Iron Man (2008)


Directed by: John Favreau

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow

Other Actors of Note: Terrence Howard, Samuel L. Jackson

Plot: Tony Stark is the complete playboy who also happens to be an engineering genius. While in Afghanistan demonstrating a new missile he's captured and wounded. His captors want him to assemble a missile for them but instead he creates an armored suit and a means to prevent his death from the shrapnel left in his chest by the attack. He uses the armored suit to escape. Back in the U.S. he announces his company will cease making weapons and he begins work on an updated armored suit only to find that Obadiah Stane, his second in command at Stark industries has been selling Stark weapons to the insurgents. He uses his new suit to return to Afghanistan to destroy the arms and then to stop Stane from misusing his research. Taken from www.imdb.com.


In the wake of the mediocre "X-Men: The Last Stand", the criminally underrated "Ghost Rider", and the overly-hated but disappointing sequel "Spider-Man 3" Marvel studios said "You know what, you bastards have been fucking up our properties for years and from now on if anybody screws up movies based on our characters, it's gonna be us!"

The first movie coming out of Marvel studios was "Iron Man", a movie that by all right should suck large amounts of ass. I mean, it's a comic about a rich prick who develops a super electronic armor that effectively kills a lot of people, he has no memorable villains beyond the most blatant Chinese stereotype since Nicholas Cage played Fu Manchu in "Werewolf Women of the SS", and it's done by the director of "Elf."

However, facing against all odds, "Iron Man" accidently ended up being great. Director John Favreau stayed true to the comics (despite the fact that in current comic continuity Tony Stark is a gigantic asshole.)

I know I kind of missed the bus on this review, but this blog was started too long after I saw the movie in theaters. So now with the new DVD release I've decided to review it. Don't like it? Bite me.

Of course it's the story of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), a millionare playboy/mechanical prodigy who builds weapons. When he is kidnapped in the Middle East and realizes his company is double dealing he builds a suit of armor to help him escape.

Upon getting stateside Stark ask for two things, an American Hamburger (for some reason he goes to Burger King for this, which is not unlike going to Australia and eating at the Outback Steakhouse) and to call a press conference where he announces that Stark Industries will no longer make weapons.

Of course this pisses off his double-dealing business associate Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) who already seems to have it out for Tony (presumably because he pissed on his Persian rug, which really tied the room together.) And ultimately it ends with a robot suit fight awesome enough to make a Japanese nerd cream in his pants.


Robert Downey Jr. was made for the role of Tony Stark. Looking back I don't know how I ever pictured anyone else in the roll. He captures the witty sarcastic womanizing drunken charm of Tony Stark perfectly and there's not a line spoken by Downey Jr. that is not wonderful. Seriously this movie could have been Tony Stark talking for an hour and a half and I would have enjoyed it.

Jeff Bridges is good once you get over the fact that he looks entirely different from any other movie he's been in, but you get used to it. This is Bridges first time as a villain and he plays a sufficiently menacing character, a sort of behind the scenes menace who is doing all the evil deeds behind the unknowing figure head's back. So essentially he's Dick Cheney. (HAW HAW POLITICAL HUMOR! Okay I'm done.)

Gwyneth Paltrow is charming and lovable as Pepper Potts, Tony's assistant and halfway romantic interest. It was refreshing that she never crosses the threshhold over to becoming the actual romantic interest, the relationship is explored more subtly than usual and it was nice to see. However Paltrow isn't particularly wowing in the role, she was good but there was nothing particularly memorable about her performance.

Terrence Howard was as equally a good choice for the role of James Rhodes, the man who would ultimately become War Machine. He's a perfect straight man to Downey Jr's off the wall antics and it really is a shame that he won't be returning for the next movie. I'm sure Don Cheadle will do a fine job but I'll still miss Howard in the roll in the same way I miss Sam Elliot as General Thunder Bolt Ross and Michael Gough as Alfred Pennyworth.

Samuel L. Jackson seems just as gimmicky in the role of Nick Fury as the likeness of Samuel L. Jackson seemed in "The Ultimates." Maybe Jackson will change my mind on the subject, but right now I think I still prefer the made-for-TV David Hasselhoff Nick Fury to Sam Jackson's rendition.


As I said, director John Favreau really did an excellent job bringing Iron Man to life. The suit looks wonderful, obviously borrowing more from the Ultimate Iron-Man look with just a touch of the classic.

The Mark-1 Suit trul does look like ther original Iron-Man suit brought ot life and it was one of the more impressive things in the film. The CGI is well done and looks as close to real as one can reasonably expect.

The Iron Monger suit is the real showpiece here, though. Contrary to popular belief Obadiah Stane and The Iron Monger were in the comics. Though the Iron Monger more closely resmebles the Parnell Jacobs War Machine Suit than the design its based on.

The fight between the two suits is incredibly reminiscent of the fight between Murphy and Cain at the climax of "Robocop 2" in fact, many of Iron Man's big fight scenes are somewhat reminiscent of "Robocop" in general.


Now enjoying this movie, I couldn't help but draw parallels to "Ghost Rider" which I rather enjoyed but most people hated. Indeed pretty much every problem listed by critics for that movie is present here.

The CG looks real but not real enough, there's not enough appearances by the title character (I think Ghost Rider actually appeared more than Iron Man), the love story is dull an uneccesarry, the villain is a second stringer and not terribly interesting, there's a build up that the title hero will be helped by a second character similar to him only to be let down (Caretake in "Ghost Rider" and War Machine in "Iron Man") and the final battle is a bit anticlimactic at its end.

I think what it comes down to is Downey Jr. is just a far better actor than Nicholas Cage. Cage was undoubtedly the main problem with "Ghost Rider." (In my opinion the only big problem.)

As I said, Favreau brought the character into the movie perfectly. Hearkening back to the comic's beginnings with the Mark I armor and having the theme song from the old 60s "Iron-Man" cartoon appear 3 times (In the casino, on Rhodes' phone as Tony's personalized ringtone, and during the awards ceremony)

Some of the choices I found questionable, like Jarvis now being a computer system as opposed to a knock-off Alfred Pennyworth and Yin-Sin now being middle-eastern as opposed to Asian and having his name changed to Yensen, but I got used to it.

Though I found the same problem with "Iron-Man" the movie that I found with "Iron-Man" the comic. Tony Stark's whole rise to glory hinges on that he is tired of being a merchant of death and wants to stop all the killing, but the fact is, he kills a lot of people in this movie. Granted all of these people are clearly labeled "enemy" but it still seems a bit hypocritical. But that's not Favreau's fault as the comic always had that problem as well, the movie just moves on and pretends not to notice that Iron Man is blowing up terrorists like there's no tomorrow.


It's a fun movie that's very faithful to the comic. It doesn't try to be more than it is, it doesn't come off as pretentious or overstylized and manages to stay true to its roots. In retrospect I found this movie on the whole to be more enjoyable then DC's golden boy this summer "The Dark Knight."

I give "Iron Man" a 5 out of 5. Buy it, watch it, love it.

Quarantine (2008)


Directed by: John Erick Dowdle

Starring: Jennifer Carpenter, Steve Harris

Other Actors of Note: Jay Hernandez, Jermaine Jackson, Doug Jones

Plot: Television reporter Angela Vidal (Carpenter) and her cameraman (Harris) are assigned to spend the night shift with a Los Angeles Fire Station. After a routine 911 call takes them to a small apartment building, they find police officers already on the scene in response to blood curdling screams coming from one of the apartment units. They soon learn that a woman living in the building has been infected by something unknown. After a few of the residents are viciously attacked, they try to escape with the news crew in tow, only to find that the CDC has quarantined the building. Phones, internet, televisions and cell phone access have been cut-off, and officials are not relaying information to those locked inside. When the quarantine is finally lifted, the only evidence of what took place is the news crew’s videotape. Taken from www.imdb.com.


My generation can fuck right the hell off.

I went into this movie and found that the audience was all 20-somethings around my age and gave out an annoyed sigh. You might wonder why I would be so dissappointed to find that I was surrounded by people roughly my own age. It's mainly because I've found that they are (at least the ones I encounter most of the time) ignorant, annoying, and functionally retarded. (For reference I am working on getting a lawn so that I may tell children to get off of it.)

The reason I mention this is because "Quarantine" is one of the most unnecessary remakes I think has ever been made, seeing as the movie it was based on, "[REC]", came out in November of 2007. So why are we being treated to this remake of a movie that's not even a year old? Because of the aforementioned tweeny fucktards who are about as deep as a drop of piss on a toilet seat and would refuse to watch anything that isn't in English. And they won't read subtitles, because that would totally interrupt their texting.

Fortunately we have the lesser-quality dumbed-down remake that spells everything out and won't interrupt their texting. Though to be honest "Quarantine" is still too good and too smart for them as evidenced by the fact that A) I liked it and B) None of the pink popped collar assholes that felt that the rest of the theater wanted to hear their review of "well that was retarded" did.

Once again we meet Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter), a reporter on a late-night tv show this time set in LA instead of Not-Madrid Spain (I suck at geography, fuck you) where once again her and her cameraman, named Scott (Steve Harris) this time instead of Pablo, are shadowing some firefighters. They get a medical call and then head to an apartment to find a crazy old woman who takes a bite out of a policeman's neck and then they come back downstairs to find that they've been quarantined in the apartment building.


Jennifer Carpenter is a perfect choice to portray Angela Vidal. She is equally as if not cuter and more charming than Manuela Velasco (the actress who played Angela in the orignal film.) One of the finer points is that that Carpenter's Angela doesn't feel the need to talk as fucking much as Velasco's did. Carpenter communicates the same emotions through actions whereas Velasco wouldn't shut her goddamn mouth for five fucking seconds. If anything Angela is an improvement in this case.

Another character that has improved in the remake is Jake (named Manu in the original film), one of the firefighters who Angela and Scott are shadowing. Manu was fifteen shades of twenty, but Jake is easily twenty-five shades. Jay Hernandez showed definite potential in 2005's "Hostel" and here it seems he's come close to realizing it. Much like Carptenter, Hernandez conveys his thoughts and emotions very well through actions and facial expressions. This is also helped by the fact that Jake is just all kinds of awesome. He kills 3 zombies with a sledgehammer (one of them being a fucking German Shepard!) and then gives another one the Steven Seagal neck-break.

Now of the 3 main characters, Scott is the dissappointment. This is not to say that Stever Harris does a bad job, in fact he's just as likeable and realistic as Pablo Rosso in the original. Much like Pablo, Scott is the real main character of this film, we see everything through his eyes but this movie tries too much to make Scott seem like less of a passive observor by bringing him into the action more. This involves him commonly dropping or setting the camera aside (which gets more than a little annoying), there's also a scene of him killing a rat, and then one of him beating a zombie to death with the camera. I'm sure the latter is supposed to be traumatic or scary but it ends up being more funny than anything.

The rest of the characters are annoying and unimportant. That's one of the bigger dissappointments of the film as while the tenants weren't a big part of the original film they felt less like extras than they do here.


The effects in this movie are fair. Aside from Scott stomping on a rat the effects all look rather real but the problem is that Scott seems to shy away from every damn scene of violence and special effect in the whole movie.

This is the big problem, the camera seems to not want to focus in on anythign that makes the movie scary. Apparently the director decided he wanted to try and be fucking hitchcock and not give us a good look at ANYTHING. Even the newspaper clippings at the end that explain whats going on aren't seeable because for the brief moment Scott actually lingers on them the fucking lense is out of focus. The camera is always going in and out of focus and the light on top is flashing on and off like a fucking strobe and its terribly annoying.

Which brings me to the next problem. Everything is too fucking dark! "[REC]" to its credit was very brightly lit and everything was very easy to see until the power went out toward the end at which point it was supposed to shock and scare you and make things hard to see. However the shock is gone this time and honestly I didn't even notice that the power had gone out until Jay Hernandez said it had (but yet they still manage to use the electric elevator...?)

And finally, I know George A. Romero put a couple cracks in the 4th wall with "Diary of the Dead" but to his credit you could tell what was going on, and to be honest "[REC]" did a pretty fair job too. But just like "Cloverfield", "Quarantine" seems to have been filmed by a cerebral palsy sufferer sitting atop a paint can shaker.


Let it be said that "Quarantine" is by no means a waste of film. Unnecessary though it may be, for the most part it seems to meet or in some cases even surpass its predeccessor in quality. yes okay the darkness thing is annoying and the tenants are all vague stereotypes but the lead characters are wonderfully done and the authenticity of the film's opening is outdone in the American version. All parts are played perfectly and you really feel like you are watching real footage shot by people as opposed to characters in a movie.

The movie holds its own despite all the stupid flaws and comes out close to as good as the original....

That is... until we come to the end.

The following should only be read if you've seen "[REC]" or don't care if the ending is spoiler for you, otherwise skip past the next picture. But honestly if you can't figure out or at very least venture an educated guess as to what happens to the main character after watching any number of the other "first-person camera" movies then you truly are an ignorant dipshit.

The ending of "[REC]" was the big cherry on top of the sundae. The movie had been nothing but good all the way through. But the last 15 minutes were where we were taken out of a nightmare and plunged straight into hell.

Things happen roughly like they did in the original, Angela and Scott are the only ones left and they enter the penthouse apartment (called "the attic" in this movie because apparently Americans don't know what penthouses are, that's news to me.)

So anyway in the original we were treated to newspaper clippings and explanation that the zombie virus originated from a girl named Niña Medeiros who was supposedly possessed by a demon. It is revealed that the owner of the loft was a priest who was trying to cure Niña and had apparently been giving the virus to small children for trial runs.

Then the attic door swings open and Pablo puts the camera into the attack to look around, whereupon an infected child makes us all shit ourselves and breaks the light on the camera, thus forcing Pablo to turn on the night vision.

It is at this point that we see the silhouette of Niña coming down the hall on wobbily legs looking like some sort of otherworldly creature coming down the hallway nothing but skin and bones clad only in a pair of soiled panties and clutching a claw hammer. The shots of Niña looking around the apartment still to this day haunt me in my nightmares, that is probably the creepiest shit I have ever seen and when she finally turns on the cameraman you will most likely have a mild heart attack.

The director apparnetly looked at this masterpiece of a scene and went "nah, fuck that." The possession has been replaced with a strain of super rabies released by a doomsday cult. Apparently once again the producers were concerned about religious overtones in much the same way they were with "Doom" and decided to opt for biological instead.

I swear if they remade "The Exorcist" today Regan would've been bitten by some sort of radioactive woodchuck and Father Merrin would exorcise the mutation from her by beating her into submission with is gargantuan pectoral muscles.

Basically, this time around the owner of the loft is a member of the doomsday cult and he's injected rats as well as several small children with the virus. It tries to play coy and pretend to be mysterious by not spelling that out for you in this scene but with the rat trying to attack Scott earlier and the shot of a child running through a vent in one scene you will be able to easily figure this out if you're not busy texting at the time. (So it was pretty much just me.)

Then the same thing happens with the attic door but we get too good of a look at the child and it kind of takes away from the fright factor. The camera lingers for too long. But now is the moment of truth, Niña is coming, right?

Wrong. Replacing Javier Botet as the tall annorexic scary as shit zombie Niña Medeiros is Doug Jones as "Thin Infected Man" basically a thin guy in a diaper with a hammer. Now the dissappointment of this is no fault of Jones' he does a brilliant job.

The problem is that we don't get to fucking see him. Rather than watching the awkward and very disturbing movements of "Thin Infected Man" the camera focuses on Jennifer Carpenter looking scared and obscuring our view. There was a point where I just wanted to scream "GET OUT OF THE WAY BITCH I WANT TO SEE THE MONSTER!"

Unfortunately we never get a good look at "Thin Infected Man" and any sort of creepiness or inhuman movement done by the brilliant Doug Jones is all for naught as we only see bits and pieces of him before he beats the shit out of the camera. Even the scene of him eating on Scott's corpse lasts only a split second and then the movie ends.

Now the director was quoted suggesting that the movie ended a different way than the original which made it okay that they spoiled the ending in the trailer, so that makes it all right, right? Wrong. The director, it turns out, is a fucking liar. So not only is the ending shown in the trailer, it's shown ON THE FUCKING POSTER!


As much as the glaring fuck-up that was the ending pissed me off, it still wasn't as infuriating as the first "That was retarded" coming from the big sunglasses wearing Paris Hilton wannabe cunt in the top row. The term "pearls before swine" came to mind and the sad thing is it wasn't even a particularly good pearl, it was a decent looking but still lackluster pearl but it was still too good for these stupid bastards who undoubtedly list the "American Pie" movies as "THE BEST MOVIES EVAR OMGZ!!!" on their facebook account right under the picture of Soulja Boy.

But hey, for an unneccesarry remake "Quarantine" was a very good movie, now look for the remake of 2011's "Spider-Man 4 coming out sometime in 2009.

I give "Quarantine" a 4 out of 5. It's not as good as "[REC]" but still worth checking out.

Now get off my lawn before I turn on the sprinklers you damn little hoodlums!

Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (2008)

Directed by: John Gulager

Starring: Diane Goldner, Jenny Wade, Carl Anthony Payne II, Tom Gulager, Hanna Putnam

Other Actors of Note: Clu Gulager, Martin Klebba

Plot: HA!


While Horror is easily the genre with the most traumatic tone and stories there's still a certain safety to horror films that we know in some way shape or form things will be okay. Occasionally a film comes along and challenges that like "The Mist" and "Cannibal Holocaust" that takes what we've known to be rules and throws all that out the window.

And then there's "Feast".

A 2005 movie by John Gulager, "Feast" was all the bad taste and gore of Peter Jackson's early films with about half the quality and humor. It was a movie that was pretty decent but fell flat when it came to being what it wanted to be.

Now comes "Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds", unlike its predeccesor, this sequel actually does have something resembling a plot: Biker Queen (Diane Goldner), the sister of Harley Mom from the first film (also played by Goldner), stumbles on the bar and finds out her sister got exploded in the last movie.

She kidnaps The Bartender ("Return of the Living Dead's" Clu Gulager) who apparently didn't die of a heart attack last time and goes to kill Bozo, Hot Wheels, and Tuffy who are responsible for her sister's death (it doesn't matter who plays them, they don't appear in this movie)

So they go to the town near the bar and happen upon Slasher (Carl Anthony Payne II), Greg (Tom Gulager), and Secrets (Hanna Putnam), as well as two midget wrestlers Thunder (Martin Klebba) and Lightning (Juan Longoria Garcia) who try and break into the only secure building in town: The Jail. Unfortunately the jail is occupied by Hobo (I can't find a credit for this guy, so i don't fucking know) who doesn't want company.


Good acting isn't really important here so I'm going to go solidly on entertainment value here.

Jenny Wade returns as Honey Pie (the chick who drove away in the beer truck toward the climax of the first movie) she keeps getting put out like she's supposed to be the lead of the movie and I really have no clue why. Honestly I was just waiting for her death but it never came, though watchign Clu Gulager beat the everloving shit out of her (and I'm talking like "They Live" levels of ass kicking here, he bites off her fucking ear!) is quite satisfying. I can only hope she bites it next time around.

Diane Goldner gets a much bigger role this time around. Biker Queen is apparently much better built for the task at hand than Harley Mom was. She's your typical stonefaced angry lesbian biker type person. Her and her gang of tattooed cannon fodder sidekicks don't do much more than look intimidating and shoot things but it works.

Martin Klebba and Juan Longoria Garcia are your typical "OMG MIDGETS LOLZ" characters but they manage to make it seem less gimmicky than it should be. Their small stature isn't brought up as much as you would think and the characters are actually both quite well-done for what any other movie would have as bit-parts.

Hanna Putnam plays Secrets, a character who apparently read the book "The Secret." She's pretty much a bit-part and serves about as much of a purpose as Grandma did in the first one. She's almost as annoying as Honey Pie.

Tom Gulager plays Greg, he's a ne'er do well, and he has a moustache. That's all you need to know about him. Greg just keeps fucking up time, one of the more memorable times being during the obligatory autopsy scene where every character present except him and Slasher get covered with either shit, vomit, blood, or monster semen and we never learn a single thing about the monsters except not to poke their organs and they have a big creepy eye in their chest cavity for no apparent reason.

Carl Anthony Payne II is fucking magnificent as Slasher. A double dealing car salesman with a gold tooth who keeps trying to dispatch Greg because his wife (Secrets) is cheating on him with Greg. He doesn't sound that entertaining but he truly is, eventually devising a plan to launch Thunder and Lightning onto the jail roof using a catapult powered by a motorcycle engine and testing it using the wrestlers' grandmother who has been mostly decayed by monster puke (just like the Beer Guy in the first movie) which features the line "Nope, too heavy, we need to lose some Grandma" also his introduction features the line "Suck a dick, motherfucker! I slash prices!"

But of all the characters, hands down the best is Clu Gulager in his return as The Bartender. Anyone who's seen "Return of the Living Dead" knows that Clu went to waste in the first film, not having many lines or things to keep him busy. This time around Clu has plenty to do and the aformentioned Honey Pie beatdown is one of the more entertaining gags in the film. Hoepfully he'll have an even bigger roel in the 3rd film but the ending is rather ambigious.


The effects in this movie are sub-par. Remember how in my Jack Brooks review I said that the conventional effects looked much more polished than the cheap CGI used by the rest of the Dimension Extreme titles? Well this is the perfect example of the bad CG I was talking about.

Most of this film is shot on green screen and it shows. Everything looks fake and digitized and it kind of hurts the feel of the movie. No less I guess you can only expect so much from a film of this calibur.


John Gulager has prides himself in doing the exact opposite of what we as viewers would expect. Plot? "Fuck that?" Character development? "That's for fags!" The autopsy scene is the perfect example of this, in any other movie the autopsy scene gives us some sort of information on the monster, we learn things about what they are, what they're made of, and how they work. In this case, everybody just gets covered in some kind of projectile goo and we walk away knowing even less than when we started.

The problem is after a while the breaking away from expectations becomes predictable. We as the audience know when things aren't going to work out, it becomes painfully obvious. The movie seems to know this and tries to make up for it with bad taste gags. While the cat rape and puker gags manager to be mildly entertaining many of them are just stupid and one particularly gag involving a baby just goes a bit too far.

Another problem is with the cinematography. The text profiles of the characters have been dropped this time around and replaced with the characters giving their own profile. It seems less entertaining and more unneccesary.

This time aroudn Gulager opted to do all sorts of tricky lenses and transitions like night vision, black-and-white, and slow-mo shots that make some gags just go on for far longer than they should (especially the aformentioned baby gag which seems to last 20 fucking minutes.)


It's ultimately better than its predecessor in just about every way but "Feast II" is still a long way from being a good movie. It does a lot of things right but it also does a lot of things wrong that other movies like "Dead-Alive/Braindead" and "Re-Animator" did so much better.

I give "Feast II: Sloppy Seconds" a 3 out of 5. It's entertaining but your life isn't going to be any emptier for not having seen it.

Jack Brooks Monster Slayer (2008)

Directed by: John Knautz

Starring: Trevor Matthews

Other Actors of Note: Robert Englund

Plot: As a child Jack Brooks witnessed the brutal murder of his family. Now a young man he struggles with a pestering girlfriend, therapy sessions that resolve nothing, and night classes that barely hold his interest. After unleashing an ancient curse, Jack's Professor undergoes a transformation into something not-quite- human, and Jack is forced to confront some old demons... along with a few new ones. Taken from www.imdb.com.

You might wanna get that looked at.

"Jack Brooks Monster Slayer" is probably one of the best movies about nothing I've ever seen. But I'll get to that later.

Jack Brooks (Trevor Matthews) witnessed his family murdered by some sort of blue werewolf thing when he was a kid and ran away. As a result he's been a seething ball of rage ever since. Anyway, Jack's bitchy girlfriend makes him take a night class at the local college.

One night after class Jack's teacher Professor Crowley (Robert Englund) mentions that he has come into possession of a nice old house because some freaky shit went down there in the past. The problem is that the pipes don't work so Jack goes and fixes them and accidentally wakes up some ancient evil and pretty soon everything goes to shit and Professor Crowley gets possessed and digs up a crate full of bones.

In this crate he finds a still beating black heart and just like that dumbass in "Jason Goes to Hell" he decides to swallow it. Then he turns into that thing that Bill Paxton got turned into in "Weird Science" and turns most of the class into weird cyst-covered zombie things. Naturally Jack grows a pair and kicks ass.

I know, I pretty much just gave away the entire thing but that only IS the only plot this movie has to speak of.

Like Ash with his chainsaw, Reggie with his shotgun, Ripley with that kick-ass machine gun thing comes Jack Brooks with... a motherfucking pipe. Jesus Christ, even Gordon Freeman at least had a fucking crowbar.

Well the other chracters are so forgetable that I can't even remember any of their names so we're only going to be talking about two performances.

Trevor Matthews does well for a low-rent actor. This is his 4th movie (I won't even mention the other 3 as there's no way you've heard of them.) Jack Brooks is sort of a cross between Earl Hickey from "My Name is Earl" and Jay from "Clerks." Matthews' performance is rather good, but his line delivery is a bit stale. Of course this could simply be attributed to the type of character he's playing, Jack plays as a soft spoken good-ole-boy with an attitude problem and that's really what Matthews comes across as.

Now Robert "I can't play anything but Freddy Kreuger" Englund. Englund is considered horror movie royalty but I'm still not sure why. He's a one-note actor who can pretty much play only one character well with a few mediocre at best notable appeareances in things lilke "V", "The Mangler", and "The Adventures of Ford Fairlane." This is one of those. He's entertaining but little else.

"This is the first time I've been entertaining in decades!"

Now one of the most surprising thing about this movie is how good the effects are. All the effects are conventional, not CG, and it works surprisingly well. It's one of the few dimension extreme titles that looks somewhat polished.

That being said, the best effects are the least utilized. The film starts out with some sort of cyclops thing that conjures up nostalgia for the old "Beetle Borgs" TV show. However it looks great. The problem is after we see it we go back to Jack's Childhood where we see a mediocre blue werewolf thing and then the big bad of the movie being some freaky zombie things and the big blob thing neither of which are particularly impressive for this day and age. (To be honest they wouldn't even look that impressive for the 80s)

So the best looking monster is the one we never actually see Jack fight.

Having tackled the Power Rangers, Rita Repulsa now focuses her monster on their new target: Jack Brooks.

The above pretty much sums up how the movie is. It banks far too much on potential that it never reaches. We start out with Jack, looking a lot like the guy with the dredlocks from "Stargate: Atlantis" getting ready to kick some cyclops ass, then we go back to the story of how he got there.

It's a nice explanation but the movie reads more like the first issue of a comic series than a movie and that's a problem. As a stand-alone film it's pretty weak, as part of an established series it could work but the problem is that that series just doesn't exist yet.

Certainly it's a quirky and fun idea making a movie that seems like a mash-up of "Super Mario Bros.", "Beetle Borgs", and "Hellboy" but it never really comes to fruitition. It's more of a felling of "it will be good" as opposed to "it is good."

It's a fun movie but that's about it. It has no plot, no memorable characters apart from the hero and the villain, and while it's far form unenjoyable it just seems to be missing something.

"Dude, don't look now, but that chick is totally giving you the eye."

"Jack Brooks Monster Slayer" is a fun, campy, nostalgic movie that will bring out the immature violent side in you that loves watching weird zombie things getting their heads splattered with pipes and slimy phallic tongues.

I give "Jack Brooks Monster Slayer" a 3 out of 5. It may look better as part of a series but as of right now it's just worth a rent.

Never Cry Werewolf (2008)

Directed by: Brenton Spencer

Starring: Nina Dorbev, Peter Stebbbings, Kevin Sorbo, Sean O'Neill

Plot: When 16-year-old Loren (Nina Dobrev) and her family greet a new neighbor a good-looking single guy and his dog she senses something mysterious and dangerous about him. Her suspicions become further aroused when some of the locals begin disappearing one by one. As Loren becomes obsessed with her neighbors behavior, she is unaware that he is monitoring her just as closely like a hungry wolf stalks its prey at night. With the help of local TV hunting show personality Redd Tucker (Kevin Sorbo) and a delivery boy with a secret crush on attractive Loren, the unlikely trio prepare for a full-moon showdown against an immortal creature with insatiable bloodlust. Taken from www.imdb.com.

This never happens

Werewolf movies is a sub-genre at horror so saturated with utter shit that even vampire movies have a better track record. I can literally name all of the good werewolf movies worth seeing right here and now: "The Wolf Man", "The Howling", "An American Werewolf in London", "Dog Soldiers", "Wolfen", "Silver Bullet", and "Ginger Snaps."

Now comes a movie that actually has the potential to not suck if only because it rips off the plot, ideas, and just about everything else from "Fright Night". We have the creepy neighbor who turns into a monster, the kid next-door who gets wrapped up in the plot to stop the monster, the cops who go to the monster's house and leave when the kid admits they believe he's a monster, the female who happens to look exactly like the ex girlfriend ofthe monster from centuries ago, the creepy yet endearing sidekick with weird nuances to his speech, said sidekick getting turned into a monster, the burnded out TV personality who is contacted to help but turns out to just be an actor then at the end comes to kick ass and chew bubblegum, admittedly the monster's room-mate has been replaced by a dog and things have been shuffled around a bit, but all the components of "Fright Night" save for the fact we're dealing with werewolves rather than vampires are still there.

Now, that being said, I'm not going to bring up the rip-off anymore. I can't find a single fucking review of this movie on the whole of the intertubes that actually reviews the movie, they all just talk about how much like "Fright Night" it is.

Loren Hansett (Nina Dobrev) believes her new neighbor Jared Martin (Peter Stebbings) is a werwolf. But her little brother Kyle (Spencer Van Wyck) starts hanging out at creepy Jared's house (which seems to suggest something far more disturbing than lycanthropy.) Finally she seeks to stop him with the help of Kyle's weird emo friend Steven (Sean O'Neill) and TV hunter Redd Tucker (Kevin Sorbo.)

"I've got some candy in my pocket, why don't you reach in there and grab it."

Okay so "acting" and "talent" aren't real valid words here but I'll give this a try. Nina Dobrev of "Degrassi: The Next Generation" (if you want an idea of what kind of talent you're dealing with here) is passable but still pretty bad in her role as Loren. Even well acted though, Loren would suck. She deduces she's dealing with werewolves after seeing Jared shut off a light and decides that fighting a werwolf is best done in hip huggers (complete with wallet chain) and a sports bra. And her big ace in the hole weapon is a crossbow with silverware wired to the bolts (even though we see her walk out of a store with a SPAS-12 shotgun that she used to great effect earlier on.)

Peter Stebbings plays the creepiest skeeviest man I think I have ever seen and seems to suggest that the movie should be called "Never Cry Sex Offender." But his skill does little beyond saying "this guy is creepy."

Kevin Sorbo is pretty much the only reason to watch this movie. Sorbo has proven to be a decent actor in the past but he's pretty weak here. Fortunately that's far from the point with Redd Tucker. He serves as a nice campy addition to a movie that takes itself far too seriously. Unfortunately Redd just isn't cool enough to save the movie and never even really has a moment of triumph. It's rather dissappointing.

Apparently killing a werewolf only works if you're dressed like a lesbian biker from a 70s movie.

The effects can best be described as okay. The demon dog look pretty good for a CG model and when Sean O'Neill becomes halfway transformed looking more like something out of "Black Sheep" than an actual werewolf it really works.

Unfortunately the actual werewolf looks rather dissappointing below the neck. While the actual head looks fine, the body looks like a gorilla made to look like a wolf with claws. The fact that good effects are seen in the movie serves to make the actual effects all the more disappointing.

It's good to see that CG dog from "Resident Evil" still getting work.

The story is as I said ripped off pretty much entirely from "Fright Night" but that's not really a bad thing. In fact it's one of the film's redeeming qualities. Part of the problem is that it tries to copy it so much that the werwolf is essentially a vampire.

Did you know that werewolves can transform at will by using a charm made from the skin of a hanged criminal? Did you know that werewolves hated fire? Did you know that if you're bit by a werewolf you can go back to normal if the werewolf that bit you is killed before the firt full moon? Neither did anybody else. You know why? The film-makers pulled it all out of their ass to make the werewolf seem more interesting.

This complemented by the bland line-reading and the fact that every time the movie actually does something right it manages to mess it up.

Of course the most disappointing part of the movie is how underutilized Kevin Sorbo is. Red Tucker has the potential to be a Peter Vincent or Edgar Frog or Reggie, but instead they opt to just make him a coward and doesn't even manage to accidently succeed at doing one cool thing.

"Does this look infected to you?"

It's cheaply made, acted, and the writing is almost entirely ripped off but it's still fun and better than most werewolf movies manage to be. It's fun but little else. But hey... it's better than "Lost Boys 2."

I give "Never Cry Werewolf" a 3 out of 5. It's good for those $1 video rental machines and that's the only way you should watch it.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008)


Directed by: Toby Young

Starring: Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox, Gillian Anderson

Other Actors of Note: Jeff Bridges, Danny Huston

Plot: A British writer struggles to fit in at a high-profile magazine in New York. Based on Toby Young's memoir "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People". Taken from www.imdb.com.

Simon Pegg commences his daily job of trying to coax Kirsten Dunst out from her blanket fort in the break room so they can do a scene.

Romantic comedies are like an abusive spouse. They hit you and scream at you and hurt you time after time but you always tell yourself you're done with them but they come to you with a nice premise and then before you know it you're going right back to them.

Unfortunately thanks to Richard Gere and that fish-lipped pirate hooker Julia Roberts romantic comedies started beating on the ones they love long ago and they've gotten better, but it still doesn't look hopeful.

However, being the naive little girl that I am, always running back to the genre that has mistreated me for as long as I can remember I still pray and hope that one day I can find a funny romantic comedy that alienates neither men nor women and doesn't have to have a plot about zombies to keep it interesting.

I went in to this movie not really knowing what to expect and much likes David Schwimmer's recent romantic comedy "Run Fatboy Run", also starring Simon Pegg which was good more due to the strength of its ensemble cast than its plot or dialogue.

Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) is a british reporter who dishes the dirt on celebrities in his independently produced magazine. He's blackballed by every celebrity and agent everywhere because he's brutally honest and scathing and more often than not insults and debases any celebrity he covers.

After a debacle where he chats up Thandie Newton (Pegg's inhumanly gorgeous co-star from "Run Fatboy Run") and gets beaten up by Clint Eastwood he gets hired to a popular American publication by Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges), the owner of the magazine.

But upon reaching New York city he fucks up pretty much everything he can and clashes with his boss (Danny Huston), his coworker (Kirsten Dunst), and some sort of talent agent (Gillian Anderson).

Naturally by the halfway point of the film, Kirsten Dunst is soiling her panties over him and they kiss in slow motion.

"So he says 'You've got red on you' and I say..." "Huh? Were you talking? I'm sorry, I was busy thinking about how I'm ruining the Spider-Man franchise with my bad acting."

Simon Pegg is for the most part the glue that holds this film together. His great acting ability helps keep the overly pass'e and tired role of the loveable loser without a hope. The problem is that Sidney isn't a loveable loser, he's an asshole. Toby Young (the writer of the book on which the movie is based and the inspiration for Pegg's character) was reportedly banned from set for annoying the actors and interrupting the director, and honestly if he's half the annoying troll that Sidney is I can't blame the crew for banning him.

It's as if halway through the movie Robert B. Weide went "Holy shit, this guy's a douche. We need 50 ccs of likeablity stat!" This transition goes from going down like a bucket full of acid-tipped sea urchins to merely going down like a martini glass of razor wire coated in balsemic vingar. The fact that Pegg makes this shit bearable really shows his ability.

Surprisingly Kirsten Dunst, who I haven't liked in the least since the first "Spider-Man" movie, shows a rare sort of endearing charm and loveability. Of course this is somewhat thrown out by the fact that her character is dating ultra douchebag Danny Huston behind his wife's back but she still shows disgust at seeing Pegg with another woman after she's told him she's going to be with Huston.

Gillian Anderson plays her part well. She's manipulative, mean-spirited, and a total domineering ice queen. I might have been put off by her character if I wasn't too busy drooling and howling like a Tex Avery wolf.

Megan Fox was the big surprise to me. Despite being too sexy for even me to hate her becuase she's a flash in the pan starlet who mostly got to where she is by her looks without concentrating on it really hard she manages to do a great job in a very satirical job. He line delivery isn't bland like it was in "Transformers" and she comes across like an airheaded bitcy Paris Hilton type.

I never thought Danny Huston would seem more creepy without vampire fangs. His character is scummy and just a general dick, the fact that his mouth seems roughly the size to fit at least 3 pool balls helps this come across.

And finally Jeff Bridges is really the best actor in the movie. Though he has something like 15 minutes of screen time he plays all of it great. It's apparent that Harding was at one point not unlike Sidney and sold out to become successful and regrets it but knows he's doing all he can. Of course Clayton is such a minor part that it wouldn't matter if he was Citizen fucking Kane.

Gillian Anderson as a mean-spirited dominant woman only supports that long time fantasy of her dressed in leather beating me with a rolled up copy of the script for the "X-Files" movie... uh... I mean...

As I said above, the story is decidedly divided between two very different halves and its so apparent that you can practically see the seams.

The first half is actually a rather ballsy r rated reasonably decent comedy which has some good jokes if they are a bit cliche. The only real problem with the first half is that Simon Pegg is just too damn likable to play Sidney. As a result you feel like everyone is being mean, unfair, and just downright prickish to him.

At about the halfway point the story changes entirely and Simon Pegg falls for Kirsten Dunst. Okay, that's a bit strange but it makes some kind of sense. What's even more bewildering is that she falls for him.

Next Dunst continues making mistakes by falling for Danny Huston and Simon Pegg gets down on his knees in the rain and begs Gillian Anderson to let him write an article praising a hack director. Then we're treated to a Rocky-like triumphant montage of Pegg shilling and becoming a sellout all to the most inspiring music the crew could dig up.

Fortunately he comes to his senses and all is well... I guess. I'm not sure what sort of message this film is trying to convey and I wonder how much of Toby Young's book actually made it into the latter half of this movie.

To sum it up the first half is full crude jokes, transexual strippers, and two-thirds of the cast of "The IT Crowd" the second half is cliche, tired, and not all that great.

"That rug really tied the room together, dude."

If anybody remembers "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People" it will be because of a good ensemble cast or because they're trying to recall horribly unspectacular romantic comedies.

I give "How to Lose Friends nad Alienate People" a 2 out of 5. It's not horrible, but you won't be missing anything if you don't see it.







Man enough is fucking enough, I am sick of these motherfucking romantic comedies on my motherfucking blog! It's fucking october, romantic comedies can suck a dick, I'm reviewing a horror movie!

Choke (2008)

Directed by: Clark Gregg

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Brad William Henke, Kelly Macdonald

Plot: Victor Mancini, a sex-addicted med-school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida, in an expensive private medical hospital by working days as a historical re-enactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park. At night, Victor runs a scam by deliberately choking in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who "save" him. When, in a rare lucid movement, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father's identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend, Denny and his mother's beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall, to solve the mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever. Taken from www.imdb.com.


Chuck Palahniuk is quite possibly the most fucked-up writer in the world. A good writer of drama, his works are always accentuated by the dark side of reality that he brings out in each of his stories. One would be hard-pressed to find a single one of his stories that don't seem like they would make a good movie. However, to date, 1999's "Fight Club" directed by David Fincher has been the only film adaptation of one of Palahniuk's novels.

Now comes "Choke", a novel that is decidedly more lighthearted than the rest of Palahniuk's bibliography. While comparison to "Fight Club" is unfair there are a few parallels to be drawn. Some of the same themes such as a man with a seeming fear of true intimacy and a no-name loser abused by the system working against it.

"Choke" is the story of Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell), a medical school droupout who works in a coloniel village attraction with his best friend Denny (Brad William Henke). Victor is a sex addict who basically goes to the meetings to pick up chicks. In his spare time he goes to restaraunts and chokes on food so that someone will save him and then they will feel in his debt and send him money that he uses to keep his alzheimers effected mother (Anjelica Huston) in a nice nursing home.

Victor's mother doesn't recognize him and one day during a visit reveals that she has lied to him about who his father is so he has Denny pose as him as the new doctor (Kelly Macdonald) helps him try and cure his mother through the help of stem-cell research and finds out he might be cloned from the holy foreskin of Jesus Christ.

Sam Rockwell is, as always, wonderful in this movie. This was a bit of new ground for him as he's less his usual "Hillbilly Brad Pitt" role and more of an everyman character than he usually plays. I found it strange how much he reminded me of Edward Norton in this movie and not just because of the fact that it was based on another story by Chuck Palahniuk.

Brad William Henke is lovable as the "Look at me, I'm a bigger loser than the main character" best friend. Henke's character has a problem with chronic masturbation and is in sexaholics anonymous to help him get over his problem. He finds support in a ditzy blond stripper: Cherry Daiquiri (Gillian Jacobs) who dyes her hair brown because Sam Rockwell tells her that skin cancer is common for blonds.

Angelica Huston is in what is quite possibly her strangest role yet (and I'm counting Morticia Addams) as Victor's mother Ida. Ida appears to be some kind of con-woman or just crazy miscreant on the run, it's unclear why she does much of what she does but it is possible that she has a severe case of dementia in the flashbacks as well as the present. She plays the part straight, which is probably why Ida is so hilarious. Huston doesn't try to act funny, it's her dry and dead-serious line delivery that makes it that much better.

Finally we have the ridiculously adorable Kelly Macdonald as Paige Marshall. Paige is a very mousy yet strangely confident woman. She's professional but something about her doesn't seem quite right. Of course, this being a Chuck Palahniuk story, something isn't. Paige doesn't seem like a very interesting character until about two-thirds of the way through the movie. Sadly it's not much of a change for Macdonalds acting-wise and the mousy-ness, while endearing, just comes across as bad acting.

If "Fight Club" was the most fucked up coming of age story you've ever laid eyes on, then "Choke" is the most fucked up romantic comedy you'll ever lay eyes on. It has the same basic formula of any romantic comedy but with those classic Palahniuk twists.Everything has a dark and quirky edge to it and that's what gives "Choke" all of its charm. It manages to be surreal as well as disturbingly real. As bizarre as things seem, Victor Mancini is a character that, just like Edward Norton's un-named protagonist in "Fight Club", just about everyone can relate to in some way or another.

I will come out and say that I have not read but the first couple chapters of this book, so I'm judging the film solely on its own merits. So all of you purists can kindly shut the fuck up and leave me to the review as I don't care what you have to say, I'll form my own opinion on how good an adaptation it is once I finish the book, till then you may join the "Wanted" purists and kindly go fuck yourselves.

The choking didn't play as major of a role as I thought it would, there are only really three scenes that make a big deal of it: one introducing the concept, one as a joke, and another as a flashback. Of course there's one final one at the end of the movie that caused the entire audience to roar with laughter, I won't ruin it but I'm sure you'll find it hilarious as well.

"Choke" is funny, cynical, and unapologetically obscene (one of my favorite scenes involves Victor having a one-night stand with a masochist who keeps interupting him and telling him the proper way to "rape" her.) but it's also clever and witty, the dialog is solid all the way through and the movie is filled to the brim with one-liners.

My only real problem with this movie was that it seemed too light-hearted. True the story is not neccesarilly bleak, but everything seemed too bright and cheery for what the story is about. I think this was the thing that hindered the film most, it made it seem like it was trying too hard to be funny and trying to overcome the pessimistic narration that tied the scenes together.


"Choke" will never hold the same legacy or appeal as "Fight Club" but it's still a very well-done movie that's worth the time to see if for no reason other than it's something new and different.

I give "Choke" a 4 out of 5. It's a good movie and you should definitively watch it and think about buying it.