Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on February 16th, 2007
As the reality TV phenomenon continues to evolve in much the same way as irradiated insects, it is perhaps time to go back and remember Series 7: The Contenders, a film that has lost none of its relevance since its release in 2001.
The film deals with a reality TV show called “The Contenders,” now in its seventh season. Contestants are selected in a lottery, and participation in the show is compulsory. The rules are simple: kill the other contestants. The winner is the last one standing, but that sim...ly means that person is off to the next season. Ultimately, the only way out of the show is feet-first.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 16th, 2007
These are the other four films featuring Peter Lorre as the mysterious detective Mr. Moto. All but the first are from 1939.
1938's Mr. Moto’s Gamble began life as a Charlie Chan film, but difficulties with that franchise’s star (Warner Oland) led to Fox putting the Chan films on hiatus. Keye Luke, Chan’s Number One Son, is here anyway, as is plenty of footage shot for the Chan film. Luke and comic relief ex-boxer Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom do their best to help Moto solve a case of murder in a boxing ring.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 13th, 2007
A group of former college friends (now apparently weathered by life, though they look as if they are CURRENT college friends) gather at beach cottage for a reunion. Stresses and resentments within the various marriages and couplings quickly put a damper on the weekend, and a desultory evening’s conversation leads to a few members of the group playing the party game that consists in reciting “Dead Mary” in front of a mirror. Inevitably, the evil spirit is summoned, and people start being killed off. Victims have the unfortunate habit of reanimating, however, which leads to mounting paranoia, as no one knows who can be trusted to still be human.
So the rather odd cross-fertilization that we have here is Friday the 13th with John Carpenter’s version of The Thing. Miraculously, an abrupt ending with several loose ends aside, the mix works, thanks in no small part to a strong cast and sharp dialogue that make our group far more believable (and thus sympathetic) than one has come to expect in films of this kind. It ain’t perfect, but it sure ain’t bad, either.
Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on February 9th, 2007
Genre and cult fans have their pantheons of cinematic deities. Some of these immortals are currently active, some are not. Some are celebrated for their incompetence. But there are others who are deified for actually making great films. And it is always heartbreaking when idols totter on their pedestals. Consider the giants of the horror film who emerged in the 1970's, and where they are now. Wes Craven has done quite nicely for himself, thank you very much, but what has Tobe Hooper really and truly done for us since...The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? And is John Carpenter really going to end his feature film career with Ghosts of Mars? Say it isn’t so.
And now comes along Masters of Horror. The series is currently airing its second season, and much of the first is now out on DVD. The premise is fabulous: get the acknowledged giants of the field to make short films with very little constraints with regards to content. But the execution isn’t always as inspired as said premise. There certainly have been some pretty memorable episodes, but for my money, the most striking (even though it has its own flaws), is the one episode that never aired in North America: Takashi Miike’s insanely nasty “Imprint.” The current season is shaping up to be a disappointment: too many mediocre-to-pedestrian episodes, directed by people who hardly qualify as “masters” of the genre.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 5th, 2007
Three young couples on a road trip leave their turtled vehicle and march through the dark woods, hoping to find the highway again. (Clearly Mensa candidates, each and every one.) They stumble upon an apparently abandoned secret facility, and naturally blunder in. A psychically powered lunatic uses astral projection to do bad things to them. People start to die. No great loss.
Think through this equation for me, will you? Direct-to-video + walking-around-tunnels-plot + Tara Reid = ? What do you think? That the movie is not a COMPLETELY incompetent mess at the technical level is a minor miracle. That it would be anything other than tedious, however, would have required a major one.
Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on February 2nd, 2007
I thought this week I’d toss my two cents into the whole HD DVD/Blu-ray debate. Let’s be clear: I have no particular technical expertise, and I have no interest in attempting to judge which is the superior format (though I note with interest that, in the latest issue of Video Watchdog, editor Tim Lucas mentions that Blu-ray players are not compatible with standard DVDs). I’m approaching this from the point of view of a collector, and specifically a collector of cult films.
It may be that the format w...r is over before it begins, if Warner’s dual-format disc or the dual-format players turn out to be everything promised. If not, one very significant difference between this battle and the VHS/Beta war occurs to me. During the previous two-format period, whichever side you took, this didn’t really limit your viewing options (at least until Beta started losing). But with studios lining up in opposing camps, that means that whichever format you choose today, there will be plenty of movies that you will simply NOT be able to watch because they will be exclusively released on the competing format. Gee, and is it a surprise that the units aren’t flying off the shelves?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 1st, 2007
Five men wake up in a middle-of-the-desert chemical warehouse. Some of them are tied, some are wounded, and all have no memory of who they are or how they came to be here. They soon discover that they are part of a kidnapping plot, but who is victim and who is kidnapper remains a mystery. What they do know is that the rest of the criminals are on their way back, and if they don’t escape the warehouse, someone is going to die.
Though the opening had me worried this was going to be Saw II with a prestige cast (Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Joe Pantoliano, etc.), it quickly developed into a tight thriller whose premise made up in niftiness what it lacked in plausibility. The paranoia is played out to the fullest, the twists come fast and furious as fragments of memory return, and frequent cuts to the police investigation of the kidnapping prevents the film from becoming a claustrophobic play. We’ve certainly seen variations on this concept before (everything from Reservoir Dogs to House of 9 is swimming in the same waters), but that doesn’t prevent this from being a very fun hour-and-a-half.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 31st, 2007
Arriving at a small English town, backpacker Christina Ricci is promptly run over by a car. Despite the impressive impact, she seems unharmed, apart from a complete loss of memory. The woman who hit her takes her in, and Ricci promptly bonds with the children, especially the little boy, who, like her, sees scary things at night. Meanwhile, the kids’ father (Stephen Dillane) is investigating a long-buried 1st Century church nearby, whose crucifixion scene is disturbingly out of whack. Ominous hints gather.
When the mystery is revealed, it is accompanied by a twist unlikely to surprise anyone with even a passing familiarity with horror films. Fortunately, the film doesn’t stand or fall on that telegraphed twist, which furthermore sets up the climax, rather than BEING the climax. The film’s central idea, though, is an interesting one, and the execution is nicely understated. This isn’t a classic in the making, but as an atmospheric little horror tale, it acquits itself honourably.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 31st, 2007
Bridget Moynahan is the new stepmother to Peter Weller’s children. 14-year-old Carly Schroeder is not at all pleased with the state of affairs, and just as displeased to be hauled off to Africa for a safari while Weller works on a dam. When their guide goes off-road, they run afoul of a pride of lions. The guide is eaten, the car is disabled, and the lions are circling. Weller mounts a hunt for his missing family, hiring a misanthropic big-game hunter to help.
There are more than a few echoes of Jaws here. If Grizzly advertised itself as “Jaws with Claws,” is this “Jaws with Paws”? Most of the elements are there, if we replace the slowly sinking Orca in the ocean with the disabled vehicle in the savannah, and the hunter is in full-on Quint mode. The finale is pretty familiar, too. So nothing much new, right down to the predictable family dynamics, but it’s all pretty entertaining, and the eating scenes are nicely gruesome.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 29th, 2007
Amber Tamblyn, playing Sarah Michelle Gellar’s sister, comes to Tokyo to help Gellar, currently in a hospital and considered insane. The help is too little too late, and soon Tamblyn is contending with the same evil ghosts. Two other storylines intertwine with this one: a young American student goes into the evil house on a dare, and she and her two friends attract the unwelcome attentions of the spectral mother and son. And back in the States, a blended family moving into a new apartment is gradually torn apart by the influence of the malevolent duo.
When Takashi Shimizu revisited Ju-On as The Grudge for Western audience, he did so with a script that, while streamlining the original and making it more comprehensible, still stuck close to the story, and the resulting film was arguably superior to its predecessor. The Grudge 2, on the other hand, jettisons the story of Ju-On 2. That sequel had a pretty convoluted plot, but it built a quite the horrific charge, and was a great spook story. The new film’s storyline starts from a false premise (that the ghosts were previously confined to the house, when they manifestly were not) and proceeds from there to work diligently at creating a result that is nonsensical, repetitive, and dull.
