Disc Type

"You never kissed me like that before."

Steve March, played by John Agar, is a radiation expert who lives and does research out in the desert. His instruments detect a strange source of gamma rays in an isolated area of the desert. It's a good bet they aren't coming from Dr. Banner, so March decides to investigate, and it turns out you wouldn't like him when he's angry. Along for the ride is red shirt ... I mean lab assistant Dan Murphy, played by Robert Fuller. They discover a brand new cave, and as they follow the radiation scent, they encounter a giant floating brain with eyes. Murphy ends up dead, and March ends up possessed by the giant floating brain, who calls himself Vol from the planet Arous. The name is an obvious riff on Eros, and we soon get the connection when March returns to his fiancée, who finds his passion a little hotter than when he left. In fact, the brain begins to revel in his newfound appetite for Earth women. But that's just a distraction from why he's really controlling March. As a renowned radiation expert, March has access to government weapons facilities, and it's there that Vol attempts to take over the world. He shoots eyebeams that can take out a model airplane in flight and destroy an entire military base.

I have to admit my knowledge of the show Curb Your Enthusiasm is casual at best. I’ve seen a few episodes over the years, but not enough to call myself a fan. So to have Season 11 handed off to me to review was a bit daunting, but as a long-time fan of Seinfeld and having at least seen Larry David in the Woody Allen film Whatever Works, I figured I had a good enough idea of what I was in store for. Thankfully the show isn’t something like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, and I could simply start the season and not feel lost. The season starts off with Larry David waking up after hearing a noise in the house. When he goes to investigate, he eventually finds a body floating in his pool. It was an attempted robbery gone bad, and as it turns out there is a law in Larry’s district that states there needs to be a fence around the pool. This basically is the catalyst for the whole season, and things just get worse for Larry and him not having this fence.

Larry is also busy with getting a new show started up with Netflix, and then when things fall through, Hulu comes in to pick up the series. Larry is being extorted into casting Maria Sofia (Keyla Monterroso Mejia), the niece of the man who drowned in Larry’s pool. The hoops Larry has to go through to get the girl on the show are pretty funny as is, but then when everyone sees just how bad of an actress Maria is it makes things even better.

“It’s simply his way of illustrating the misrepresentation of having quantum particles existing in two states. The cat in the box is either dead or alive. But we can’t tell until we open the box to observe it, so until we do so, the cat is both dead and alive.”

I’ve seen a lot of horror and thrillers in my time. This is my first one with mathematics at the heart of it. I applauded the film for introducing me to something new. However, the moments of intrigue are surrounded by periods where the plot seems to drag on. Also, I’m not sure that the characters’ reactions to particular events are sensible. For example, my daughter suddenly goes missing, and I suspect that her disappearance is somehow the result of my newly acquired residence. No matter how irrational that idea may be, the first thing I would do is get me and the rest of my family a hotel. In the case of The Cellar, the Woods family just keeps on living there. Now this could be partially forgiven, as the mother, played by Elisha Cuthbert, is determined to find her daughter. But once I get a distinct impression that my family is not the only presence in the house, I’d be conducting my investigation from a safe distance.

All is fair in the spy game. Or least that is the principle that this film embraces, as every character attempts to get the upper hand on the others. Though the film is not without its thrilling moments, it does take a bit of time to get to those thrilling bits. Told in a nonlinear fashion, it takes a moment to adjust to the constant shift between the two plots. It is only when things start to synch that I found myself completely engaged with the story. On the plus side, the film has a cast of recognizable faces, to include Arrow’s Katie Cassidy, The Cleaning Lady’s Adan Canto, Chicago Fire’s Annie Ilonzeh, Dermot Mulroney, and last but not least, Mel Gibson. While I would not categorize the film as box office quality, there are some elements that make for an intriguing story once things get into a groove.

It should have been a straightforward op, the kind that they’ve done hundreds of times over a career spanning decades. But from the very beginning, CIA officers Bill (Jason Isaacs) and Harris (Mulroney) sense that there is something suspicious about the assignment. It’s an interrogation at a black site of a man recently granted political asylum after speaking out against a dictator. The intelligence tells them that the man’s group has extremist affiliations. But from the moment they speak with him, he appears nothing like he’s supposed to. Complicating matters is a new member to their team (Ilonzeh), who’s pushing for more direct measures, or perhaps a better word would be enhanced, in order to get information. Either way, something isn’t sitting right with Harris and Bill.

Every era has their Hollywood good guys and their Hollywood bad guys. Back in the early days, we had Nazis to pit against our heroes. When they didn't quite fit the bill, we had the Japanese. For much of the Cold War, we had great Russian villains to test the mettle of our heroes. Terrorists fit the bill a lot today, but perhaps the only group hated by large segments of American audiences more are the 1%ers. Anyone who makes an obscene amount of money must have cheated to get there. It doesn't hurt that financial power companies have been immersed in the last couple of economic disasters. Michael Douglas taught us that greed is good, and while every single one of us wants to be at the top, it's not quite the politically correct thing to express ... at least out loud. Billions gives us the kind of power broker who is just too much fun to hate. It's the classic struggle of good guys versus bad guys. Of white hats versus black hats. But nothing is that simple in Billions, and if you haven't yet spent some time with the likes of Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis as Chuck Rhoades and Bobby "Axe" Axelrod, you're missing one of the more compelling dramas on television right now. But we lost Damien Lewis and his Axelrod character last season. It's a blow, to be sure, and I expect he's going to show up at some point when the series leads us to its final episode, but we're not there yet, and the show must, and certainly does go on with Billions The Complete 6th Season.

"Let the games begin."

“But I like to have sex with dragons.” 

Have you ever had the desire to see a midwestern take on ninjas? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you have not, but the if you happen to be that one person out there with an itch for bad cinema, I’m talking the kind of film that makes Troma look like high art cinema, then Ninja Badass may be the movie to quench your need. After 30 minutes of watching this film, I had to stop it and take a break. When Ed Wood set off to make his films, he didn’t intend to make a bad movie; it just happened. He was a filmmaker just trying to do the best he could without any real talent supporting him. Ninja Badass seems to go above and beyond to create one of the worst films in history, and what’s somewhat frustrating is that this was almost a good movie if it had showed just the slightest bit of restraint. But restraint is a word not in this film’s vocabulary. This is hands down the most WTF-did-I-just-watch movie in all my time reviewing films.  This is no small feat.