Posts by Brent Lorentson

When it comes to locations in horror films, insane asylums seem to be one of the go-to spots, and with good reason.  From watching numerous ghost-hunting shows over the years, it would also seem that there are numerous “haunted” asylums out there that are nothing more than rundown relics of what they once were.  So getting into House of Dust and seeing it is yet another haunted asylum film, the expectations went down, and I hoped for the best.  In the end it turned out to be a fun little film.

When we first meet Emma (Inbar Lavi), her family is dropping her off at her new school.  She’s the quiet type who just wants to fit in with the other college students, and it’s not long after her arrival that she catches the attention of Kolt (Steven Grayhm).  The two hit it off at a late night bonfire where the two go off with Kolt’s friends, and they eventually find their way into an abandoned section of the campus that at one time was a facility for mental patients.  Of course there is an urban legend attached to the location, but thankfully the film avoids following the local stories and goes its own path when Kolt and his friends have ashes spilled on them while they are investigating the location.

When it comes to revenge, Hollywood has exploited the theme in just about every conceivable way.   It’s a genre that has been done so much that it’s hard to find a fresh hook to bring the audiences in, much less create a story that will motivate the audience to root for this blood thirsty protagonist.  Getting the audience on your side as your hero hunts down individuals for retribution is asking a lot, but still there is always going to be an audience that will fill theater seats.

As for how Piggy fares in the lexicon of revenge films, unfortunately this was a film that seemed to be doomed from the start.  I had caught a trailer for the film, and for the most part it left me at least optimistic about the possibilities.

The World War 2 genre has been done to death by Hollywood, but The Monuments Men gives us a fresh look at the war and delves into a story that is a breath of fresh air to the genre.  Despite all my history classes that delved into the atrocities of World War 2, it was never discussed about what happened to the great landmarks that were spread throughout Europe and encountered the cold hand of war.  Granted, when measured against the staggering amount of lives lost throughout the war, the thought of a sculpture being destroyed or a Picasso painting being incinerated simply seems petty by comparison.

In 1943 as the war seems to be making its final push toward the defeat of the Nazi party, Frank Stokes (George Clooney) delivers a pitch to President Roosevelt about the importance of preserving the art of the past before the war destroys it all. His pitch is passionate though idealistic, but still it is enough to convince the president that assembling a small unit simply to help preserve certain classical monuments couldn’t cause any harm.  Stokes goes on to gather a team of scholars, most of whom are well past their prime, to join him on this quest to protect and preserve the past.

With a title like The Zombinator you basically know the kind of B-movie spectacle you are getting into.  Any notions of great special f/x or even a good script should be cast aside, and you simply have to tell yourself to sit back and enjoy the silliness that should follow.  But what the title did was build up these crazy thoughts of a cyborg from the future to take out hordes of zombies.  Well, this isn’t that movie.  Even the cover art gives promise to this kind of cheesy film, but there are no cyborgs from the future; instead we get another run-of-the-mill film about a documentary film crew that stumbles into trouble.

I don’t have a problem with this found footage/documentary style that seems to saturate the horror market these days but at the same time with so many films that get it right, you’d imagine all these up-and-coming filmmakers trying to emulate this style would latch on to what works and figure out ways to improve upon it.  George Romero’s Diary of the Dead, as well as the film Rec, are examples of how to do it right.  But what usually comes from these films are large doses of shaky cam and shots that never really show the viewer enough of what they want to see.

With a new Transformers film on the horizon, it is no surprise that the animated series finds its way on DVD.  Shout Factory releases the entire series of Transformers: Energon in a 7-disc set with 51 episodes that amount to over 18 hours of Transformer fighting goodness. Over the years there have been numerous incarnations of the hit animated series; just how well does this series fare?  Honestly it surprised me how much fun this series turned out to be, and it left me wishing that Michael Bay had drawn some inspiration from this series.

The series picks up 10 years following the last war between the Autobots (the good guys) and the Decepticons (the bad guys).  The Decepticons that remain work alongside the Autobots helping to collect energon, a resource that give energy to the Transformers. The humans are trying to harness its power as well.