Movie Review: The Lost Future (2010)

I was working on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that involved an entire orc nation with human slaves, and looking for visual ideas to work from.  I read the manga JAPAN drawn by Berzerk's Kentaro Miura for some ideas.  I had watched the old 70's movie At The Earth's Core with Doug McClure, Peter Cushing and Caroline Munro for even more ideas.  Upon a trip to Blockbuster Video (yes, they still have those), I picked up a copy to watch, since they didn't have a copy of the sequel to Uwe Boll's In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.  When I reached a certain point, I realized I had seen bits of this movie before on SyFy Channel, and hadn't watched the whole thing.  Now I had paid or it, and I would watch this joint South African-German production and review it.

Our story concerns a caveman tribe called Grey Rock, containing the very manly Savan (Corey Sevier) and the not-so-manly Kaleb (Sam Claflin).  Both live in a wild untamed wilderness with their tribesmen, hunting giant mega-sloths of the Ice Age and bring back the spoils to their mates: Savan to his yellow-haired mate Dorel (Annabelle Wallis) and Kaleb...not so much.  Kaleb pines for Dorel, and his sister Miru (Eleanor Tomlinson) makes a point to make fun of him for it.  While they live in relative safety, they are still in danger from the Mutants: a subhuman race that roams the forests and mountains.  They are savage and if they bite you, you're infected and you'll turn into one of them.
The lives of these cavemen is turned upside down by an invasion of Mutants.  Most of the tribe locks themselves away in a cave, but Kaleb, Savan and Dorel are left outside to make their way to go for help.  They are almost killed by a Mutant when they are saved by a mysterious stranger named Amal (British actor Sean Bean).  He is a member of an elite group of protectors of various other tribes and bears strange artifacts with him.  He says that no matter if they were bitten or not, if a Mutant breathed on you then infection would set in.  With that, Amal leads these cavemen into the real world -- the world AFTER the fall or mankind -- to find a cure for the disease.

Playing with the idea of cavemen in the future is not a new idea.  It has been explored in films like America 3000, Battlefield Earth, the remake of The Time Machine, and even Planet of the Apes (both original and the remake).  The thing that makes it such a fertile playground is how exciting it is to get the reveal.  When people see that the world is changed so much, save the visual landmarks that have stood the weathering of time for familiarity's sake, it can awe a person or shake them to the core.  It's one of those moments that make a passable movie great.  The same could not be said of this movie.
When the reveal comes, it's in the friggin' title: THE LOST FUTURE -- as in "the future in the past."  If you missed that on the cover of the DVD, it comes up again as the title card.  Understandably the movie was set in the future, but if they had tried to let us know that in the movie without a whole lot of exposition at the 2/3 mark, the movie would have done a lot better. 

Movie Review: Journey to Promethea (2010)

I am a big fan of fantasy films, it this site is any indication, and I am also a fan of productions featuring Billy Zane.  From the TNT TV movie Invincible to the Academy Award-winning movie Titanic, he has proven himself to be a very capable actor and also one that takes a good whack at the characters he plays if he finds them unworthy.  Such is the case in the TV movie, Journey to Promethea.

I was drawn to renting this show by the DVD's title font -- the same kind used on the Clash of the Titans remake poster -- but I was less satisfied with the plot: A chosen people were persecuted by the evil King Laypach (Zane) because of a prophecy delivered by his enemy, the rebel swordsman Drayden (Gabe Begnaud).  The prophecy involved him and one of these persecuted people; the king did not know which.  He sent soldiers out to kill the first-born, but one soldier named Ari (Louis Herthum) resisted the order.  He was made to watch his wife drowned and was sent Ari to the front lines three times in a row to see if he would die.  Ari escaped and roamed the wilderness as a mercenary and woodsman, thinking he would never have to see any more about the prophecy that caused him so much pain...until he met Magnus (Sam Murphy).
Magnus was a young man on a quest to avenge his father's death and to rescue his imprisoned brother Binon (Caleb Michaelson).  What Magnus did not know was that he was the heir to the power of Draden and part of the key to the prophecy; this was soon rectified by the interference of the goblin Gydro (Drew Rin Vardick), a magician on the side of good who is coincidentally a tutor to Princess Aria (Jessica Heap).
Previously thought to be a myth, Princess Aria is accompanied by three warrior women and her royal  guardian Derja (Natasha Itzel).  When Magnus and Aria meet, Gydro is happy that now the quest is halfway complete: now they must get to some magic boulder in the forest and place Drayden's sword (which Gydro possesses) into the boulder to destroy Laypach from afar. 
Naturally, Laypach won't allow this, so he sends his dark warrior to find and kill him.  This warrior Kronin (Scott Schwartz) is massive and wields a similar weapon to Drayden's sword, albeit powered by dark magic. 
Many people and supporting characters die before the day is won, yet the movie drops the ending on you like a dead body.  It's really embarrassing to see how badly this movie was made.  It had some potential to be good yet they squandered it all on God-knows-what: it sure wasn't the script.  It is in this respect that Billy Zane saves the movie.

Billy Zane knows about crap.  He's starred in enough crap to have that ability (Bloodrayne, Critters, Tales From The Crypt: Demon Night, Invincible, etc.) and he's starred in some really good stuff to (Back to the Future, Titanic, Zoolander, etc.) to know what's what.  When he gets a shitty and incoherent script, he trolls HARD by ad-libbing (at least I think so; the script-writers couldn't be that clever).  For this, Mr. Zane, I salute you.

Movie Review - The Wolf Man (2010)

Werewolf showdown.

 

When I saw the trailer for this movie, I immediately said, "I hope they have some sort of werewolf battle at the end."  I went to see it, and I was not disappointed. But I am getting ahead of myself in this review of a remake of a movie from 1941.

So, there's an English guy who got attacked by a werewolf. He died, so he obviously isn't the werewolf. The guy's brother, Lawrence Talbot (notorious Hispanic-at-large Benicio Del Toro), comes from a very successful stage career in America to see to the details of his brother's funeral and his estate, Talbot Manor.  He would not have known about it from his aloof asshole of a father Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins) who still lives there, but instead learned about his brother's death from from Gwen Contliff (Emily Blunt), his brother's fiancee.  Lawrence eventually got to view the body before burial and found a medallion on the corpse, the kind sold at the gypsy camp outside of their town, known as Blackmoor.

Upon visiting, Lawrence meets with an old gypsy woman, Maleva (Geraldine Chaplin), who tells Lawrence that his brother was attacked by something evil. Just then, the gypsy camp comes under attack by the werewolf, and Lawrence is bitten. So begins the most awesome displays of movie makeup magic since the late Stan Winston, as created by Rick Baker. You can feel the burn of the wounds as the curse reddens the flesh while coursing through Lawrence's veins.  It's really amazing stuff.  Then the change from man to wolf-man occurs and IT IS INCREDIBLE.  The digital FX are able to twist and shape the actor into a monstrosity that doesn't stray too far from the base of the werewolf design, that can give a great blood-curdling howl against the biggest full moon since the time of the dinosaurs.

Eventually, bad stuff happens. One can only expect a werewolf on the loose to cause havoc.  So Inspector Abberline of Scotland Yard (Hugo Weaving) comes to investigate the Blackmoor murders and was able to catch the person responsible for them--Lawrence Talbot?  The madness does not stop there, as Lawrence is taken to a London mental institution for incarceration and study.  He promptly escapes by transforming into a werewolf and causes havoc on the streets of London, all on the way back to Blackmoor. It is there that the truth is revealed about Lawrence's past, his brother's murder, and his mother's death--all in the same shot.  It also gives me the satisfaction of seeing something I called at the beginning of the movie and this review: WEREWOLF SHOWDOWN.  A werewolf showdown, I might add, that does NOT disappoint.

End spoilers.

Movie Review - Bitch Slap *UNRATED* (2010)

I've always been a big fan of the mid-90's action shows "Hercules: the Legendary Journeys" and "Xena, Warrior Princess".  They showed me a fantasy version of ancient Greece that never failed to entertain with the action pieces, tongue-in-cheek comedy, and light sexual references.  It's what got me to stick around for later shows produced by Renaissance Pictures and directed by Sam Raimi, "Jack Of All Trades" and "Cleopatra 2525".  The latter will come into play in this review of the direct-to-DVD movie Bitch Slap, particularly in the movie's overt use of characterization from "Cleopatra 2525".

The TV show I'm referencing is about the titular Cleopatra, a dim-bulb stripper who went in to get a boob job in 1996 AD and did not wake up from the anesthesia. She was frozen until medical science could find a way to revive her.  She was eventually revived in 2525 AD by Hel (a smart, ball-busting female guerilla commander) and Sarge (her ambiguously butch second-in-command.)  They team up and fight against CG robot monsters and squeeze in as much T&A as possible.  The movie Bitch Slap borrows quite a few of these elements.

The story is non-linear, and jump-cuts further and further back into the past to justify what is happening in the present.  What is clear is the three main characters follow the old bar joke (blonde, brunette, redhead) and are female, homosexual, and wear push-up bras.  They are Hel (Erin Cummings) the smart ball-busting businesswoman, Camero (America Olivo) the butch lesbian ex-con, and Trixie (Julia Voth) the dim-bulb stripper.  They are in the desert searching for the MacGuffin, but keep getting side tracked by random camera passes over their boobs and asses.  The impromptu water fight IN THE DESERT was a notable scene that did not have to happen, but went so far as to show how far this T&A show was willing to go.  The madness did not stop there.

In between the jump cuts to the past, they decided to include every type of double-cross ever written into this single movie.  An attempt of respectability was attempted by involving Zoe Bell as stunt coordinator, but that was hardly helpful as the fight scenes lacked oomph and dragged on for minutes without upping the stakes.  The dialogue was god-awful (perhaps on purpose), and they tried to make their movie deep by including quotes from Sun Tzu.  It got so bad, that they even ripped off The Usual Suspects to end their movie.  If you think that was a spoiler, don't bother watching this movie.  You will be disappointed. 

I think this movie was supposed to be as offensive as possible, with no confusion.  Indeed it is, but not for the reasons one might think: I picked up this movie expecting to see more of the cast from Renaissance Pictures.  We saw enough Michael Hurst, but only a few scenes with Kevin Sorbo and one scene with both Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor.  If you can imagine, that's the only reason why I picked up the DVD in the first place.  Not the stretched fabric against equally taut skin over firm flesh on the lead actresses and not the repeated lesbian sex scenes.  With this movie, Bitch Slap will be the second movie with a prominent lesbian scene I have watched in the past seven days.  I do not find these movies, folks; they find me.

CHOICE CUTS:

• The principals from the Renaissance Pictures shows of Hercules and Xena are here!  Lucy Lawless (Xena) and Renee O'Connor (Gabrielle) both play nuns in a convent, Michael Hurst (Iolaus) plays a bad guy, and Kevin Sorbo (Hercules) plays a not-so-bad guy.
• The cursing.  I like a good curse word like anyone else, but one must know how to curse before committing it to paper or celluloid.  Plentiful, but otherwise poor in quality.
• It occured to me as I was writing this review if this film wasn't a way of commenting on the Zak Snyder film SuckerPunch...

PRICELESS QUOTES:

"I'm so weak and vulnerable!"

-Trixie, telling Camero why she won't fight.  This is an actual line.

"Lube my boob skank twat."

-Camero, while beating an opponent to a bloody pulp.  This is an actual line.

"We're all just bitches in the end."

-Pinky, the main villain of the movie.  Also an actual line.

The box claims that this was an attempt to make a better B-movie.  Whoever wrote that line needs to be shot, but not before actually watching a B-movie.  This movie has only one real note, and it is of a state where so much was put toward looking awesome, that the end result is boring: "mundanely visceral." 

RATING: 1/10

Movie Review - Chloe (2010)

I saw the ads and trailers for the movie Chloe back in 2010 when I would see certain movies back in 2010.  It was marketed as a sleek thriller, with some sex in it.  It left so much to the imagination, but I thought it'd go the route of a racially homogenous version of the Beyonce vehicle Obsessed.  Now that I've seen in, I must say it is one hell of a movie, and is even more so if you've never seen anything about it.  This movie has highs and lows, and all of them are so low-key thanks to the acting abilities of the cast, consisting of two acting icons and one rising star in the shape of actress Amanda Seyfried, she recently of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale movie adaptation of Red Riding Hood.

In the role of of our titular character, Chloe, Miss Seyfried plays a beautiful call girl who says she can be any man's fantasy: their secretary, their daughter, their seventh-grade teacher, and so on.  She is recruited for her skill set when she finds herself wrapped up in the inferiority complex of Dr. Catherine Stewart, OB/GYN (Julianne Moore).  Chloe is hired to tempt the doctor's husband, Mr. Stewart (Liam Neeson), a music professor.  The doctor is suspicious that her husband is cheating on her, and chooses to spy on him with a very talented liar.  The two develop a "business" relationship which is, to say the least, not the sole focus of the watching audience.  It builds to a climax and leaves quite a lingering that really makes you wonder about the nature of love and attraction.

My initial focus on the movie was to just see it and stop thinking I should see it.  As the movie went on, it afforded me several reasons why I need to see more movies with the actors involved.  I have all the reasons I need to see Mr. Neeson, so that's a given; Julianne Moore has made more movies that are so interesting, yet I have not seen due to budget constraints, like Blindness.  More to the point, I would like to see more of the otherworldly beauty of Miss Seyfried.  If you've ever looked at her, you know that Miss Seyfried does not look like an average person.  Something about her is very different.  Is it her operatic training, or her teen modeling experience? Probably not, but I can's imagine what else it could be that's gonna make me want to watch more of her movies.

Oh, I know why. She's hot.

CHOICE CUTS:

• Amanda Seyfried, the part where you can see the crazy, and Amanda Seyfried.  That is all.

The ups and downs, twists and turns of this film completely had me on the edge of my seat.  It made me want to know exactly how far the story would go.  With two actresses so easy on the eyes, it was a pleasure.

RATING: 8/10