CG-apes over traditional make-up effects, but the simple fact is that traditional make-up would have looked ridiculous and the motion capture is quite impressive even if the CG is still apparent. But you can deal with those stiff faced monkey suits so you'll watch your dodgy CG and you'll damn well like it, dadgummet!

It's an admirable effort and the movie moves in nice little segments that transfer nicely from lighthearted to dark. My only complaint is that they really wuss out on the ending. Planet of the Apes movies are supposed to have bleak depressing endings and this one's all happy and hopeful. Andy Serkis' Caeser isn't near the bloodthirsty bastard that Roddy McDowell's Caeser was, fortunately there's a much scarier looking ape by the name of Koba who could easily cause the uprising we've all been hoping for in a sequel that hopefully will one day exist.

Me, I'm hoping the next one is a remake of the original except update everything to look all futurey. Let's get a younger man to play Taylor like, say, Mark Wahlberg. And we could use a lot of great character actors like Michael Clark Duncan, Paul Giamatti, and Helena Bonham Carter to play the apes. Shit, they could get Tim Roth to play the villain! And we'd need a good journeyman director to really capture the vision of "Planet of the Apes" somebody like Tim Burton! I'm picturing it in my head right now and I'm telling you there's no way it could fail!

"SLAAAAYER!!!"

It really is a great movie and it may just be the breath of life this series needed to get it kick-started again.

I give "Rise of the Planet of the Dawn of the Day of the Night of the Apes" a 5 out of 5.

Piranha 3D (2010)


Directed by: Alexander Aja

Starring: Steven R. McQueen, Elisabeth Shue, Jessica Szohr, Adam Scott, Jerry O'Connell

Other Actors of Note: Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, Ving Rhames, Eli Roth,

Plot: After a sudden underwater tremor sets free scores of the prehistoric man-eating fish, an unlikely group of strangers must band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food for the area's new razor-toothed residents.



It's been a pretty weak summer filled with a lot of flops and a fair amount of movies that were good but not great (thus why I haven't reviewed them) I don't need to tell you that "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" is awesome, nor that "Predators" was a worthwhile sequel to the original (still not as good as "Predator 2", fuck the haters.) But I do feel the need to comment on "Piranha 3D" because it's a more than worthwhile remake, it's not making much money, and it's the best movie you'll see this summer.

The movie opens with Richard Dreyfuss reprising his role as oceanographer Matt Hooper from "Jaws." Hooper's moved away from the ocean, obviously due to fear of being eaten by fish and seeing as Quint died a sharky death and Chief Brody was the casualty of a bad sequel explaining why a good actor wouldn't want to be in it, he's the only member of the trio left. He's sitting in a boat drinking Amity beer and singing along to "Show Me the Way to Go Home" on his radio. As he's trying to reel in a fish, he knocks a bottle of beer of the boat which falls to the bottom of the lake and inadvertently causes an earthquake that releases an entire underwater lake filled with hungry prehistoric piranha. Hooper finally suffers the death the book gave him but Spielberg left out of the movie.

Open on our small town with a name I can't remember as douche bags pour in to drink, fuck, and listen to terrible music. Here we meet our hero Jake (Steven R. McQueen) and his mother, the sheriff, Julie (Elizabeth Shue)

Jake comes to pick up his little sister from band practice and meets Joe Francis analogue Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell), the creator of "Wild Wild Girls" who hires Jake to show him some good locations to shoot his bad soft core porn.

Predictably everything gets fucked up and fish eat everyone. There's really not much more to explain here.


Steven R. McQueen, who imdb tells me is in "The Vampire Diaries", is a good actor in spite of what the information between those commas tells me. It's unfair to compare him to his grandfather (the late Steve McQueen for those of you who are a little slow) so I won't do that. I will simply say that Jake comes across as a shy teenage boy very realistically and that is seemingly deceptively hard for a 21-year-old actor if every other movie with older actors playing teenagers is any indication.

Jessica Szohr, who imdb tells me is in "Gossip Girl", is a good actress in spite of what the information between those commas tells me. I will simply say that Kelly comes across as a girl-next-door type very realistically and that is seemingly deceptively hard for a 25-year-old actress if every other movie with older actors playing teenagers is any indication.

Now, with the teens out of the way, let's get to the characters and actors we actually give a fuck about:

Elisabeth Shue plays Chief Brody from "Jaws", she exactly plays him, which is impressive seeing as she is a woman, and not Roy Scheider. Okay, she's not exactly Chief Brody but she's the exact same thing. Shue shows off what a badass she can be when the script allows and is a much more compelling hero than Jake.

Jerry O'Connell is a scene stealer as both comedic relief and the closest thing this movie has to a human villain. Every single line, movement, or action on O'Connell's part is memorable and usually hilarious.

If there had to be somebody to give the lame exposition filled with plot holes, it had to be Christopher Lloyd. Lloyd appears in all his Doc Brown splendor and his brief screen time is filled with magic.

Ving Rhames plays a role that was obviously written for Ving Rhames and does his best to fill out the checklist for "badass black guy." He says both "I'm getting to old for this" and "*insert bad pun here* Mothafucka!"


Forget the trailer you saw. The CG fish look much better in the movie. In fact all of the effects in this movie look good, though most of the underwater attacks are quick and hard to see, but I think that's intentional.

This is another of the dreaded post-conversion 3D movies. To be fair, Aja decided to this before post-conversion proved to be so catastrophically horrible and this movie was filmed with 3D in mind so this is easily the best post-conversion film I've seen yet.

The one scene Aja did film with 3D cameras is a long and hilarious underwater nude lesbian scene between Kelly Brook and Riley Steel. This scene is one of many instances of nudity that are shockingly prevalent in this film. This movie is about 20% plot and characters and 80% tits and gore. Aja obviously didn't want to make a SyFy original movie here so he gives fans of cheesy monster movies what they want, monster action. You will not believe that this movie is not NC-17 when you see it. There are so many memorable gore moments that I dare not spoil, in the biggest douche bag massacre ever filmed. There's roughly ten minutes of just solid deaths and it should please the gore hounds out there.

The movie is quite obviously tongue-in cheek but that fortunately never spills over to the characters. This movie wouldn't have been as great is the actors were all hamming it up. Instead everyone plays this whole thing deadpan which only proves to make every single blood drenched minute of it a load of fun.

If you like a fun, violent, and nudity-filled horror movie that delights in its own campy greatness then I recommend that you watch "Piranha 3-D" by any means necessary. 5 out of 5.

Pig Hunt (2008)


Director: James Isaac

Starring: Travis Aaron Wade, Tina Huang, Howard Johnson Jr., Rajiv Shah, Trevor Bullock, Jason Foster, Nick Tagas, Bryonn Bain

Other Actors of Note: Les Claypool

Plot: When John takes his San Francisco friends to his deceased uncle's remote ranch to hunt wild pigs, it seems like a typical guys weekend with guns - despite the presence of John's sexy girlfriend Brooks. But as John and his crew trek deeper into the forest, they begin tracking the awful truth about his uncle's demise and the legend of The Ripper -- a murderous three-thousand-pound black boar! Taken from www.imdb.com.


"Pig Hunt" is not a good movie. Not at all.

To call "Pig Hunt" good would be to insult it in ways man cannot even fathom. "Pig Hunt" is maybe one of the best movies I've seen in ages.

So the story of "Pig Hunt" involves a guy and his buddies (enlisted men who have never seen combat) going out into the woods near one's late uncle's house to hunt wild pigs. Pretty soon the group meets up with two old hillbillies that used to be friends with the protagonist. The movie starts with a bunch of people wandering around in the woods finding mutilated animals until someone gets injured, the second act involves a murderous family of rednecks pursuing the group through the woods, and the third act is where shit gets really fucked up. If you're not looking for this movie on Amazon right now, then you're dead inside.


In a world of bland clean-cut protagonists, there's no reason why Travis Aaron Wade's John Hickman should be anything more. This is why it's so shocking and amazing that John really comes into his own by act two, and by act 3 he's easily a guy to root for even though he has no spectacular character traits to speak of, nor any sort of character arc. He's a grumpy country boy living in the city at the beginning and that's what he is at the end, but he remains one ofthe better reserved protagonists I've seen in movies of this type.

Tina Huang's Brooks is another example of a character I shouldn't care about. She starts out the movie as some sort of anti-war activist painter who tags along on he hunting trip seemingly just to annoy the audience by being the typical annoying anti-machismo strawman. But just like John, Brooks shows herself to be pretty awesome in act two, proving to be an expert marksman and a cool headed sensible horror heroine that's not going to just run into the woods screaming like an idiot with her tits bouncing. She's also really hot, so... bonus!

Howard Johnson Jr.'s character is a necessary evil in a movie like this. He's an enlisted soldier with no combat experience, he's a truly annoying rude shithead and a complete fucking idiot. Easily every single bad thing that happens in this movie is his fault. He comes into his own toward the end of act 2 but unfortunately doesn't get to do much in act 3. Still he plays a truly hate-able character that somehow becomes endearing partway through.

Jason Foster plays the closest thing to a villain in the movie (aside of course, from the giant pig.) Foster's Jake is your typical backwoods tough who's too obviously gotten high on his own ability to bully others around with intimidation and violence. He's a capable villain (of the 5 of 6 this movie has) and plays his part well enough to be menacing even before his character shows signs of becoming violent.

Bryonn Bain plays a tall black hippie in a tie-dyed toga that carries a Kurkri Machete and grows weed in the forest. I would delve further into this but I've told you all you need to know to realize his greatness. A part early on where he calls Howard Johnson Jr. a "negro" is one of the first big laughs the movie gets.


I know it may sound like I'm being sarcastic talking about this movie. It most likely sounds like pure kitsch and certainly the events that take place in this movie are absolutely ridiculous, but that doesn't mean they're not strong enough to stand on their own. Every time Rob Zombie makes a movie, this is the type of movie he's trying to make.

Sure the gore is well done and it's plentiful enough to satisfy most people watching for that alone. But the story is awesome and with each section that unfolds, it just gets better. Sure we know the moment we see the family of hyper-Christian rednecks that they're going to go after the main characters before the movie is over, we know machete hippie is up to no good, and we know that at some point a giant pig is going to show up and wreck some shit up. But each time it happens it happens in such a way that it seems fresh and damn near illegally entertaining.

James Issac, director of "Skinwalkers" and "Jason X", directed this movie and I had no idea that he had something this good in his system. Never once does the movie feel bogged down or boring and things unfold in the most amazing way channeling movies like "Razorback", "Deliverance", and "Apocalypse Now" in some sort of melting pot to make a movie that's as memorable as it is amazingly good.

This is a giant pig movie, yet we don't even get to see the pig until the end of Act 3 and it's completely missing from Act 2. Yet it never feels like the movie's dragging its feet, giving you plenty of suspense or action to chew on as you wait patiently for the pig to show up.

Clearly the movie is based more than a little bit on the legend of Hogzilla (the infamous pig even gets name-dropped at one point) and the writer easily could have made this another "monster systematically kills kids in the woods movie", but instead (just like in "Razorback" and the upcoming South Korean pig movie "Chaw") we're left to focus on the characters and villains far more evil and disturbing than the giant boar on the cover.

My only complaints are that the movie ends on a strange note, and one scene involves two characters being left for dead and we're just left to assume that they died without so much as even seeing their bodies later in the movie.

The soundtrack is also a big part of the "Pig Hunt" experience, mostly due to the score by Les Claypool (AKA, the reason that "Primus" sounds like "Primus") who also cameos as preacher collared leader of the hillbilly clan.


If you even have a mild love of horror then there's absolutely no reason why you should walk away from this movie displeased. It's a monster movie that dares to look beyond its own definition and be something fun and memorable. This movie is not a rent, it's a definite buy.

I give "Pig Hunt" a 5 out of 5.

Operation: Endgame (2010)


Directed by: Fouad Mikati

Starring: Joe Anderson, Rob Corddry, Ellen Barkin, Odette Yustman
Other Actors of Note: Brandon T. Jackson, Ving Rhaimes, Emille de Ravin, Zach Galifianakis, Beth Grant, Bob Odenkirk, Jeffrey Tambor

Plot: A battle ensues among groups of government spy teams in an underground facility after their boss is assassinated. Taken from www.imdb.com

I love it when a comedy pushes itself to be something more. Sure you can drop as many f bombs and be as gross-out and sexual as you like, but when a comedy is truly at its greatest is when it steps across a line into something else, something darker.

"Tropic Thunder" did this, "Punch Drunk Love" did this, and "Employee of the Month" (the one with Matt Dillon, not the one with Dane Cook) did this (though it overstepped its bounds and finished off with a shitty ending that ruined the entire movie.)

So naturally when I hear about a black comedy that's like a cross between "Battle Royale" and "Mean Guns" (Remember "Mean Guns?" Of course you don't you silly bastard, it was terrible!) that promised to be all manner of violent and gory, I immediately signed up.

The set-up is simple: Our hero Fool (Played by "The Crazies'" Joe Anderson) has just landed a job aboard Omega Team in a secret underground facility in Washington, DC. The group he's joined deal with assassinations, cover-ups, and all manner of sneaky underground spy shit.

After meeting with his contact High Priestess (Maggie Q) and new boss Chariot (Rob Corddry) -they're all codenamed after tarot cards- he's brought down into the underground facility where he meets with his old flame Temperance (Odette Yustman). Soon, team leader Devil (Jeffrey Tambor) is killed, but not before setting off a program called Endgame that will delete all files in the space of one hour before filling the entire underground complex with napalm.

Now the spies are caught downstairs, with Team Alpha ordered to kill Team Omega, and the mysterious Hermit (Zach Galifianakis) knowing the only way out.


There are a lot of interesting characters in this movie, but Joe Anderson's protagonist "Fool" is not one of them. Fool is about as dry and uninteresting as protagonists seem to come. This movie seems to be the inverse of Anderson's role in "The Crazies" where his screen presence stole just about every scene he was in. As a hero, Fool isn't much and as such I didn't really care that much whether he lived or died.

Odette Yustman's Temperance is another weak point of the film. She's some sort of femme fatale that goes around and sleeps with world leaders and dictators to leak information from them. She's also not the least bit likeable and I couldn't give less of a fuck about her former relationship with Fool.

Rob Corddry saves this move, and I say this with absolute sincerity. I'm not a big fan of Rob Corddry. He was pretty good on the Daily Show but everything since then has been utter shit. In fact there is no reason why this character should have worked, because Chariot seems like a carbon copy of Corddry's character from "Harold and Kumar Go to Guantanimo Bay" at first glance, but he is. Chariot is a foul-mouthed drunken asshole that seems to either brood or yell the entire movie, he always seems to be mad, and doesn't have the least bit of respect for anyone. But Chariot is charmingly hilarious, walking around sipping whiskey out of a bottle shaped like a Baretta, and when the action starts he kicks a whole lot of ass. However, what really makes Corddry the best part of this movie is that he really acts. There's a lot of Chariot under the surface about how he's not happy with the life he lives and cares a great deal about the agents he has control over. I never in my life dreamed that Rob Corddry could have given a performance like this and I dare say that I hope to see more of him in the future.

Ellen Barkin plays some horrible cougar named Empress that leads Alpha Team. She's pretty much the bitchiest bitch you ever did meet and the disturbing amount of collagen in her lips services to make the svelte body in the red dress she possesses that much more confusing to my libido. She's effectively the "bad guy" of the movie though she doesn't really seem to be worse than any of the rest of alpha team.

Brandon T. Jackson (Alpa Chino from "Tropic Thunder") and Emille de Ravin (Claire from "Lost) play a hyper conservative black man and a psychotic Jesus freak; respectively "Tower" and "Heirophant" of Team Alpha. Both are batshit crazy and a little bit creepy and give decent performances that are at least slightly more memorable than the rest.

Ving Rhaimes is given a one-joke character named Judgement. Judgement's entire purpose in the movie is to make bad puns using the words "Judgement" or "Judge." He's in the movie until he stops being funny (see: immediately) and then dies. Hooray.

Zach Galifianakis plays Hermit. Easily the weirdest character in this or any other movie I've ever seen. Hermit used to do assassinations until he got diabetes, now he wanders around the complex in a hazmat suit and gas mask for reasons never really explained. This character does rely a bit on Galifianakis' brand name weirdness, but that doesn't take away from the character and he was doing these roles since long before he got famous.

Oh, Bob Odenkirk is in this. His comedic abilities are absolutely wasted on his character but he does a very good job.


Technically, this movie looks great and the special effects all look top shelf despite this being a semi-indie movie. The characters (except Fool and Temperance) are all interesting and well fleshed out.

The plot remains solid, keeping things funny throughout without taking away from the more serious aspects of them film. For this alone, the director should be honored. It's no easy task keeping a balance like that.

The movie is inter-cut with scenes of Barack Obama's inauguration speech, sort of as a way of showing why the spies are being phased out and their base and files being destroyed. It's a great story of the old regime covering up the dirty works that the new regime would not approve of.

I'm told that the original script, titled "Rogue's Gallery" was much more comedic and had a different ending. I think the ending to this, which I wont ruin, is a bit of a let down. However, the ending isn't a deal breaker like it the ending of "Employee of the Month"


It's not a perfect movie, some actors are wasted, other actors have too much screen time, there's a few plot holes, and the ending leaves something to be desired. But if you're looking for a good gory, funny, dark, serious comedy and a damn fine movie for a first time director, this movie is for you.

I give "Operation: Endgame" a 4 out of 5.

Daybreakers (2009)


Directed by: Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill, Willem Dafoe

Plot: In the year 2019, a plague has transformed most every human into vampires. Faced with a dwindling blood supply, the fractured dominant race plots their survival; meanwhile, a researcher works with a covert band of vamps on a way to save humankind. Taken from www.imdb.com.


Let me start this review by addressing all of the people who didn't like The Spierig Brothers' previous movie "Undead." *ahem* Fuck you for hating on an original, well-put-together, technically and comedically brilliant film because it did something a little different. I do not understand you zombie fans that have to have that shit started by a virus and only a virus every single fucking time. Just because somebody tries to use aliens or some supernatural explanation it is not sacrilege. Just because George A. Romero invented the fucking things doesn't mean everyone has to copy his exactly. "Undead" was genius and you're morons for not recognizing this.

That said, I was naturally excited for the brothers' sophomore effort into horror movies. The fact that Sam Neill was involved only served to excite me even more. I will watch anything -except "Jurassic Park 3"- over and over again.

Our main character is Edward (Ethan Hawke), a reluctant vampire who works at a blood bank. I doubt this was intentional but given that he only drinks pigs blood and is kind of a pussy, it makes for a nice touch.

Edward is looking for a blood substitute so that vampires will not have to rely on the ever-dwindling human stock for sustenance. His employer Charles Bromley (Sam Neill) is especially concerned about this due to his love of being a vampire. It seems that when a vampire goes without blood, they turn into a Count Orlock-looking bat creature called a Subsider.

With blood supplies dwindling to practically nothing and Subsider epidemics popping up all over the city it's looking like the end of vampire society as we know it. That's why it's fortuitous when Edward runs into a group of humans trying to escape the vampires.

It seems that the humans are in the midst of a man named Elvis (Willem Dafoe) who has managed to accidentally cure himself of vampirism. Edward and Elvis work to replicate this effect for the benefit of the world as a whole.

Ethan Hawke gives a more than passable performance as Edward Dalton. I don't know if it's Hawke's fault but Edward is a rather boring character who doesn't really have much growth throughout the film. He becomes less of a pussy toward the end but that's about as far as it goes.

Claudia Karvan plays Audrey Bennett, the head of the human resistance. She feels like a tacked-on character added simply to have some sort of lead female in the movie. She brings nothing special to the table and as such I'm not going to talk about her any longer.

Willem Defoe rules every scene he's in. He doesn't go over the top with Elvis, but it could hardly be said that he's playing the character straight either. Elvis speaks in a deep southern accent that seems to fade in and out at will. Given that the film takes place nowhere near where there should be southern people I believe this was an intentional way to bring across what an eccentric person the character is.

Sam Neill is also great as our villain and it is honestly a shame that Bromley and Elvis never share a scene together. Perhaps this would have caused the movie to explode from trying to contain too much greatness in one place. Unfortunately the role is a bit too small for the actor, Bromley is a bit of a generic evil bastard and is given little characterization beyond this to exploit.

"Okay, who just said 'Jurassic Park 3 sucked?'"

The story is a pretty straightforward affair, nothing that's not been touched on in a myriad of other films numerous times. What makes "Daybreakers" unique is the way it immerses you in its world. We're treated with small tidbits throughout the film that lend themselves to bringing this world to life.

There are toothpaste ads featuring people with pearly white fangs. A brief mention is given to forest fires being started by vampire animals going into sunlight and at one point we see the aftermath of one such happening though it's just something we see in passing during a chase scene. Mirrors are all video screens because vampires don't have reflections.

The Spierigs do their job in making this world feel real and not like something just dreamed up for a movie. It's impossible not to compare this movie to the "Blade" movies, which failed to immerse you in a similar world in any way.

In many ways "Daybreakers" is what movies like the "Blade" and "Underworld" series' should have been. Also, in comparrison to both of those movies, this one doesn't skimp on the gore. This movie doesn't just show blood. There are several disgusting gore effects and one scene toward the end is basically an bloody orgy of death and dismemberment.

There's some dodgy CGI at a few points but I blame this on the movie's modest budget and not the film-makers.

"Shoot it! It's sparkling for some reason!"

It doesn't re-invent the genre but it certainly breathes some life into it. Not the best vampire movie out there but it's one of the few that manages to be good enough to watch twice and though it could have done more it's a great second effort from a couple of promising film-makers who I hope to hear from again very soon.

I give "Daybreakers" a 5 out of 5. If you like horror at all, make it a point to see this one.