Movie Review - Jason X (2001)

We'll start this movie review off as I usually do: through a anecdotal segue.
Ever since I started watching Hercules in the Paramount Pictures' Action Pack, I began to take more and more interest in the work of Sam Raimi after Army of Darkness. The director has a great body of work after the Evil Dead trilogy (looking at you, Cleopatra 2525) and hit the big time with Spider-Man. While Spider-Man is great, my mind still remembers a time when the gods were cruel and plagued mankind with suffering and lands in turmoil cried out for heroes. Most lands preferred Lucy Lawless' Xena, but I preferred Kevin Sorbo.

I don't know if it's just that he's a pretty man or if chicks in the Hellenic Period were easy, but Mr. Sorbo has brought more babes to bed as Hercules than Captain Kirk in Star Trek. When Mr. Sorbo left the Greek world, he ended up in a world created by Star Trek's creator Gene Roddenberry called Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. There, he's Dylan Hunt, captain of the Commonwealth Fleet's warship called the Andromeda Ascendant. He's the only Commonwealth officer to exist after 300 years and he wants to rebuild the lost government with the help of his Rag-Tag Crew™. Two members of his new crew are the human pilot Beka Valentine (played by Lisa Ryder) and the ship's android avatar that goes by the name "Rommie" (played by raging Anglo-Filipina hotness Lexa Doig). Now, I bring up these two characters from Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda to illustrate a weird coincidence that happened in the casting of the tenth installment of the Friday the 13th horror series called Jason X.

Our story shows up at the capture of our main antagonist Jason (played by stunt master Kane Hodder). I'll never know why people think they can just catch Jason, tie him up and be done with it. You can't. The people who have him in custody are government types who are going to dispose of Jason (good idea) by driving him cross-country to a dumpsite (bad idea) and getting rid of him there. The doctor on staff for the transport of Jason is Dr. Rowen (Lexa Doig), a woman highly opposed to giving Jason any chance to escape. Don't worry, say the higher-ups on site; he's in chains with guards watching him, he's not going anywhere.
Sure enough, the guard (note the singular form) is killed and Jason goes on a rampage, killing many soldiers and chasing Dr. Rowen about. She tricks Jason into a cryogenic chamber to freeze him for 500 years, but he stabs Rowen through the cryotube and they both are frozen for 500 years. Over the years, mankind destroyed Earth and fled to space. A team of medical students is on a field trip to the dead planet Earth to see what they can find in its ruins. They stumble upon the facility that holds Jason and Dr. Rowen, taking both back to their spaceship in orbit.
While Jason is put on a dissection slab, a machine that regenerates parts via nanotechnology revives Rowen in the ship's sickbay. She wakes up and all she can talk about is Jason. The group of young, nubile and horny med students on the ship, including the introverted Tsunaron (Chuck Campbell) and his confused android KM-14 (Lisa Ryder) tell her that the big guy they found with her is quite dead and he won't be bothering anyone at all.

They could not have been more wrong.
Shortly after dispatching the dissecting student with liquid nitrogen, Jason does his thing and kills teenagers having sex. Then he pulls an Alien and goes for the shadows. The man responsible for the field trip, medical professor Lowe (Jonathon Potts), brought Space Marines to fill out the body count. These doomed and poorly disciplined soldiers follow Sgt. Brodsky (Peter Mensah), a badass soldier dude who knows how to relax. His troops don't know how to act, so they get chopped up and Brodsky gets injured trying to save them. Or something.
Needless to say, the people on board are scared and have no way of beating Jason. Tsunaron and KM-14 are stuck somewhere and they come up with a plan to defeat the Voorhees menace. The method employed was good, but the after-effects couldn�t have been worse. Upon being blown to bits by an enhanced KM-14, Jason lands on the medical regenerator. Since most of his body was blown away in a hail of gunfire that DIDN'T pierce the hull, the regenerator had to make do with metallic parts. After moments of cutting back and forth between Jason's carcass and the completion gauge, Jason is all crazy-ass cyborg. Some more shit happens and half the ship starts to fall apart. The leftover crew makes it over to the other side of the ship to execute a plan to hold Jason off.
The plan is to use the ship's holographic projector to make a fake Crystal Lake campsite and hold Jason there while they escape in an escape pod. Two holographic sluts, who easily have the best lines in the movie, delay Jason from pursuing the survivors. This scene alone is comedy gold.

Jason breaks free of the hologram and almost has his prey when Brodsky shows up and faces off with Jason. This gives the survivors enough time to escape in an escape pod. Not to be discouraged by a life-or-death battle in space, Jason jumps and lands on the escape pod and tries to kill the survivors. Brodsky's there too and lunged after Jason, knocking him off and fighting him as they both fall into the nearby planet's atmosphere. You'd think this was the end of Jason, the way Rowen, KM-14 and Tsunaron celebrated as if he was finally dead. Such a belief would be the end of you, but not the end of the Friday the 13th franchise.

This movie sucked, yet held an immense entertainment factor. It's not a great horror film or even a good B-movie; but it has to be one of the best comedies I've seen in a while.

Crazy Dream from my High-School Days

I remember having this crazy dream back in Miami before I went to college. It was my junior year at DASH (Design & Architecture Senior High School!) and I was friends with this senior dude who did not go to my school. His name was Duergan (changed to protect the innocent) and he got me hooked on more Mystery Science Theater 3000. I say more because I liked the show when it was on Comedy Central, and on the Sci-Fi Channel (now called SyFy, because they hate their viewing audience.)

Nevertheless, I borrowed a lot of old school MST3K videos (storebought and bootlegged off the TV) and watched them every week during the summer of 1996. There were a lot of Godzilla (old Russian bear Godzilla--not the T. rex/raptor wannabe) flicks, spy flicks, legitimate dramas, old sci-fi classics and late 70's/early 80's horror movies that were all mocked equally by a lonely human and robots who saw no color and rarely understood the relations between men and women. I decided to watch these movies straight in a solid Thursday afternoon:

• Eegah, a 60's movie about a caveman who gets shot by cops at a pool party,
• Time of the Apes, a 60's Japanese knockoff of Planet of the Apes involving the 'Infamous Japanese Boy' and Sandy Frank,
• Hercules and the Captive Woman, starring Reg Park fighting armies of Atlantean super-soldiers,
• The Brain That Wouldn't Die, about a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein who saves his wife's severed head after a car accident, only to drive her mad and cause some crazy, unrelated monster to attack the lab.

...because I supposedly had nothing better to do. That night, I had an excellent dinner and I watched the FOX crime drama "New York Undercover". I fell asleep in the middle of it and began to dream a crazy dream...

I had this dream that my parents got enough money to move us all to Beverly Hills (not sure why.) For some reason, my brother and I still lived in the same room together with a long window overlooking the backyard. One night, my brother and I were chillin' in the room when we heard a sound in the yard. I looked out and saw a large, bummy-looking man walking around the back lawn. I yelled at him, "Go away, you bum! Leave!"  He didn't hear me. My brother joined in and yelled; that's when he heard us. The bum turned toward the window and jumped through! In a shower of glass, he landed on our bed (we had to share a lot).

I took a good look at the guy...and he looked like Eegah, but he had the build of Hercules. This guy was very dangerous looking--and unconscious. Weird little imps that we are, we go into the kitchen and get some cocktail swords and when we got back to the room, we started to stab him in his crotch with them. It seemed like a good idea at first.

The Hercules-Eegah hybrid sat up in pain and threw my brother into the wall. Being the manly man that I am, I ran screaming like a bitch. I ran out the house and jumped over the fence to my backyard. Then I jumped over the other fence leading to my front yard. Then I jumped over the first fence leading to my back yard. This went on for 10 minutes; that's just how my dreams work.

I then went and jumped the neighbor's fence. The neighbors had put plastic in their chain-link fence, but I still climbed to the top. Then the plastic in the fence made the fence start to sway under my weight. The sway was pretty forceful and launched me into the neighbor's pool. Then I pulled my self over the pool fence (they have a small child and don't want him/her falling into the pool) and ran through the open gate in the fence facing the opposite street. At that point, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I began to walk down the street. Before I get even a few houses down the block, I hear a loud car crash. I turn around and it's the Hercules-Eegah hybrid wrestling some woman's Rolls Royce away from her. He throws her out of the car and rips off the roof. He figures out how to drive a car pretty quick and drives the car on the sidewalk to try and get me! I'm out running him, but for how long? I think to myself. I look back and he plows right through a tree. I make a sharp turn and lose Hercules-Eegah, but now I'm in a badly lit cul de sac.

There are some people there in the cul-de-sac discussing something, but I can't make it out. I join the conversation, but I can't make out what I'm saying, either. Then I begin to understand at the end when we all agree that we should go to the mall.

We push through some bushes and see a great mall, separated from us by a 4-lane highway with a median strip. On the median strip, there was an admission booth. The admission to get into the mall was $10. Luckily, the money I had in real life (all I had in my wallet was $10 at the time) translated into the dream and I had enough money to get in. The other people with me didn't have money and were very angry and didn't understand the reason for having to pay admission to get into a mall. I was happy to get to the mall but before I could get in, Hercules-Eegah was right behind me--in a brown wig and purple chiffon dress! I had to get away from this cross-dressing caveman, but through which entrance?

There were two: one was the entrance going through the arcade, the other was the entrance going through the perfume shop. I went through the perfume shop and ran up the nearest stairs. I looked back and saw that Hercules-Eegah followed me, but was stuck in the perfume store smelling all the wonderful scents! I smiled and went on my way--but I didn't go... 

Alright, I need to make something clear: in my dreams, I don't always see things in a first-person view. Sometimes I see them in a second-person view or a third-person observer, or third-person omniscient. Anyway, I switched to a third-person observer and watched this old Black couple walk past this rug shop. The wife looks into the store and says, "Ohh look, honey, some rugs! Let's buy some for the children!" Knowing that she wants them for herself and that the rug salesman would give them a hassle from the look on his face, he fixes his fedora and says, "C'mon, honey, you know they won't let our KIND shop here." 

The camera flashes back to me in first-person as I bump into a man who looks like Keanu Reeves wearing an outstanding blue vest. He greets me and asks, "Hey, you want to see the new music store I designed?" 

Before I can answer, Bluevest drags me down the stairs to a nearby Sam Goody, where a foppish man waits blindfolded and overflowing with happiness. Bluevest pulls off the blind fold and says, "Here it is, dude!"

The fruity man is overcome and hoots, hollers and dances his way into the new store. I'm distracted by a CD display that has some new artists, so I check it out. There's a CD single in there called "Bust That Ass" by none other than J.C. and Eddie Torres (aka "Eddie Vatos") from "New York Undercover". A nearby video wall flares up and it's J.C. and Eddie's video for "Bust That Ass". It shows them running up on crooks and bustin' 'em in the head, and kicking down doors to get the perp. Then when they catch him, they do him like the door. The video ends with them arresting themselves.

...and that's it.

Movie Review - Hamlet 2 (2008)

So I just sat through a movie called Hamlet 2, whose main draw was to showcase its main character as a crazy man for sequelizing a work of William Shakespeare.  It put me through several emotions: sadness, satisfaction, anger, and happiness.  Not to mention the embarrassment for the city of Tucson, Arizona.

The film centers on the life of unpaid drama teacher Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), who has big dreams of acting, but kinda sucks at it.  He is a drama teacher at West Mesa High School in the aforementioned Tucson, which has only 2 students: Epiphany (Phoebe Strole), a racist young woman, and Rand (Skylar Astin), a closeted young man.  The two acting students participate in Dana's plays, which are always stage adaptations of popular movies.  Unfortunately, these adaptations are very unpopular, particularly with the local theater critic--an 8-year-old who writes in the paper, Noah Sapperstein (Shea Pape).  So Dana's life continues to flounder, both professionally and personally with his wife Brie (Catherine Keener) and their roommate Gary (a wasted David Arquette).

When the other high school electives are cut due to budget problems, the drama class grows to a healthy size and introduces us to our other characters Ivonne (Melonie Diaz), Octavio a.k.a "Heywood Jablowmey" (Joseph Julian Soria), Vitamin J (Arnie Pantoja), Chuy (Michael Esparza) and the silent yet accident prone Yolanda (Natalie Amenula).  This leads to interesting adventures with a kaftan, and ultimately to experimenting with original work for a play.  The principal (Marshall Bell) still has to cut funding, and drama is next on the block.  Dana is pushed to create a new play, this time with the added utility of saving the drama program.  His original material: a sequel to William Shakespeare's Hamlet.  This proves problematic, as everyone in the Shakespearean play dies at the end.  Luckily, Dana has decided to dive into the fan-fiction writer's toolbox and is able to bring back all the principals using a time machine, a light-handed homage to Grease, and a modernized Jesus Christ (who is written in Dana's script as having a swimmer's bod.)

Due to some disagreements, the principal gets his hands on the script and objects to the sex, violence and general blasphemy in its pages.  Instead of firing Dana outright, he locks the gym--where the play was originally to take place, then threatens him like some right-wing nut.  With the principal's help, the city of Tucson gets involved and serves him with a cease and desist order, as well as informing the local churches of the play's content.  With all these stumbling blocks and then some, Dana still manages to have some help on his side: the ACLU sends Cricket Feldstein (an on-target Amy Poehler) to fight on behalf of Dana's 1st Amendment rights.  The kids won't give up, and with their energy, neither will Dana.  What ends up on stage is the most controversial, explosive, and silly sequel of anything ever made.

This movie made me feel uncomfortable at times, with the pain of Dana's life being put out on front street for our amusement.  It's some fucked up stuff, but it's supposed to make us laugh.  I just couldn't.  Not to say that the rest of the movie isn't funny, though.  There are good comedy moments, and some interesting commentary on race relations--very minute, but worth a look.  Of particular note is the introduction of a character who is playing a fictional version of herself: Elizabeth Shue.  She is a minor character who comes to some prominence at the end, and hers is a character that was a nice addition.

CHOICE CUTS:

• The kaftan scene.  I had to rewind to make sure I saw what was shown.
• Every time Yolanda got hurt: it's funny because you would hope she says something, but no...
• The pronunciation of Dana's last name throughout the film.
• Watch Amy Poehler's acting when she meets Dana--one minute it's "we'll help you fight this injustice", and the next it's "your play is irrelevant".

PRICELESS QUOTES:

"Chuy, you're going to have a magical life.  Because no matter where you go, it'll always be better than Tucson."

-Dana, to one of his students

"I have so much anger. I feel like I've been raped. In the face!"

-Dana, after reading a bad review of his stage adaptation of "Erin Brockovich"

"It's a slippery slope... beer, liquor, dope, coke, meth, chicks with dicks, then jail!"

-Dana, who has let us all know more than we needed to about his battle with alcohol.

This movie could have been funnier without all that other shit that made Dana a wackjob, and I would have loved to see more of the other students' lives like they did with Octavio.  At the same time, I'd seriously like to know what crawled up the writer's ass about Tucson.

RATING: 4/10