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Movies

Warlock (1959) and Warlock (1989) a (very) belated double feature review

To begin: Other than their identical names, the two films reviewed here have absolutely nothing to do with each other, OK?  It just so happens I saw them both this past week and couldn’t help but review them together.

Beginning chronologically, the 1959 film Warlock features a trio of big name actors in the principle roles.  Here’s the movie’s trailer…

Though Henry Fonda at that time was likely the biggest “name” actor in the cast, the movie’s main character is Johnny Gannon (Richard Widmark, quite good), a member of a group of roughneck cowboys who, in the movie’s opening minutes, are shown to terrorize the town of Warlock (that, folks, is where the movie’s name comes from).  In those opening minutes it is clear his character is very conflicted.

While his brother and friends are part of this group of roughnecks who run the town’s sheriff out, it is clear he feels they’re going too far.  As the film’s story is revealed, there is very good reason for his conflicted feelings.

One day, the roughnecks go a little too far and one of them murders the town’s barber.  The town folk meet and decide they will hire a “Marshall” to come in and make law and order.  The man they hire is Clay Blaisedell (Henry Fonda) who brings along his companion Tom Morgan (Anthony Quinn).  The two are fearsome gunfighters and, upon meeting those who hired them, Blaisedell tells them at first they’ll love him for what he does but eventually they’ll come to fear -and hate- him for the exact same reasons.  Indeed, the implication is that Blaisedell and his companion move from town to town ending the rampant violence caused there but when the job is done, not only are they no longer needed, they’re no longer wanted.

Into this mix come two female characters, Lilly Dollar (Dorothy Malone, quite good as a woman with a grudge against Blaisedell) and seemingly meek townswoman Jessie Marlowe (Dolores Michaels, absolutely stunning, who develops feelings for the same man).

The movie, directed by the legendary Edward Dmytryk, creates a Greek tragedy-type drama with the notion of mercenary justice versus proper law and order.  While Blaisedell is presented as a decent man, the fact is his job involves being a great terror to the people who are are terrors to others.  Meanwhile his good friend Tom Morgan uses his own means of keeping their partnership going while Gannon wrestles with family issues (his brother is a member of the roughneck group) while wanting to bring genuine law and order to this town he lives in.

Add to the mix a delightful turn by DeForest Kelley as Curley Burne, one of the roughnecks who just may, in the end, renounce his ways and you have an entertaining film that lands, IMHO, just shy of some of the great westerns of that era even as it strives to join them.

The problem with this film is that we’re presented an awful lot of characters with various motivations and, while the film runs a healthy 2 hours, it feels like at times the film presents these motivations -and changes in the characters- a little too abruptly for my taste.  The movie was based on a novel by Oakley Hall and, while I never read the novel, it is my understanding the book presented far more characterization than the movie could, and certain characters were discarded which may have hurt the overall presentation.

Still, the film was entertaining and, while it may not have quite delivered a High Noon or Shane-type classic western experience, if you’ve got the time, you’d do far worse than giving Warlock a try.

And now for something completely different…the trailer for the 1989 horror film called…Warlock!

Taking its general plot -and inverts it- from (of all things) The Terminator, Warlock is nonetheless and entertaining, if somewhat dated, horror film involving two time travelers, one of which is a…witch.  Or rather, a Warlock, the male version of a witch.

The Warlock, played with a delightful evil edge by Julian Sands, is apprehended in the late 1600’s and set to be executed but manages to use a spell to escape to the movie’s present (ie, 1989).  Hot on his tail and entering the spell as it is cast is Giles Redferne (Richard E. Grant, also quite fun), that era’s Witch Hunter.

They land at separate points and the Warlock starts his search for the three parts of the “Devil’s Bible”, an artifact that when put together reveals the true name of God, and can undo all of creation.

His search takes him to a home in which Kassandra (Lori Singer), a down on her luck (money wise) new wave woman lives.  Within the home and hidden in a table the Warlock finds the first of the three parts of the Bible he seeks.  He also takes out the home’s owner and casts a spell on Kassandra which ages her very quickly and will kill her in a matter of days.

Redferne appears, hot on the tail of the Warlock, and together with Kassandra they set out to find -and stop- the Warlock before he finds the last two parts of the Bible and destroys all of creation.  So, like The Terminator, we have time traveling duelists coming to the present but, as mentioned above, the plot is inverted because the bad guy is the one being pursued by the present day female and the good time traveler.

Warlock’s screenplay was written by David Twohy who today is probably best known for writing and directing the “Riddick” films, from Pitch Black to The Chronicles of Riddick to Riddick to the upcoming Furia.

The movie is at times cheesy and I suspect many of its scares have been diluted with the passage of time.  While reading some of the original reviews/opinions regarding the film, it appeared when it was originally released it was considered very scary but in watching it today, nearly thirty years after its original release, I suspect the film could be shown intact on TV today and nobody would blink an eye.  Worse, some of the special effects presented have aged tremendously and therefore are pretty weak.

Still, the interactions between the characters was fun and, while cheesy, the film created an interesting reality in which the fight against the Warlock incorporates some (I’m assuming) historical methods for dealing with the beast.

Though I enjoyed seeing the film, I have to admit this is a hard one to recommend, especially to today’s audiences.  Warlock is most certainly a product of its era and, when viewed today, may try people’s patience, especially with regard to the not so-special effects.

Nonetheless, if what I’ve written above intrigues you, give the film a try.  It might just entertain you as much as it did me.

Movies

Kill Command (2016) a (mildly) belated review

A couple of months ago and on a website devoted to upcoming films I read about a low budget indie film that was about to be released called Kill Command.  Here is its trailer:

I don’t know about you, but I loved what I saw.

The movie was released to VOD and was made available for purchase and I had her on my list of films to see via Netflix.  Yesterday, I finally had a chance to see the film and…

Not bad.  Not bad at all.

To begin, the film is indeed a low budget affair but despite this, and as should be evident in the trailer above, the effects are nonetheless quite impressive…for the most part.  I won’t lie: There are times the effects aren’t as good and this is when the homicidal machines are on the move or being shot at (in general the effects for the creatures when they’re not moving all that quickly are quite good.  When they’re moving quickly…not so good).

So how’s the story?

Pretty engaging, at least until the very end (I’ll get to that in a moment).

In the near future, a group of soldiers are ordered to train against robotic machines on an isolated island.  Joining them in the group is Mills (Vanessa Kirby, who is quite good), a human with cyber “augmentations” which allows her to link up with machines.  The soldiers in the group generally don’t trust her and, once they arrive on the island, that trust is strained even more as outgoing and incoming radio communications are blocked.  The soldier group’s leader, Captain Bukes (Thure Lindhardt, also quite good), suspects something is up and is very weary of Mills’ presence.

For her part Mills tries to help the others out.  She “sees” robotic machinery deep in the woods and, eventually, scout ships fly in (sometimes very close) to watch over what the human soldiers are up to.

Eventually, the soldiers’ target, a group of robotic armed soldiers moving along a path in the island’s forest, is spotted.  The soldiers set up an ambush and quickly get to the business of dispatching these machines.  While they do, Mills notices something off in the distance and behind their group.  She goes to investigate and finds a larger, frightening looking robot fighting machine.  She links up with it and receives odd messages and images before blanking out…

When she recovers, the machine is gone.

She returns to the group and they continue their movements…until it becomes clear the hunters have become the hunted.

Kill Command is certainly not The-Most-Original-Movie-Ever-Created™.  Indeed, the trailer above offers a positive review which, quite correctly, states the movie is something of a mash up of Predator and The Terminator, which to me is far from a bad thing.

The actors take their roles seriously and the threat -and suspense- becomes quite real.  Kudos to director/writer Steven Gomez for infusing his film with this palpable sense of dread and managing to get some top effect-work out of what was, again, a very low budget.

If there is one flaw in the film, for me it was the movie’s conclusion (told you I’d get back to this).  Given that talking about it will reveal some rather big SPOILERS, I’ll get to that in a moment.

In the meantime, if the above trailer intrigues you, I recommend you give Kill Command a try.  Its a damn good sci-fi/suspenser which may not quite be up to the level of either Predator or the original Terminator but nonetheless acquits itself quite nicely before that aforementioned ending.

Still not sure you want to see it?  Here are the film’s first few minutes (though there are a couple of scenes, if memory serves, not shown and therefore it is not exactly accurate that this is the first eight minutes of the movie):

Anyway, what follows are…

SPOILERS

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!

If you’re still here, I hope you’ve given the film a try or are genuinely not interested in seeing it and curious about what bothered me about the film’s end.

Here goes.

As the soldiers are attacked by the machines, they are picked off one by one (a rather standard, even cliched concept that nonetheless ramps up the suspense nicely).  The big mystery of what the machines are up to isn’t such a big mystery in the end.  Basically, the “main machine” behind the others is becoming self-aware and, as it was programmed to be a war robot, it has turned the tables on the human soldiers and made its robotic army use the humans for training.

Mills tries to break into the machine and make it stand down at various stages of the film, but she is unsuccessful.

By the end of the movie, three soldiers and Mills are all that’s left alive.  They set up a final stand and the movie’s climax becomes a “siege”, with the overwhelming number of robots coming in for the kill.

However, Mills at this point has an Electromagnetic Pulse bomb (EMP) which she tells Captain Mills will wipe the mad machine’s internal programming and, therefore, end its threat.  Only problem is that to do this she has to lure it close to the EMP and that, in turn might wipe out Mills’ cybernetic memory as well.

Captain Bukes, who started the movie off very weary about Mills and her place in this training mission, nonetheless now doesn’t want her to sacrifice herself.  Nonetheless, circumstances eventually dictate that both Mills and the killer robot be far closer together than hoped for when the EMP is detonated.

Both machine and Mills suffer serious injury to their cybernetic cortex yet the fight continues.  Mills, facing memory shut down, manages to lure the homicidal robot up into a building and, using her control over a sniper rifle, shoots the creature through its “head”.

As the creature dies and Mills’ memory is wiped, we see that the creature has downloaded itself into the now “blank” memory banks within Mills.

The remaining soldiers, thankful they have survived the onslaught, take Mills with them to their awaiting transport, unaware that she may now be carrying the homicidal creature’s mind within her.  However, she is still a human and we must assume that not all her personality is carried within her programming.  Therefore we’re left to wonder: What will this programming do?  What will happen from here on?

And that, my friends, is the type of ending that drives me freaking nuts.

They might as well put a giant “THE END….?” or “TO BE CONTINUED” title after the final fade out.

Frankly, I’m tired of movies pulling this too-ambiguous crap.

Is it so damn hard to give audiences a story which features a complete beginning, middle, and ending while resisting the temptation to add sequel fare at the very end?

Worse, this ending is an inverse copy of David Cronenberg’s famous 1981 film Scanners.  In that film we follow good and bad telepaths and, at that movie’s climax, they face off and use their psychokinetic abilities against each other.  The good guy takes the worse of it and his body disintegrates.  However, before its completely gone his mind “jumps” into the bad-guy’s body and takes it over.  Thus we have the good guy “win” in the end even though audiences see the bad guy’s *body* left standing.

We don’t know where Kill Command goes from here because there’s too much ambiguity about this programming jump.  Clearly we’re supposed to suspect things might go very bad when Mills makes it back to the mainland.

But, again, why do this to us?  Why not give us an unambiguous ending and perhaps hint that the machine is still alive elsewhere and in another of the robotic units?  Why go this route?

Sorry for the rant, but it genuinely hurts me to see a film that, IMHO, is 98% good/decent which then stumbles during its final five minutes.

Movies

Blood Father (2016) a (mildly) belated review

It is impossible to review a relatively new movie featuring Mel Gibson without first addressing the controversy surrounding the man.  While what happened to him occurred a long time ago, there are many who still cannot stomach watching a film featuring the actor.

I can’t blame people for having that opinion.

It seemed Mel Gibson’s life went seriously off the rails at that time and he himself has stated he was in another frame of mind at that time and heavily into drinking…a mix that could have resulted in tragedy instead of what actually happened: Mel Gibson became a Hollywood pariah.

To some extent, he’s still there and the proof is obvious.  When Hacksaw Ridge, the critically acclaimed WWII drama he directed was released this year, TV commercials for the film stated something along the lines of: “From the director who brought you Braveheart” yet nowhere was it mentioned that director happened to be Mel Gibson.

So for those who simply cannot see a Mel Gibson film without being reminded of the things he did, Blood Father is obviously not for you.  For the rest, here’s my review…

Blood Father is a low budget “B” action movie featuring Mel Gibson in the title role.  His character, Link, is a curious amalgam of the “real” Mel Gibson and the types of characters he is best known to play.  Characters who hide an inner rage and may be just a little crazy yet are, in the end, noble and trying to do what’s right.  Like Mad Max or Martin Riggs, these people aren’t supermen.  They carry a lot of hurt inside and can barely contain it.  They will also fight for their loved ones and, quite literally, step in front of a bullet for them.

As the movie begins, we see Link in an AA meeting (here’s where real life, I suppose, mixes with fantasy).  Link talks before the group, offering a “state of the state”-type statement, that he’s been sober for two years and living clean.  Clearly the past has scarred him, bad, yet he’s fighting along, trying to do what’s right.

Link lives in a shabby trailer (not unlike Martin Riggs!) and works as a tattoo artist.  On the walls of his trailer are posters for his lost child.  Clearly, he misses her badly and wants to get back to her.

Meanwhile, we catch up on Link’s daughter, Lydia (Erin Moriarty) and find she’s mixed up with the wrong crowd.  They’re a group of violent, drug dealing Mexican traffickers who are in the process of strong-arming (and killing) people who worked for them.  Lydia can’t handle the scene and, accidentally, shoots her boyfriend and flees his violent friends.

Having no one to turn to, she calls Link and asks for some money so she can disappear.  Link hurries to get her but soon enough he’s confronting the violent Mexican traffickers as well as the police while trying to save his daughter’s life.

As mentioned above, Blood Father is a low budget “B” action film and I suspect if it wasn’t for Mel Gibson’s presence, and pretty damn good acting, the film might easily have disappeared without much of a trace.  Mind you, the way it was handled by the studios did a pretty good job in burying it anyway (I heard almost nothing about the film until it was available on VOD), so any success the movie has -modest though it likely was- is a testament to the quality of the film alone.

And there is quality here.

For most of the film’s run I enjoyed the movie, though I have to admit I groaned more than a little at the way Lydia allowed the bad guys to track her (Come on, girl, its understandable your old man doesn’t know about modern technology but don’t you know Apple iPhones can be tracked?!).

Anyway, regardless of this, the film moved along well and the action sequences were tightly cut, exciting, and never over the top.  There is even one action sequence involving Mel on a motorcycle that echoed Mad Max in the very best way possible and was, to me, the highlight of the film.

But having said all that, the film did have issues.

The biggest flaw, to me was the casting of Ms. Moriarty in the role of Lydia.  Don’t get me wrong, Ms. Moriarty is a damn fine actress.  I think she played her role as well as she could.  But she just didn’t fit the part of a drug snorting/boozing runaway who was at the edge of a precipice and coming down the drugs/booze while in the care of her father.  In this movie she’s supposed to be a young version of Link, something her father is all too painfully aware of so he hopes to clean her up and offers her something he never had: A second chance.

Again, Ms. Moriarty, IMHO, is a good actress but she looked a little too “clean” for this role and I found it hard to believe she was someone who lived on the streets for several years before returning to her father.

However, this was a minor problem compared to the movie’s climax, which for me was something of an abrupt dud.

As I said before, this was a low budget film and the climax of the movie makes that all too clear.  The final shootout proved to be the film’s least exciting action sequence, and it boggles my mind that was the case.  There was little tension and a resolution that felt hurried and, ultimately, hurt the film more than the miscasting of Ms. Moriarty.

Sadly, one can have 3/4ths of a damn good film ruined by the last 1/4ths.  While I don’t believe the lame ending of Blood Father completely wiped the film out, it took all that good will and, unfortunately, squandered it in a less than exciting shootout.

I truly, truly wish the film had done something a little better here.

Regardless, while Blood Father may have its flaws, it is an exciting (for the most part) film that features Mel Gibson in a familiar type role, one that he handles quite well.  Considering some of the other “geriatric” action films of late, even with its missteps Blood Father is worth a look see.

Here’s the film’s trailer which, unfortunately, gives a little too much away…

Movies

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016) a (mildy) belated review

Confession time: I love the Absolutely Fabulous (or AbFab) TV series which originally ran from 1992 until 2012.

Like most British TV shows, the episodes presented each season were fewer than those found on U.S. TV shows.  AbFab’s first season, for instance, featured 6 thirty minute episodes.  Subsequent seasons ran between 6 and 9 episodes each, with the final “season” being a mere 3 episodes long.

After that last season, I figured that was it for Absolutely Fabulous.  Not so, as the above headline clearly makes obvious.  Here’s the trailer for the 2016 film…

Now, if you’re not a fan of Absolutely Fabulous and have no idea what the heck it is about…I suspect the trailer won’t do much for you.  Heavens knows, I’m a fan of the show and the trailer didn’t do all that much for me.

Alas, this trailer is, unfortunately, a pretty good indication of what you’re getting with the movie.  Let me reiterate: I’m a fan of the series.  I loved the misadventures of the ditzy Edina (Jennifer Sanders, who created and wrote most of the series episodes and wrote the screenplay to the movie) and her best friend, the spectacular vampiric Patsy (Joanna Lumley in the role of a lifetime…and several more!).

So, clearly, I hated the film, right?  It’s not worth it at all, right?

No.

There are funny moments to be found in the AbFab film and many of the cameos are quite funny.  But the problem is this film never really hits the “hilarious” stride I was hoping for.

While I’m glad to see the whole gang again -and then some- this movie moves along at a rather slow pace and some of the comedic set pieces work (the flight to France, a rather unique karaoke club, and the fate of Kate Moss) while others (Patsy dressing as a man, as seen in the trailer) absolutely…don’t.

The film’s biggest problem ultimately is that as good as the good stuff is, it simply isn’t enough to offset both the leisurely pace and the many parts that don’t work as well.

By the time the film reaches its climax and you expect things to get frantic, the film seems lost and, curiously, decides to crib its climax from The Return of the Pink Panther.  Don’t believe me?  Check out the AbFab movie trailer above and pay particular attention to the scenes where Edina and Patsy are in a very small red car…and what happens to them in it.

Now check out the scenes presented below from The Return of the Pink Panther.  Pay particular attention to what happens between the 49 second mark through approximately 1:50…

Strange.

Anyway, if you are a fan of Absolutely Fabulous, the TV show, you’ll probably like the film a lot more than if you’re a newbie.  However, even fans of the show, I suspect, will be surprised at how (by the Gods, I’m turning into Donald Trump!!!) low energy this movie is.

While the AbFab film is not a total disaster and there are some very amusing scenes, one nonetheless can’t help but feel this was a missed opportunity.

Too bad.

Movies

The Jackal (1997) a (very) belated review

Way back in 1973 there was a thriller released to theaters and adapted from a best-selling novel by the name of The Day of the Jackal.  It starred Edward Fox as the mysterious “Jackal”, a highly skilled and deadly killer for hire who is charged with eliminating Charles de Gaulle, the president of France.

I loved the film.  It had a near documentary presentation and despite the fact that the “Jackal” was clearly a nasty, nasty man, you couldn’t help but admire how he pieces together the elements of his plan while the law slowly, inevitably, nip at his heels.  The climax of the movie was incredibly gripping and audience manipulation at its finest: You root for the good guys to stop the “Jackal” even as a dark part of you wishes, after witnessing all this planning and activity, he actually finish the job.

Here’s that movie’s trailer.  Pardon the “Harry Palmer Movie Site” lettering…this appears to be the only available YouTube listing featuring this trailer…

Many years later and in 1997 a powerhouse cast consisting of Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, and Sidney Poitier would star in a remake of that film, entitled The Jackal…

I saw the film years before, though I doubt in theaters when it was originally released, and recalled not thinking all that much of it.  Again, I loved the original film and this remake felt so very…inferior.

The years pass -as they inevitably do- and The Jackal was on cable last night and I started watching it almost from the very beginning (I think I missed the first few seconds or, at most, about a minute of the very start) and found myself curiously drawn to it.

Seeing the film again from essentially the beginning to end and with the memories of The Day of the Jackal not being quite as strong as they were when I first saw this remake, I found myself far more engrossed in this film than I was before.

Mind you, the film remains far from “great” but my feelings for it have moved up quite a bit.

The plot of The Jackal is essentially the same as the original film, though it does sport some big differences.  You have a shadowy group of people who hire the Jackal (Bruce Willis) to kill someone and his target is…well, I won’t get into spoilers here but let’s just say that reveal is part of the story versus the original film which gave us who the target was from the beginning.  We then have, like the original film, a “split” movie, alternating between the Jackal and his preparation(s) for the kill and our heroes’ attempts to find him.

On the good guy side, Sidney Poitier plays FBI Deputy Director Carter Preston.  His character is in league with Russian Major Valentina Koslova (Diane Venora), a tough as nails operative, and when they get wind of the Jackal and the fact that he plans to commit a very high level assassination, they get in touch with Richard Gere’s Declan Mulqueen, an IRA “terrorist” currently in prison and the only person they know who has had contact with the Jackal.  After a bit of bantering, they offer him vague promises of a better/lighter prison term to help them hunt him down.

Turns out they really do need him as Mulqueen reveals he has actually seen the Jackal and, in their group, is the only person who can identify him by sight.  Later still it is revealed Mulqueen isn’t interested in hunting down the Jackal just to reduce his prison sentence.  He and the Jackal have a history…and Mulqueen has very good reasons to want the Jackal taken down.

So, returning to my overall view of the film this time around: The Jackal entertained me far more than it did the first time I saw it all those years ago and, as I stated before, it could be because my memories of the original film have faded over time and therefore I’m not comparing both films head on anymore.

The Jackal was a good suspense film but, as I also stated before, not quite great.  There were several problems with the overall story, things that happen that make no sense or aren’t adequately explained.  For example, the Jackal at one point paints a van with a removable white paint and, using a high pressure hose, times how long it takes to wash that paint off.  This is an intriguing bit of plot and, if memory serves, it was used in the original film, but in The Jackal the use of the wash-off paint is pointless.  I won’t spoil things but when the Jackal finally does wash the paint off, it is for no real reason and, given what happens, it might have been smarter for him to just leave the original paint!

Later on in the film, toward the climax (MILD SPOILERS), we have Richard Gere’s Mulqueen chasing the Jackal through the streets and eventually into a subway but its never really explained why his character would think the Jackal went that way.  Given the large amounts of people running to and fro, it strains credibility to think he would spot his target among so many people.

Another problem with the film, at least to me, was that the movie’s makers got a little too pleased with showing off Bruce Willis in various disguises.  While the idea of him changing his looks made sense, after a while it felt like overkill.  Perhaps that’s just me.

Still, the movie nonetheless moves nicely and the star power gathered together is fun to watch, as is spotting cameos by some then up-and-coming actors in early roles (J. K. Simmons and Jack Black both appear in the film and you can spot them, if you look hard, in the trailer above).

The bottom line: While no classic, I came away with the impression The Jackal was a better film than what I originally thought, though it still doesn’t quite reach the levels of a really great suspense film.  If you’re in the mood for a decent action/suspense film with some major star-power, you could do worse than watch The Jackal.

Movies

Train to Busan (2016) a (mildly) belated review

Train to Busan, a South Korean production, immediately made my list of films I intended to catch after their theatrical run (in this film’s case, I don’t believe it played in my area).

The few reviews of it I read were glowing and intriguing, noting the film was a high-tension zombie film set, for the most part, on a train traveling from Seoul to, you guessed it, the city of Busan.

So I waited and, after a while, the film was made available for purchase,  I found it via VUDU on sale one day and, rather than wait for Netflix to get it, gave in and outright bought the film.  Yesterday I finally had a chance to see it and I’m pleased to say I don’t regret the purchase one bit.

Train to Busan’s two main characters are Seok Wu (Yoo Gong), a self-centered fund manager who barely has time for his very young daughter, Soo-an (Soo-an Kim).  He’s revealed to be a ruthless financial “shark” who is willing to ease an investor’s concerns over the phone and then turn around and make a killing selling the same stock he just told the man to hold on to (I hope I remember this right! 😉

When the workday is done we see him in a garage talking on the phone to his wife, who lives in Busan, and whom he is in the process of divorcing.  She tells him their daughter wants to come to Busan to see her and essentially begs him to do the right thing on her birthday (which is the next day) and allow her to come to Busan for a visit.

Seok Wu doesn’t care to do so and tells her.  When he reaches his apartment and gives his daughter her birthday gift, a Nintendo Wii game system, his daughter’s reaction isn’t what he was expecting.  He asks her why she isn’t impressed with this gift and the daughter points to the Wii system she already has and which he gave her as a gift for “Children’s Day”.

Feeling guilty over this and noting it is clear his daughter wants to see her mother, Seok Wu agrees to take his young daughter on the train to Busan.  He figures to miss only half a day of work and be back at the office by the early afternoon.  Together they drive to the station but along the way see fire trucks roaming the streets and a big fire taking up an entire floor of a high rise.  They don’t stop to dwell on the tragedy and instead drive on, reaching the train and boarding it.

We are presented with a larger cast of characters on the train, some of whom will be a part of the story.  Not one of them notices a distressed woman with mysterious bite marks on her leg board the train.

Very soon, pandemonium begins.

Train to Busan, as I noted above, very much lived up to my expectations.  It is exciting, action filled, and tense as hell.  It also knows when to slow down and give us character moments…along with building up the tension for the next action/horror scene.

For those adverse to gore, the film does not dwell on or show much of it, which I didn’t mind at all.  Sometimes, particularly in zombie films, gore becomes the way to give audiences doses of horror but in a film with this giddy amount of high tension, it wasn’t necessary to have much of it.

Though I ultimately loved the film, there are a couple of minor negatives worth noting.  For example, the film’s characters were just that, more “types” than “real” people.  Given the fact that the central core of characters is fairly large and the movie has only so much time to present them and then put them in danger, I didn’t mind though some others have pointed this out as a negative.

A little more problematic is the fact that this is a fairly low budget film.  Granted, outside of Hollywood “blockbusters”, most films made in foreign lands don’t have anywhere near the money the bigger Hollywood films require.  Nonetheless, there were some scenes in Train to Busan which I suspect the film’s makers would and could have made far larger and impressive had they the budget to do so.

Regardless, these two negatives are at best very minor.  Train to Busan is an exciting, action/tension filled zombie film that easily sits atop the list of the best of the genre.

Well done and recommended!

Movies

The Prophecy (1995) a (very) belated review

Yesterday and while feeling myself in a mental fog (don’t ask…and, no, it has nothing to do with drugs or alcohol, neither of which I consume), I was flipping through the channels and hoping to get my feet on the ground (figuratively) when I caught the start of the 1995 film The Prophecy.

I’d heard about the film and knew there were several sequels made to it (according to Wikipedia, this film has produced four sequels).  I also knew it had the delightfully off-kilter Christopher Walken in it as the bad-guy and so I stuck around and watched it.

Wow.

Look, the movie is, at best, a fairly low budget “B” movie with a pseudo-religious plot that doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense.

Counterpoint: You have Christopher freaking Walken playing the angel Gabriel, who walks the Earth and talks in your typical Christopher Walkenese while hunting down a soul hidden from him…a soul which would lead to the end of a war in the heavens which, we’re told, is stalemated.

Christopher Walken’s Gabriel is indeed your badguy, and he’s an absolute hoot, turning from “nice” to “nasty” with remarkable ease.  If there’s any real negative to say about this film (other than the fact that the plot is silly as hell), it is the fact that the movie should have had Mr. Walken in every scene.

Anyway, back to the plot.

So you have this evil soul hidden in the body of some military man who dies of old age and the angel Simon (Eric Stoltz in what amounts to a semi-long cameo) takes the soul from his body and hides it in the body of a little girl (Moriah Shining Dove Snyder) while Gabriel and his minions try to get their hands on it.  As stated before, this soul is so evil having it on Gabriel’s side will give him an advantage in the eons long War of Heaven.

Simon enlists the aid of a former priest, now policeman named Thomas Dagget (Elias Koteas) to…I dunno, help or keep his eyes peeled or something.  Gabriel eventually finds and kills Simon while Dagget, close behind, figures out the little girl is the target and, with the help of Katherine (Virginia Madsen), the little girl’s teacher, they hold off Gabriel and try to free the girl of the evil extra soul she carries.  Got it?!

Look, we’re not talking Casablanca here.

But for some at times cheesy fun and a wonderful evil performance by Christopher Walken, plus a you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it cameo by another pretty big named actor at the end of the film (I won’t give him away…suffice to say he was in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and, like Mr. Walken, his appearance in the film is a total hoot), you could do a lot worse than spend some time with The Prophecy.

Movies

Jason Bourne (2016) a (mildly) belated review

I’m a fan of the original three Bourne films (2002’s The Bourne Identity, 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy, and 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum).  All three featured Matt Damon in the titular role of Jason Bourne, amnesiac American hitman who is trying to figure out the lost pieces of his life while the “Agency” works very hard to eliminate him.

Until the Bourne films appeared, the king of the spy films was James Bond but, as Pierce Brosnan limped through his last features in the role, not only James Bond but the entire superspy genre appeared to be played out.

So it was a very pleasant surprise to find there was still life in it, as long as one offered a great plot and genuinely exciting action sequences.  All three of the original Bourne films were a hit and their influence was clear when in 2006 the then latest James Bond reboot, Casino Royale, appeared and, to my eyes, to a great degree took note of the Bourne films and moved in that direction.

After 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum, however, it seemed this movie franchise was at its end.  I distinctly recall Matt Damon was asked about either the plot of this film or where the franchise could go from here and, tongue planted in cheek, he noted something along the lines that all three films had the same plot.

He wasn’t totally wrong.

For each Bourne film does indeed feature a repetitive plot which I pointed out in the very second sentence of this review.

Despite the repetitive nature of the plots, the three original films nonetheless managed to use what they had well.  When we reached The Bourne Ultimatum, however, it was clear this film was intended to be the finale.  All of Jason Bourne’s original questions were answered and our protagonist made amends for his violent past while closing down the agency that made him what he was.

Despite this seemingly complete resolution, Hollywood being Hollywood and the allure of money to be made resulted in the first, and thus far only, “sideways” sequel to the Bourne films, the 2012 Jeremy Renner/Rachel Weisz starring The Bourne Legacy.  On paper the concept wasn’t bad.  Since Matt Damon wasn’t going to be in this film, the producers decided to focus on the many other “Jason Bournes” out there and make a feature on them.

Alas, what may sound intriguing on paper unfortunately didn’t work, IMHO, in the finished product.  I felt The Bourne Legacy (you can read my original review of it here) was at best an “OK” film that didn’t resolve anything and appeared to be intended to start a new franchise rather than stand alone as its own good film.  It comes as little surprise no sequels to this film were ever green lit.

However, Hollywood being Hollywood (redux) and money to be made, it shouldn’t be too terribly surprising that with the passage of years, Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass (he oversaw the last two of the original three Bourne films) were again drawn into making another Bourne film.  They did, of course, and earlier this year Jason Bourne was released.

Alas, despite some really good action sequences and a very game Matt Damon, the best I can offer is, like The Bourne Legacy before it, a mild recommendation for Jason Bourne.

The film certainly isn’t a disaster.  As I stated before, the action sequences are quite good at times (even if the final car chase is ludicrous).

But the story…

Once again we have Bourne looking into his background.  Once again we have the “Agency” and their shadowy operative after our hero.  Nothing’s really changed except the concept this time around seems tired and at times I couldn’t help but feel things weren’t as interesting as before.

Yet there’s little doubt the film could have been great.  It features a good cast, including Tommy Lee Jones as CIA Director Robert Dewey, current “it” girl and soon to be Tomb Raider Alicia Vikander as CIA operative (and a woman with her own agenda) Heather Lee, Vincent Cassel as “Asset”, a hitman with a personal grudge against Jason Bourne.  Julia Stiles also makes her return to the Bourne universe as Nicky Parsons, a role she’s had in all three original Bourne films.

But, again, the movie was decent but never spectacular.

The big problem lies in the screenplay and the way the story is told.  As an audience we’re whipped from place to place and people are heading rapidly to the left, then to the right, then there’s gunfire and fist fights and car chases and general mayhem and rinse, lather, and repeat, and all revolve around a) Jason Bourne’s “origin” and b) a Mark Zuckerberg/Steve Jobs-like character who’s created some kind of Facebook-like program everyone uses and which the CIA hopes will allow them to watch over everyone.

By far the film’s worst sin and what soured me on much of what followed involves the films opening moments.  I’ll get to this in a moment but it does involve a big SPOILER.

So, before I get into that SPOILER, I’ll repeat: Jason Bourne is a decent enough time killer that you should be able to enjoy but, frankly, you’re better off checking out the original three films.  A mild recommendation for Jason Bourne completists.

SPOILERS FOLLOW!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

 

All right, for those still here: The movie gets started by Julia Stiles’ Nicky Parsons breaking into the CIA computers (a wise move…NOT!) and downloading some very sensitive material, including files related to Jason Bourne and the assassin program he went through.  The CIA notes what she’s up to in real time and, because of the nature of the material she steals, they believe Ms. Parsons is in league with Jason Bourne.

This isn’t the case.

Jason Bourne has kept a very low profile while currently residing in Greece.  He makes money in bare knuckle boxing matches and while staying “off the grid”.  He has no idea at all what Parsons is up to but after she’s stolen the sensitive CIA material she seeks out and finds him at one of his boxing matches.  There, she allows him to see her.

After the match, Bourne finds she’s left him a note in his belongings on where to meet up with her.

This is where the stupidity of the story goes really deep.

Why not just meet Bourne right then and there?  Why leave him a note and then meet him elsewhere?

Oh, right, because when they meet up where she wants to meet, in the middle of a freaking all-out street riot in Athens, they become targets to the CIA who has, by this time, figured out where they are (as opposed to at that boxing match, where they weren’t at), and we get to have an Exciting-Chase-Sequence™ which eventually results in Nicky Parsons getting shot and killed…but not before she gives Jason a key to a locker which will lead him to the next place he needs to go.

How do I put this delicately?I  This sequence is STUPID, STUPID, STUPID.

Why the hell didn’t Nicky Parsons just wait for the boxing match to be over, approach Bourne, and talk to him there and then?

I’ll tell you why…Oh wait, I can’t.

IT MAKES NO SENSE.

It felt like the movie’s creators hoped to “shock” audiences at the death of this recurring character just as they did with another big character in the opening minutes of the second Bourne film (I won’t reveal who).

But in this case, the way it was done was just beyond stupid.

If you can get past that, you may enjoy the rest of the film a little more.

Maybe.

Movies

The Last Witch Hunter (2015) a (mildly) belated review

Hmmm…The Last Witch Hunter…it was a Vin Diesel film, right?  The follow up to his incredibly successful (and goofily over-the-top) Furious 7?  Which in turn was his follow up to his cute (even though I personally didn’t like the overall film) vocal turn in Guardians of the Galaxy, right?

I mean, Vin Diesel was on such a roll!  Yet I recall The Last Witch Hunter (I’ll refer to it as LWH from now on) came and fled the theaters -and everyone’s memories- quicker than you could say, “Vin Diesel is in a new movie and its called–”

I kid, I kid.

But the reality is that while this film featured a big cast, including Michael Caine, Elijah Wood, and Rose Leslie in the principal roles, the studios seemed to smell a stinker and while the movie was released to theaters, it felt like not much of an effort was made in the promotion of this feature.  It kinda came and went.

The critics were certainly not kind.  Over on Rottentomatoes.com, LWH scored a pathetic 16% positive among critics yet, curiously, total reviews were only 123.  Generally, a “big” film release winds up with at least 200 “professional” reviews.  Furious 7, for example, had 233 professional reviews.  Suicide Squad had 294.  Jason Bourne 259.  Thus, LWH’s 123 is a pretty small amount.

The point is, critics weren’t all that interested in, or bothered, to review the film and those that did, obviously, hated what they saw.  Audiences, too, weren’t all that impressed.  Again based on Rottentomatoes.com, only 44% had a favorable opinion of it.

So why the heck did I like the film?

Don’t get me wrong: LWH is far from a “superb” film.  It loses steam as it goes along and the climax wasn’t nearly as exciting as it could have been.

And yet, I liked the damn thing.

In some ways the movie reminded me of the Hellboy comics/movies.  Here we have an alternate reality where the “real world” goes about its business yet in dark corners and alleys a parallel world of magic exists, in this case where witches go about their daily business.  At one time, however, witches and humans clashed.  800 years before Kaulder (Vin Diesel) and his people confronted a particularly evil witch.  Kaulder slayed her but she “cursed” him with immortality.

In the present, Kaulder works for a religious organization which has made peace with the witch population.  Kaulder acts as an enforcer, making sure the witches don’t stray and/or abuse their power.  While the witches view him as a stern, fascistic “cop” and rightfully fear he may end their lives at any moment, we find that Kaulder, while stern and no-nonsense and has a past which should make him hate all witches, is actually a very even keeled man who isn’t a bloodthirsty killer at all (I really liked the opening “present” day act on an airplane and the way Kaulder interacts with a witch who has accidentally endangered the entire flight).

Kaulder’s right hand man, a priest named Dolan (Michael Caine), is the 36th “Dolan” to have stood by Kaulder and helped him do his job.  When the movie starts Dolan 36 is set to retire and a new Dolan (#37, played by Elijah Woods) is set to take over.  But Dolan 36 dies of old age…apparently…and after the funeral Kaulder suspects something is amiss.

When Kaulder and Dolan 37 investigate Dolan 36th’s apartment, they find things indeed aren’t what they seem and a mystery is revealed…one that has ties to Kaulder’s origins.

I won’t go into more spoilers but, again, this movie entertained me.  The effects are top notch and the story moves along nicely.

It is a straight up fantasy story and perhaps those accustomed to seeing Vin Diesel play either sci-fi heroes (a-la Riddick) or macho car-driving heroes had a hard time accepting him in an action/fantasy role, especially when he plays a character who many think is a “bad ass” but turns out to be the type of hero that is willing to smile and has a soft spot in his heart for others…even if they may be witches.

Again, LWH isn’t The Greatest Thing I’ve Ever Seen™, but it is an entertaining action/adventure/fantasy that wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the studios and the relatively few critics who bothered to write about it thought it was.  At least IMHO!

Movies

Phantasm: Ravager (2016) a (almost right on time) review

I’ve written before of being terrified way back in 1979 or, more likely, 1980 when I saw the original Phantasm (the movie was released in 1979 but I must have seen it at least a little after its theatrical release as I wasn’t in the U.S. at the time).

The movie was incredibly creepy and downright shocking to my then 13-14 year old mind.  The scene with the flying ball-o-death, in particular, had me shaking.

The memory of the film stayed with me but it wasn’t until many years later that I got to revisit the movie.  By then, there were at least three sequels (Phantasm II came out in 1988 and is probably the best of the sequels.  Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead came out in 1994 and Phantasm IV: Oblivion came out in 1998).  All four of these films were written and directed by Don Coscarelli and feature (for the most part) the same recurring characters, protagonists Mike (A. Michael Baldwin, though he was temporarily replaced with James Le Gros for Phantasm II), Reggie (Reggie Bannister), Jody (Bill Thornbury), and, most importantly, the movies’ villain: the very sinister Tall Man (Angus Scrimm).

The plot of that first film played out like a beautiful, unsettling, and ultimately terrifying nightmare: Young Mike, his brother Jody, and best friend Reggie lose a good friend (this happens in the movie’s opening act).  During the funeral, Mike witnesses a strange sight involving the Tall Man, the funeral’s director, lifting without any apparent effort a coffin with their friend’s body in it.  What is this sinister -and clearly superhuman- man up to?

What follows is Mike’s attempts to get his brother and Reggie to believe him that something is most decidedly up at the funeral parlor.  Eventually they face the Tall Man and, more terrifyingly, the strange flying metal balls which serve as security in the funeral home.  These ball ram a victim in the head and impale themselves into a victim’s skull via razor sharp blades.  Once impaled, a drill opens up the victim’s skull and sucks out their blood.

I’m tempted to show the movie’s most famous sequence here, but for those who haven’t seen the film, give it a look.  While the original movie has aged some it remains, IMHO, a decent watch, especially since it was remastered this year.

Phantasm II, as I mentioned before, is probably the best of the sequels though by the time it was released I couldn’t help but think The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead II (1987) had an impact on that feature.  Ironically, it wouldn’t surprise me if The Evil Dead, which came out a couple of years after the original Phantasm, was inspired to some degree by Phantasm yet It seems to be the case that Evil Dead II, which came out a year before Phantasm II, proved something of an inspiration to that movie.

In Phantasm II you had a little more humor and a “hero” in Reggie who armed himself in a semi-goofy manner not unlike Ash did.

Phantasm III, to my eyes, felt like a half-baked work.  It wasn’t terrible by any means but it just felt far from complete.  I’m not certain if I’ve seen Phantasm IV but if I have, it clearly didn’t register all that strongly.

Which brings us to Phantasm: Ravager, the fifth and, most likely (I’ll get into that in a moment), last Phantasm film.  Don Coscarelli co-wrote the screenplay of the film but co-writer David Hartman took on the directorial reigns.

The film follows Reggie as he appears to move from alternate world to world, seeing himself as an old man nearing his death in one world to the fighter he always was taking on the Tall Man and his menacing silver balls in the next.  He also gets to meet up with the mysterious Lady in Lavender (Kathy Lester), a still sexy incarnation of the Tall Man.

In the retirement home Reggie finds himself in he is visited by a now grown and much older Mike who listens to his friend’s stories of confronting the evil Tall Man but barely believes them.  In another reality, he wanders a desert area, meets up with a beautiful woman, and is confronted by the menacing silver balls.  In a third reality, he faces a world in flames and under the thumb of the Tall Man.

The story, as one suspects, is presented in a fragmented manner and the viewers are possibly dealing with a elderly man who may be losing his mind as he draws nearer and nearer to death.  The original Phantasm was essentially a meditation on a young man’s mental breakdown following the death of (I’ll try to be delicate and non-spoilery here) a very close family member.  When that film is done, we’re not certain how much of what we saw was real or not.

Subsequent Phantasm films, especially the second one, tried to straddle the reality versus fantasy elements to varying degrees and its fair to say the more that was revealed the less successful the films were.

Phantasm: Ravager inverts the original film’s formula and, to my mind, this is where it is at its most clever, especially after all we’ve experienced in 2016.  Instead of a young boy working out the trauma of death, we have an older man whose best years are behind him dealing with his approaching death (again, so 2016).  Has any of what he’s done before been real, or is he suffering from age related dementia?  It’s heavy stuff which could have made for great drama but…

…the film simply doesn’t stick the landing as well as I hoped.

The sequences of Reggie in a nursing home are, in my opinion, the best the movie offers.  When Reggie talks of his past to the grown Mike and Mike nods and patiently lets his good friend vent (noting at one point he’s heard these stories before), as a viewer I couldn’t help but feel touched by Mike’s caring and Reggie’s confusion.  These scenes were handled quite well by the actors.

Angus Scrimm, who played the movie’s villain The Tall Man, appears here for the last time in the various movie timelines in his most famous role.  Mr. Scrimm would pass away before the film was completed but his presence in this movie proves most welcome yet again, though the fact that the actor has passed may well indicate the movie series has reached its end.

While I enjoyed much of what I saw in the film, what seriously hurts it, IMHO, is its climax.  Set in a Tall Man created apocalypse, these scenes could have been very grim but instead are goofy thanks to the introduction of another character (I won’t go into spoilers but this “tough as nails” character was too late an addition and his “smart ass” quips felt out of place with what we had going until that moment.  I can’t help but wonder about the wisdom of going in that direction at the tail end).  It also hurts that these sequences show the film’s very low budget in a very unflattering way.  What does it say when the best scenes in the film have Reggie and Mike talking in a nursing home with no special effects at all?  I can’t say Phantasm: Ravager is an outright terrible film.  It works well enough and provides fans of the series several things, particularly the touching idea of this hero we’ve followed for so long being laid low by the ravages (pun intended) of time itself.  Others who are not as familiar with the world of Phantasm will surely not enjoy the material as much and should probably try the first two films to see if they like them before dipping their toes into this one.

In the end, I can only offer a tepid recommendation for Phantasm: Ravager.  If you’ve been around since the beginning and want to see the end, its a decent enough bookend flick that could have been, with a slightly different focus, a stronger overall work.