Posts by Brent Lorentson

From the title alone it will either induce an eye roll or peak your curiosity.  I have a soft spot for fun cheesy horror, and with the tease of potential nudity well, this seemed like it would be a good time.  Turns out I had way more fun watching this movie than I expected; it was actually pretty good.  By no stretch of the imagination is this a brilliant slasher, but a solid B-movie that would have made Roger Corman and Lloyd Kaufman proud.

The story follows Rebecca (Katie Peterson) who has returned home from college to spend her Spring Break with her ex-cheerleading friends from high school.  Rebecca is looking forward to getting away and has hopes for all the parties and drinking that should follow, but her religious zealot of a mother more than disapproves of her daughter’s decision.  The girls end up staying at Missy’s (Shea Stewart) dad’s rental home for some girls-only fun.  Thankfully for the viewers the fun consists of drinking and tiny bathing suits that have tops that conveniently manage to come off when the story’s pacing slows.  None of the girls are all that likeable here, but when you’re watching a movie called Girls Gone Dead you’re not here for rich character development, you’re here for the boobs and gore.

Ever wonder what Herman Melville’s classic tale Moby Dick would have been like if instead of a white whale Ahab was obsessed with but a giant white dragon?  Well, then you’re in luck, because that is exactly what Age of Dragons is, a literal remake of the classic but with dragons.  At first I found this idea pretty awesome, and heck it even has Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon) with Vinnie Jones(X-Men Last Stand); what could possibly go wrong?  Sadly, a lot can go wrong.

The story opens with a young Ahab witnessing his sister’s death at the hand (or talon in this case) of the white dragon.  Ahab barely escapes with his life as his body is severely burnt whenthe dragon breathes its fire onto him.  This reason is as good as any to develop a strong hatred for dragons, and from here the legend of the great dragon hunter is born.  It’s at a tavern Ishmael (Corey Sevier) enters with his partner Queequeg (Kepa Kruse) the two adventurers are looking to join Ahab’s crew and slay some dragons.  After a harpooning contest with Stubs (Jones) it’s decided they are good enough to join this elite crew of hunters.  My first problem came here, so to decide if this guy is good enough to venture out into the wild and slay dragons you simply have him throw a harpoon as though it were a dart into a painting across the room?  This is really all it takes to go slay dragons and be able to boast how awesome a hunter you are?  Sure, it’s a film with dragons and shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but there was trouble in logic town, and this kind of logic would be the film’s undoing.

Going into this film all I really knew was that it was written and directed by Mario Van Peebles (New Jack City) and a vague memory of the trailer I caught on a previous DVD I reviewed.   One look at the unappealing cover and it had me thinking I got stuck with a low-budget Step Up knockoff, and I just really wasn’t looking forward to this film, but I do try and stay optimistic, because sometimes you never know when something good may come along.  This is one of those films.  It’s not great, and it’s hard to even consider putting this in the same league as The Breakfast Club as the DVD cover innocently makes that connection.  But of all the high school films that have come out in previous years, in my humble opinion this may be the best one out there as it tackles some very delicate and important issues without coming off like a bad movie of the week.

With prom on the horizon and seniors getting ready for graduation and college, Hendrix (Mandella Van Peebles), a junior, has his mind set on getting a car of his own and asking Cheyenne (Simone Battle) a senior, to the prom.  His friends are excited about the prom as well but more so about the prospect of losing their virginity by the night of the dance.  They’re so excited that they make a bet to see who of their group will be the first to pop the proverbial cherry.  The bad news for Hendrix is that Cheyenne has an overprotective father that just so happens to be a cop (played by Michael Jai White) and he won’t even consider a guy to date his daughter unless he at least has a 3.5 GPA.  This minor speed bump doesn’t stop Hendrix from trying, so he asks for her help in tutoring him, and in return Hendrix offers to help her with her graduation video that revolves around the notion of success.

“Loyalty is what you can hold in your hand.”

I know it doesn’t completely fill the bill as a pirate film, but ever since I saw The Goonies up on the big screen I became obsessed with all things pirate related.  Even one of the first books I read as a child was the Robert Louis Stevenson classic Treasure Island.  The bad part with being an 80’s kid was growing up in an era where pirate films simply were hard to come by, and when they did they weren’t very good; I’m looking at you Cutthroat Island.  I think most of us can agree it wasn’t until Pirates of the Caribbean came along that we pirate fans finally got the movie we had been waiting a long time for.

Just to forewarn you this is not a review for the mini-series that aired on the History channel with Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton.  Instead this is for the bad knockoff that seems to have been released just in time to catch any spillover interest from the Costner version.  So how does this version of the battle between the two feuding families hold up?  Well, not so good, and I’m being generous in saying that.

Taking into consideration this production had nowhere near the budget of the History Channel version, it does what it can to try to pull off this epic tale of love and revenge.  But being ambitious is not enough to make up for everything a retelling of the Hatfield and McCoy story this film is lacking.  Just because you have a limited budget doesn’t mean you can’t pull off a great western; A Fist Full of Dollars and the original Django come to mind as being great iconic westerns done on shoestring budgets for the time.  And those movies are pretty ambitious when you look back at them, and being a little more current El Mariachi (though a modern western) was another micro-budget film filled with gunplay and a story heavy on revenge but effective on using  the most out every dollar and location at hand. I just point this out since just because a film doesn’t have a large budget they shouldn’t be let off the hook for not stepping up to the plate and delivering the film they set out to make.

A serial killer is on the loose in New York dispatching up-and-coming hip hop artists.  Is it a feud between rappers, a crazed fan, or is it all part of a conspiracy connecting all the homicides involving rappers reaching back to the days of Tupac and the Notorious BIG?  Chances are if you’re anything like me you couldn’t care less.  I take rappers about as seriously as Carrot Top, and I’m willing to wager it’s Carrot that has more talent.  But people still enjoy the music, and as long as the fans are happy that’s all that matters.

It doesn’t take long to figure out who the killer is, but what does seem to drag through this film is the reason why the murders are taking place to begin with.  As the investigation of the murders goes on, our lead detectives Johnson (James McDaniel) and Francelli (Michael Mosley) explore the many avenues that lead to why the hip hop scene is how it is.  The murders create buzz which raises the sales of albums, so it’s made clear that violence between artists is more than welcomed by the record companies.  Even the hip hop magazines stand to make a profit when they manage to release an article or the last interview with a fallen artist.