Posts by Jonathan Foster

“Imagine if you could never make another sound, not for the rest of your life.”

With those opening words, Marvel Knights Animation draws you into the world of the Inhumans, a race with many different genetic varieties. This 12-episode DVD shares one of the many stories from this unique corner of the Marvel Universe, focusing on the Inhumans’ home of Attilan, an island in the middle of the ocean. Ruled by their king, Black Bolt, they are content to live in their protective dome, blissfully ignoring the outside world. That bliss is shattered during the yearly coming-of-age ritual, when one of the self-imposed genetic transformations goes horribly awry for one of the young people. This sets off a chain of events orchestrated by Black Bolt’s insane brother, Maximus the Mad, who is determined to rule Attilan or see it destroyed.

What do you get when you take one over-actor, one under-actor, a mythical creature, and place them in the Norwegian woods? The answer is Thale, the worst thing to come out of Norway since the Viking raids. This is quite possibly the most boring film I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen Rubber and Southland Tales). Leo and Elvis clean up crime scenes for a living. One day, while cleaning up a scene where a man’s body has been scavenged by animals, they find a hidden doorway to a secret room. In that room, they find a naked girl in a tub hooked up to life support machines and tubes à la The Matrix. Unsure of what to do or how to help her, they soon find out she’s not what she seems, and that different groups want her.

My first problem with this film was the audio. This is one time where I would have preferred subtitles. (There were no subtitles to be had.) The English dubbing over the Norwegian dialogue was worse than a Godzilla flick. Admittedly, I don’t know a thing about dubbing audio, but it’s like the people responsible didn’t even try to match the voices to the actors’ lips. There were times when the audio came on a good half second after the actor stopped speaking. Compounding the bad dubbing was the similarity in the voices for Leo and Elvis, so sometimes the only way to tell who was talking was by the tone of the voice. (Elvis is usually freaked out, while Leo almost always speaks in a stoner’s monotone, but more on that later.) It gets really confusing when Leo and Elvis find the deceased man’s audio tapes, and they start talking over them while the camera is focused on the tape player.

“I’ve always advocated, and I still will advocate until the day I close my eyes and die, that there should be a national holiday honoring Jackie Roosevelt Robinson, so then all people will know who this man is.”

That statement by fellow Brooklyn Dodger Don Newcombe illustrates just how important Jackie Robinson was, not just to baseball, but to professional sports as a whole and the civil rights movement. When Robinson strode onto Ebbets Field in 1947, he shattered a color barrier that had been in place since professional baseball began.

“People will always put themselves and money first.”

What do a yuppie business student, an escaped prisoner, and an enforcer for the Serbian mob have in common? They all want Easy Money, and the lives of these three very different men intersect in very unpredictable ways. Unfortunately, this Swedish crime film from director Daniél Espinosa (Safe House) is hard to follow for reasons that go beyond me not understanding a word they’re saying.

Something strange in your neighborhood? Who ya gonna call? Well, if Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd are busy and you don’t mind being on TV, you call SyFy’s Ghost Hunters. For eight seasons, the team from T.A.P.S. (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) has gone to various spooky locations to investigate claims of paranormal activity. Led by Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, T.A.P.S. takes on a variety of cases in the first part of this season that send the team from a WWII aircraft carrier and a haunted amusement park to Providence’s City Hall.

For those unfamiliar with Ghost Hunters, each episode follows the same pattern. Jason and Grant get info from their client on the eerie goings-on before the team splits up to investigates the location. After the investigation wraps, the team analyzes the audio and video footage they’ve recorded and presents their findings to the customer. While formulaic, I feel it adds an air of legitimacy to the investigations. To see the team use the same equipment and techniques the same way again and again shows that the team has a methodical approach to their work.

You know the story. A bunch of teens head out to a remote location to party, with most of the group getting drunk and/or high. Ignoring any and all warnings, they do something that invariably gets most of them killed, whether they deserve it or not. Most horror movies — like Cabin in the Woods or Wrong Turn — take this recipe and throw in their own flavor. Unfortunately, Nobody Gets Out Alive adds nothing new to the pot. Here, the location is a forest, the warning comes in the form of an urban legend AND the requisite Creepy Old Guy, and the teens make all the mistakes that are typical of a horror movie. The result is a dull, flavorless slasher flick.

The first misstep Nobody Gets Out Alive takes is not making the viewer care about the victims. We only learn approximately three of the seven names of the teens heading out to the woods and, honestly, I didn’t even care to learn them. These kids are raging stereotypes typical of any slasher movie: the jock, the stoner, the awkward nerd, the virgin, and the girl with loose morals. They’re all here, and all they do is whine, complain and snipe at each other at the slightest provocation. I found it incredibly hard to believe these people were ever friends. Because these characters are so irritating, they are extremely unlikable and I found myself rooting for the villain to kill them just so they would shut up.  

Dumbo. Babar. Horton. Everyone loves elephants. These gentle giants of Africa and India have been lauded in both story and song. They’re also an integral part of any circus worth going to. With all this love for elephants, it would seem any movie about the oversize beasts would be a slam-dunk, right?

My Lucky Elephant is your basic movie about a boy and his dog; or in this case, a boy and his elephant. When a baby elephant gets separated from his herd and stumbles across an orphaned boy (First Khunchar), they instantly bond. The duo then set off on a journey to find work and friends. As they go from the jungle to the city, they also discover their place in the world.