Tag: Journal Entry

Zombie Fight Club A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Zombie Fight Club (2014) – A Movie A Day 2021 #5

Zombie Fight Club Poster

I’m a huge fan of zombie movies. At least, in theory I’m a huge fan of zombie movies. I love the idea of zombies, and I love the versatility of the sub-genre. Yeah, that’s right, I used the word “versatility” when describing zombie movies. Even if a multitude of zombie movies use essentially the same plot over and over, the potential for variety is definitely there. Some of my absolute favorite movies and television shows of all time include zombies as a main focus, and they range from trashy splatter movies, to hilarious comedies, to historical action/dramas and beyond. The potential metaphors that zombies can be used for are numerous, and in the hands of a skilled set of filmmakers, a zombie movie can have great impact and meaning. But of course, with so many zombie movies having been made over the decades, many of them aren’t going to be so great. Zombie Fight Club falls firmly in the “not so great” category for me.

Zombie Fight Club is a Taiwanese zombie/action movie with lots of blood and guts. All of that sounds good so far, right? Of course it does. On top of that, the movie is filled with beautiful women and men in in skimpy outfits fighting hordes of the undead. So we have all the makings of a nice and trashy zombie movie that emphasizes fun over quality, and on that level I did enjoy Zombie Fight Club. The bloody action was fun, and the practical effects, when they were used, were over the top in a great way. A lot of the bullets and gore were digitally added though, and that was a whole lot less fun for me. I’m just not a big fan of purely digital effects when they look as overly fake as they do here. But then, I love practical effects even when they look fake, so that’s a contradiction I’ve had to learn to live with. Overall though, the action and blood (and skimpy outfits) are easily the best things about the movie, and they make it worth watching for some light entertainment.

My main issues with Zombie Fight Club start right in the title though. You’d think the movie would be about a club of some sort where people fight zombies. Or maybe the zombies fight each other. But what you get for the first hour of the movie is what feels like a riff on the scene in the apartment building towards the beginning of the original Dawn of the Dead. So after a while, I gave up on the “fight club” promise of the title and just settled for “zombie fight” instead.

In this first section, we meet a few different groups of people living in the same apartment building. We’re introduced to a guy and his girlfriend who get some drugs and have a party, what appear to be gang members who have kidnapped someone, and a group of police officers who are coming in to raid the place. People start turning into zombies after taking drugs (even though this doesn’t make a lot of sense given some various factors that I don’t really want to go into), and the building is quickly overrun. Meanwhile, it turns out all but one of the cops are dirty and are just trying to rob and kill the criminals they were sent to take down. The one good cop, Andy, separates from the rest of the officers when everything starts to fall apart, and Andy ends up pairing with the girlfriend of the guy who got the drugs at the beginning of the movie. So for the first hour of the movie, we follow Andy and the girlfriend, Jenny, as they try to survive and escape. We see some of the other people in the various apartments fight and die, but Andy and Jenny are the loose focus of the movie.

Then, over two-thirds of the way through the movie, we jump forward in time. We thought Jenny and Andy might have escaped, but in the new post-apocalyptic world, they are both slaves in a new society. The new society is run by a psycho ex-professor who we briefly saw murder his daughter’s friends after his daughter was killed. It’s super random, and this late in the movie, I wasn’t sure I was ready for a whole new beginning to the story. I mean, there are less than 30 minutes left in the movie when the time jump happens. But hey, we finally get to see the Zombie Fight Club!

The fight club is a pit where the slaves of this new world are forced to fight for their lives against the undead. So, not so much a fight club, and more of a murder-for-entertainment situation. Think of The Governor from The Walking Dead and the zombie fights he put on. It’s similar to that, but with slaves instead of (mostly) volunteers. And really, the whole new world situation is a lot like The Governor’s city in The Walking Dead, just way over the top. And yeah, I’ve been referencing other things while describing Zombie Fight Club, but it really does seem like the movie isn’t trying to hide its inspirations. Many scenes felt like the filmmakers saw something in something else that was cool, so they decided they wanted it in their movie even if the plot got completely twisted out of shape to make the scene happen.

So anyway, in the final 30 minutes of the movie we follow Andy and Jenny as they try to escape to freedom which has been overrun with zombies anyway. The end.

This really felt like two movies mashed together, and it would have been better had this been two separate movies. But as it is, I still enjoyed Zombie Fight Club for how goofy it is. It doesn’t take itself seriously, so I shouldn’t take it seriously either. I’m sure I’ll watch it again sometime, because now that I know what to expect, I can enjoy it for what it is: dumb, fun, and bloody.

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Xanadu A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Xanadu (1980) – A Movie A Day 2021 #4

The original movie poster.

Everyone has gaps in their movie-watching history. Even the most avid filmgoer is bound to have missed a few semi-important movies in their favorite genres. It’s totally normal, and that’s the excuse I’m using to explain away the fact that I’d never seen Xanadu up until now. I love musicals, but Xanadu became one of those “yeah, I’ll get around to it” movies that I never got around to. Me not having seen it kind of became a thing between my friends and me, but I was recently cornered and gently nudged into finally sitting down and watching Olivia Newton-John sing and skate around with Gene Kelly and that one guy from The Warriors. So now now I’ve seen it, and you know what? I enjoyed it.

Is Xanadu a good movie? Maybe not by any conventional definition of the word “good,” but I had fun watching it nevertheless. I enjoyed most of the music and the majority of the dance numbers, and when you get right down to it, that’s all you really need to enjoy a musical. Well, that’s all I really need to enjoy a musical.

I look at it this way, Xanadu is a genre movie through and through, and genre movies, in my opinion, are best judged on whether or not they meet the expectations tied to that genre. So what’s needed for a movie to be considered a musical? Music, obviously, but to be more specific, the movie needs a good number of sequences where the music is the main focus of the film. What else do you need? Dance numbers aren’t absolutely required, but they’re a welcome addition that firmly places the film in the musical genre. Beyond that, I’d say that a charismatic lead or leads doing a lot of the singing and dancing will go a long way in helping to pull everything together when the plot and story end up lacking. And yeah, the story and plot of Xanadu are famously lacking, but I didn’t really care. Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly are insanely charismatic, and the goofy story about muses and inspiration and gods and dreams was just a colorfully absurd foundation on which the musical numbers were haphazardly placed. And that’s fine.

It’s like when I watch a martial arts movie. As long as I see some people punching and kicking each other every ten to fifteen minutes or so, and as long as that punching and kicking is fun to watch, I’m going to get at least a base-level enjoyment out of the movie. That’s largely how genre movies work in my head. But anyway, back to Xanadu.

If you’ve never seen Xanadu, it’s a musical starring Olivia Newton-John as a mysterious woman named Kira who is often on roller skates and who is also magical in some way (you find out how and why later in the movie). That one guy from The Warriors (Michael Beck) is a painter named Sonny who has lost his inspiration, but when Kira skates up to him and kisses him before disappearing in a flash of light, Sonny gets inspired to find her again. On his journey, Sonny meets Danny (played by Gene Kelly). Danny used to be a musician, but he lost his inspiration decades prior when he lost the love of his life (she disappeared, not died). So the three main characters end up running into each other repeatedly, and Sonny and Danny are inspired to open a dance/music/skating club called Xanadu. Then some stuff with gods and muses happens, but I won’t spoil everything for you. So yeah, the story is silly, but it’s fine. There are some extended sequences of Kira and Sonny getting to know each other that often feel like references to other movies (most obviously Singin’ in the Rain), and their love arc is fine. Danny also has a connection to Kira, but it’s not clear until later what that connection really is.

Speaking of Sonny and Danny though, there’s a strong theme of the past and present coming together with Sonny representing 1980s spandex and synths and Danny representing the 1940s big bands. The two of them trying to find common ground when designing Xanadu led to what is probably my least favorite part of the movie. There’s a really long musical number with Danny dreaming about a big-band while Sonny dreams about a “rock” band circa 1980. The two dream bands play alternating verses beside each other, then they literally start to come together as the stages slowly roll into each other and the bands integrate their two songs into one song. It’s an obvious metaphor that didn’t need what felt like ten minutes to play out. 

I don’t want to complain too much though, because I did enjoy the movie. My favorite bit was later on when Sonny and Kira decide that Danny needs to update his clothes for the grand opening of Xanadu. What follows is a ridiculous sequence with Danny trying on a whole bunch of very 80s outfits with neon-painted dancers wiggling around the various sets. That sequence probably had the best editing throughout the entire movie because it was just an absurd barrage of color and sound. The scene had no bearing on anything in the movie, but I loved it. 

I will say the directing cinematography was noticeably lacking at certain times. Sometimes it felt like the director did a wide shot but forgot to get any close-ups or anything that might suggest fun and movement. Other times I felt like I could see why the director made certain decisions, but the result didn’t always fulfill the intention (like the single shot on Kira as she’s singing in the other-worldly plane of light tubes and stars). But I’m not going to go film-school on Xanadu. There’s no reason to, because the movie is just supposed to be light and fun. It was very light, and it was pretty fun. Some of the songs and sequences are still stuck in my head, and that’s a good thing. So yeah, I enjoyed Xanadu. I don’t know when I’ll watch it again, but I’m sure I’ll get around to it.

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The Tournament (2009) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Tournament (2009) – A Movie A Day 2021 #3

DVD Cover

When I saw the DVD case for The Tournament, I didn’t have very high hopes for the movie contained within. The title is generic, and the cover is reminiscent of many other low-budget action movies packing the department stores of the world. But, as much as I’m not a fan of the floating-head-style of marketing that seems to dominate the home video market, in this instance it worked on me. Seeing Kelly Hu’s floating head next to a gun was all the convincing I needed to spend part of my evening watching The Tournament, and I’m glad I did.

The Tournament is an independent British action movie starring the aforementioned Kelly Hu alongside Ving Rhames and Robert Carlyle. The setup for the plot is rather generic, so my reading of the DVD case was fairly accurate in that regard. The tournament within The Tournament is battle-royale-inspired scenario where thirty of the world’s top assassins are brought together into a small town and set loose to kill each other in any way possible. There’s a group of anonymous rich people from all around the world watching from a secret location (by hacking into security cameras, satellites, etc.), and bets are made on which assassin will be the last one standing. The lone survivor wins the tournament and gets a giant cash prize along with bragging rights. Each assassin is implanted with a tracking device that also reads their vital stats (so the team in the control room can track who is dead), and if there isn’t a winner after 24 hours, all the tracking devices will explode. So, you know, a lot like Battle Royale.

So that’s the setup, but the actual story focuses on just a few of the assassins and one random civilian. Ving Rhames is Joshua, an assassin who has won a previous tournament. We learn early in the movie that he’s not back because of the promise of money and fame; he’s here for revenge. Someone close to Joshua has been killed, and he’s been led to believe one of the assassins participating in the current tournament is the person who did it. Elsewhere in the city, Lai Lai Zhen (played by Kelly Hu) is a somewhat stoic assassin who ends up feeling obligated to protect Father MacAvoy (played by Robert Carlyle), a drunken priest who gets caught up in the tournament after he accidently ingests one of the tracking devices. Lai Lai Zhen’s motivations for participating in the tournament are a mystery at first, and much of the story involves peeling back the layers of her story as she and Father MacAvoy converse more and more. A few of the other assassins are also featured throughout the movie such as Ian Somerhalder’s eccentric American psychopath Miles Slade and Sébastien Foucan’s quiet and smart free-running French assassin Anton Bogart, but the remainder of the thirty assassins are essentially props to get punched, kicked, shot, and blown up by the stars of the movie. And boy do they get punched, kicked, shot, and blown up.

I didn’t expect the action in this movie to be as fun as it is, so even though I enjoyed the story going on between our three main stars, the excessively violent and bloody action was the biggest treat for me. The movie begins by showing the final moments of the tournament that Joshua previously won, and the screen is filled with blood, bodies, fire, and bullets. It’s a great way to set the tone of the movie, and the action sequences throughout the remainder of the film always lived up to the promises made by that opening scene. There are some great martial arts sequences with Lai Lai Zhen battling various assassins in hand-to-hand combat, and there are huge set pieces with car chases, explosions, and many, many bullets fired. The action is abundant and varied, and it always kept me entertained. Plus, the movie doesn’t shy away from copious amounts of blood and gore (there is no shortage of exploding heads and bodies), and that will always get bonus points from me.

As you might expect, there are a few twists and turns in the movie’s story. The twists aren’t super twisty though, and even though I pretty much immediately figured out what was going to happen well in advance of it actually happening, I was still thoroughly entertained. The stars did a great job of getting me care about their characters, and the over-the-top action sequences had me smiling the entire time. Definitely check out The Tournament if you ever get a chance.

 

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Decoys 2: Alien Seduction A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Decoys 2: Alien Seduction (2007) – A Movie A Day 2021 #2

Decoys 2 DVD Case
Decoys 2: The Second Seduction DVD case

Even in the world of online streaming everything, I’m still hooked on physical media. As part of my unfortunate addiction to outdated formats, I make regular trips to used movie stores like Movie Trading Company. On every visit I’ll be sure to check out the $0.99 DVD table, and almost every time I’m done pawing through the rows of forgotten and unwanted dics I’ll come away with a stack of cheap entertainment. It’s like a treasure hunt, though I admit I do have to be very generous with my definition of “treasure” in most cases. Still, over my years of bargain-bin shopping I’ve found some movies I love that I would probably have never given a chance otherwise.

For example, if I had seen Decoys 2: Alien Seduction on any of the streaming services I frequent, chances are I wouldn’t have clicked on it. It might have been added to one of my endless queues where it would have existed until it either got dropped from the service or I cancelled my account, but with so many choices available online there’s not a great chance that it would have piqued my interest enough to devote an evening to it. But, on a shopping trip yesterday, Decoys 2: Alien Seduction did pique my interest enough to pay ninety-nine cents plus tax for it, and it even topped the short stack of DVDs I arrived home with. There’s just something about having a physical disc in my hands that makes me feel almost obligated to watch it with undivided attention. So, long story long, last night I watched Decoys 2: Alien Seduction. So was it a successful treasure hunt? Do I love the movie? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Decoys 2: Alien Seduction (also known as Decoys 2: The Second Seduction according to the DVD I now proudly own) is a Canadian sci-fi monster comedy about a group of horny college guys who create a contest to sleep with the most women over a certain amount of time. I seem to remember the contest’s time frame being like two or three days, but I could be misremembering that, and it’s not important anyway. While the guys are preparing to prey on the hapless females of their university, there is a group of female aliens on campus who need to find virile men to seduce so they can impregnate the men with their alien spawn. Unfortunately for the guys, the process of impregnation involves a rapid bodily temperature drop that tends to kill the victim (hence the need for virility so they can survive the process). Why is there a temperature drop? It has something to do with the aliens being from a very cold planet. The aliens’ frigid planetary origins also explain their one major weakness: they’re allergic to heat. Oh yeah, and the aliens are all disguising themselves as beautiful women, and they can read minds and change their clothes to mimic any man’s fantasy. So with all of that in place, hilarity ensues. Well, something like hilarity ensues.

If I had to describe Decoys 2: Alien Seduction somewhat succinctly, the movie is an attempt at making an eighties sex comedy crossed with a late nineties sci-fi movie in the vein of Species, but filtered through the budget-conscious lens of an early Syfy Channel original movie (it’s not a Syfy movie, but it sure does feel a lot like one). Everything is done in an intentionally campy way, which, given the budget and the premise, was a wise decision. It’s a silly movie designed to get a few laughs, show a few breasts, and then roll the closing credits before it overstays its welcome. For what it set out to accomplish, I think Decoys 2: Alien Seduction did a fine job.

Though most of the comedy was just okay, I did smile a few times, and though they teased more nudity than they actually showed, I still found myself not regretting my decision to watch the movie. And I’m glad I stuck around until the end, because you do get to see the aliens in their true forms a lot more as the main group of guys (and one female friend who has of course been pining over the not-quite-so-scummy member of the group) hunts down the beings that have been killing their friends. I really enjoyed the designs of the monsters (again, think Species), and even though they didn’t have the budget to make the aliens very mobile in wider shots, the action was goofy and fun in a cheap sci-fi way. There were also some digital effects that looked okay for the era and budget, and overall the action/sci-fi portion of the movie was entertaining. 

There is also a bit of star power in Decoys 2: Alien Seduction. Tobin Bell and Dina Meyer, both involved in the ongoing Saw series at the time this movie was released, make appearances as a professor and a doctor respectively. Tobin Bell looked like he might have been able to show up for one or two days to shoot out all of his scenes, but Dine Meyer played a fairly important role throughout the whole movie. She was even included in the climactic battle at the very end of everything. 

And I suppose the only other thing that bears mentioning is the plot itself. I enjoyed the obvious role reversal of the predatory males being preyed upon by females who shove phallic alien tentacles into the guys’ bodies. It’s not super clever, but it doesn’t need to be. It works, and, as ridiculous as it is, it drives the plot forward. So yeah, I enjoyed Decoys 2: Alien Seduction enough to pay ninety-nine cents for it. Someday I might even watch the first Decoys… but only if I find it in a bargain bin somewhere.

 

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Promising Young Woman A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Promising Young Woman (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #1

Like many movies that were supposed to be released theatrically in the first half of 2020, I’d seen the trailer for Promising Young Woman many, many times due to repeated delays and uncertainty of just when it would finally be released once theaters gradually started to re-open. I tend to go to the theater a lot, and I’ll often start to tune out when I see the same trailers over and over, but Promising Young Woman always held my interest every time I saw its trailer. The clips made the movie look like a fun revenge thriller, and I’m a big fan of revenge movies. Trashy or classy, good or not-so-good… I’m pretty much always in the mood to watch some revenge. Promising Young Woman didn’t look trashy from the trailer, but it did feel like it might be a stylish yet simple film with its bright colors, violent and angry tone, and what looked like a setup for a huge revenge set-piece with multiple victims. Now that I’ve seen the movie, I can say Promising Young Woman is far more than a simple rape/revenge thriller. It’s a topical dive into the psyche of a traumatized woman that manages to twist out some thrills, very dark humor, and even a few touching moments out of a heavy and inevitably heartbreaking story.

Carey Mulligan stars as Cassandra (Cassie to her friends if she were to have any), a woman who has had her life derailed by a past trauma. The movie begins with a scene very familiar to anyone who has seen the trailer multiple times like I have. Cassandra appears to be drunk and helpless at a bar, so a “nice guy” offers to help her get home safely. When the kind gesture turns into a predatory situation involving the guy’s apartment, alcohol, and his bed, Cassandra reveals she was never drunk to begin with. Cassandra’s tone becomes sober, serious, and threatening. We cut away from the shocked look on the guy’s face, and we next see Cassandra walking home, hot dog in hand, with ketchup running down her arm and onto her shirt. Well, it’s probably all ketchup. Maybe.

And that’s one of the many things I really enjoyed about Promising Young Woman. Many things are held back from us, the viewer, but not in a frustrating way. If you’re like me, then you might want to see Cassandra get a bit of revenge in that opening scene. A little violence that leads to a little catharsis. But that’s not what Promising Young Woman is about. It’s not about the violence. Violence, as we later find out, is what contributed to Cassandra’s current state of mind, though not in as direct of a way as you might assume. To see her be violent right away would take away from her journey and it would change the focus of the film. The focus of Promising Young Woman isn’t on setting up multiple violent acts of revenge, the focus is on getting to know Cassandra and watching as she is forced to deal with her past trauma catching up to her.

So what is the trauma I’m dancing around but not talking about? I don’t want to say. One of the things that first-time feature director and screenwriter Emerald Fennell does so very well in this movie is knowing exactly how and when to peel back the layers of Cassandra’s life and mind. We quickly learn that Cassandra has been catching predators (so to speak) for a very long time. We’re not sure exactly how long, but her living situation and diary are strong indicators that she’s been living like this for many years. She’s been living a double life so long that the few people she’s close to begin to take notice and worry. Just when it feels like Cassandra might be forced into decisions she doesn’t want to make, someone from her past enters her life and everything changes.

And that’s really all I want to say about the plot. The movie isn’t a mystery or anything, but again, it’s constructed in a way that gives you just enough information at just the right time. I would be doing a disservice to the viewer if I were to give away any more plot than I already have (and I haven’t given away anything you can’t glean from the trailer).

So, I went into the theater expecting fun revenge, but what I got was heavy, character-driven revenge. And I thought it was great. Not only are the writing and direction superb, but the movie is constantly visually engaging. I could take a deep dive into the visual metaphors and motifs throughout the film, but that’s a bit more than is relevant in a review like this. Plus, diving too deep would give away too much, and if you’re interested in seeing Promising Young Woman, I’d suggest going into it knowing as little about the plot as I’ve shared here. I’ll just say that the visuals of the film (color choices, lighting, camera angles, framing, blocking, etc.) all enhance the tone of the film immensely.

Something else that also struck me while watching the movie was how great the cast is. Carey Mulligan is fantastic as a woman who seems to be emotionally teetering on the edge of something much, much darker throughout most of the film. Beyond Carey Mulligan though, the rest of the cast is made up of incredibly strong performers including Allison Brie, Alfred Molina, Laverne Cox, Clancy Brown, and Bo Burnham as the agonizingly charming character of Ryan. Some roles are smaller than others, but the performances make each of them feel vitally important.

I’m sure it’s clear by now that I highly recommend Promising Young Woman. It’s probably not going to be to everyone’s liking (it’s definitely not a feel-good movie), but I thought it was great. I wouldn’t even begin to claim to be an expert on the specific subject matter explored, as far as revenge movies go, I think that aspect was handled in a surprising and and satisfying way. “Satisfying” rarely means “happy” in revenge movies though, so expect to be tense for pretty much the entire time you’re watching the film. Even the happy moments feel tense because you know something else is going to happen, and it’s probably not going to be good for anyone involved. That said, there were moments of levity throughout the movie. Some, especially late in the story, felt a little off to me, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment. I wouldn’t go so far as to call Promising Young Woman a black comedy as I’ve seen it categorized, but I did find a few moments genuinely funny.

So, 2021 is off to a good start for me theatrically. One (good) movie watched, and only 364 more to go in my restart of my abysmally failed attempt at watching a movie a day for an entire year. If you’re not familiar with my self-imposed movie-watching challenge (and why would you be?), then my rules for A Movie A Day can be found here: http://highspot.cnjradio.com/2020/01/04/a-movie-a-day/

I’m going to make another attempt at the challenge, because why not? I’ll complete it one of these years, surely.

Official Site: https://www.focusfeatures.com/promising-young-woman

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The Hunt (2020) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Hunt (2020) – A Movie A Day #93

The Hunt is the movie that was supposed to come out last year, but was delayed after people started making assumptions about what the movie is and what it means. I really don’t want to go into all the details about why it got put on hold, but it had to do with some mass shooting that took place prior to its release, as well as certain people taking to Twitter to sow the seeds of misinformation and polarization. Just Google The Hunt if you really want to know the details.

Regardless of the reasons The Hunt was delayed, I figured the people who were talking and tweeting the loudest about how horrible it is were probably going to be wrong. The people who seem to rage the loudest about how morally reprehensible a movie is tend to either not understand it or never even bother watching it. The Hunt hadn’t even been released when people clamored for its shutdown, so clearly they hadn’t seen it. But hey, a movement for censorship is all you really need for a great marketing campaign. So, good job everyone.

I saw images for The Hunt and read brief story summaries around the time it was first supposed to come out, but I don’t remember seeing a trailer for it until much later when a new release date was announced. The trailers looked fine, but certainly not great. The heavy-handed political mockery present in the trailer really kind of turned me off. Like, I’m fine with political mockery and satire, but I’m just not entertained when it comes across so obviously and with so little subtlety. But I thought maybe the trailers were just playing up the political satire angle to take advantage of the already politicized comments about the movie flying around the internet. With my expectations low, I went into watching the movie with as open a mind as possible.

So I saw it, and I didn’t enjoy The Hunt very much.

The movie is about a group of people who are kidnapped and hunted for sport. The hunters are rich and elite, while the hunted are middle class and below. The hunters get caught up on gendered pronouns and hoping everyone is pro-choice while the hunted get worked up about immigration and crisis actors. You see where this is going? Yeah. It’s like the writers cherry-picked the most politically polarized comments from the internet and crafted them into dialogue to be spoken by characters who might as well be cardboard cutouts of real humans. But I think I’m being too nice. I don’t think many things were “crafted” in The Hunt. It’s a wooden attempt at political humor that, for me, falls completely flat. I got just as much laughter and joy out of the comments on the YouTube page for The Hunt‘s trailer as I did with the characters in the actual movie. Also, don’t go look at the comments on the YouTube page for The Hunt‘s trailer. They’re mostly atrocious.

Anyway.

Here’s some stuff I liked about The Hunt. Betty Gilpin’s character of Crystal was pretty interesting. Well, I should say that Betty Gilpin’s performance was interesting. Crystal came across as somewhat of an enigma. While everyone else was wearing their political ideologies on their sleeves, Crystal was quiet and calculating. She was more concerned with staying alive, and it quickly became clear that she had a past that would help her to not die. Crystal’s true nature remained a mystery all the way until the end, and even when the movie ends, her true motivations arguably remain ambiguous. So yeah, Betty Gilpin is good.

What else do I like about The Hunt? They mentioned a movie I do really like, Tears of the Sun. I liked that. I also started to want to watch Tears of the Sun while sitting in front of The Hunt.

Anything else? No, not really. Everything else was just varying shades of mediocrity or head-shaking moments of attempted humor. Nope, I didn’t like it.

It’s funny though. The hubbub about the movie stemmed largely from fears that it is meant to incite division among the American people. I just find it hilarious that when reading comments from people who have only seen the trailer, different people will bee 100% sure that the movie is insulting them regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum. The movie skewers all sides. It looks like it’s trying to be smart, but it’s not. Not at all. People just love to get mad at stuff. The Hunt isn’t worth getting mad at.

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Bloodshot A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Bloodshot – A Movie A Day #92

I’m been a huge comic book nerd for nearly all of my life, but even though I knew of Bloodshot, I never read it. It looked interesting enough, but for whatever reason, I just never gave it a shot. The trailers for the new Bloodshot movie had me very interested though. 

For one thing, I’ve grown to be a pretty decent fan of Vin Diesel over the last few years. I wasn’t a fan when he was doing stuff like XXX and the early Fast and Furious movies, but I jumped into the Furious series at number 4, and I absolutely love it. That led me to being a fan of Vin Diesel. Plus, when I learned that he’s a bug nerd in real life to, I became an even bigger fan.

Also, I’ve been a huge fan of Guy Pearce since Memento. I adore that movie, and Guy Pearce is great in it. He’s great in everything. Even Lockout (which I also enjoy). So seeing Vin Diesel and Guy Pearce in a comic-book based sci-fi action movie with strong overtones of Memento in the trailers had me hooked right away. I didn’t expect Bloodshot to be superb, but I expected it to be fun. It definitely is fun, and I was definitely satisfied with what I saw. 

Vin Diesel plays Ray, a bad-ass Marine who handles his business with brutal efficiency. Ray is killed after a mission, but he is resurrected by Dr. Harting. Harting uses technology to rebuild wounded warriors, and the nano-technology used to bring Ray back from the dead is Haring’s crowning achievement. Ray’s memories are spotty, but as flashes his own death begin to come back to him, Ray sets off on a mission of revenge. But not everything is as it seems. 

I don’t want to spoil any more than that setup, but you can watch the trailer if you want to know why I got such a strong Memento vibe. Bloodshot really does have a similar setup to Memento, but Ray is way more violent and murderous than Leonard was.

Overall, Bloodshot is a fun action movie with neat effects and likable characters. The plot is in no way surprising, but I don’t think it really needs to be. It’s just good, violent, pulpy fun. It won’t be for everyone, but I certainly liked it. I’d love it if they went ahead with a sequel or started a small shared universe with the Valiant Comics brand. A lot of things are up in the air right now with, well, the world, but also with movies and theaters. Bloodshot‘s theatrical run got cut way short, so hopefully once the industry recovers they’ll give this potential series another shot.

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Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare – A Movie A Day #91

This movie. Oh man. What do I say about Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare?

Well, for one thing, I’ll be saying a lot about this movie on the podcast I do (called The Last Theater). My best friend Joey and I watched this in preparation for that show. The show will go up sometime in April, and it’s part of a retrospective we’re doing on the entire A Nightmare on Elm Street series. Freddy’s Dead, as the sixth movie in the series, will be episode number six out of ten. So, check though out for some lengthy thoughts, but here are a few brief thoughts that may or may not make it onto the episode.

Joey and I had both seen Freddy’s Dead before, and neither of us had super great thoughts about it. I think Joey thought a lot better of it than I did though. I mostly remembered the cameos, one of the death scenes, and the horrendous 3-D section of the movie. I can usually take or leave 3-D, even in modern movies. It works well for blockbusters like Star Wars or a lot of big comic book movies, but for the most part, I have no preference about watching something in 3-D or not.  Thankfully the blu-ray release of Freddy’s Dead that we each have doesn’t have 3-D capability, but unfortunately, the filmmakers decided to be extremely obnoxious about how they incorporated the 3-D effects into the movie. I won’t go into detail here (because this will be a teaser to go listen to The Last Theater), but yeah, I hate the 3-D in this movie. This is the movie I cite as an example every time I talk about terrible uses of the third dimension. This and the yo-yo from Friday the 13th Part 3. But at least Friday 3 had a fun/dumb theme song.

Freddy’s Dead is not very good. There are fun parts to it, and Robert Englund is great as always, but it leans hard into the campiness that had grown throughout the series. It definitely had potential with the basic story, and I think that’s what makes it even more frustrating for me. Freddy’s Dead could have been really scary, but it just lets me down at every turn. But hey, at least it was fun watching it with Joey on his birthday.

Is it my least favorite in the franchise? I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to listen to episode 10 of out Nightmare franchise retrospective over at The Last Theater. That will be our wrap-up episode where we talk about the series as a whole and rank the movies in order of preference.

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The Flying Guillotine (1975) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Flying Guillotine – A Movie A Day #89

I’ve been a fan of Master of the Flying Guillotine for many years, but it wasn’t until recently that I discovered other movies involving this most ridiculous and awesome martial arts weapon. For those who might be unaware, the flying guillotine is a (fictional) weapon that is basically a collapsible hood with retractable blades on the inside (there are also blades circling around the outside of the hood). The collapsed hood is thrown. When it lands on someone’s head, the hood extends over the person’s head and down to the neck where the internal blades deploy. The attacker yanks the hood back with its attached chain, and the victim’s head comes with it. It’s pretty great.

Anyway, Master of the Flying Guillotine is a silly, over-the-top martial arts movie with nearly non-stop fights and wackiness. I’ve seen it many times, but I stumbled across an article (this one I think: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-flying-guillotine-series-in-all-its-weird-glory/) that talks about the other flying guillotine movies that I never knew existed. A quick search later, and I find that two of the flying guillotine movies are on Netflix right now! So, of course, I started at the beginning with the original, The Flying Guillotine.

The Flying Guillotine came out before Master of the Flying Guillotine, but it’s not a prequel. At best, Master is a spin-off, but even that’s not really true. It just uses the same weapon. Also, Master is very different in terms of how the movie is constructed. Master is barely more than a wacky assemblage of fight scenes with minimal plot, but The Flying Guillotine is very plot driven with some nice, sympathetic characters.

There’s a lot going on in the movie initially as we see the emperor of China going crazy with power and paranoia. He’s out to kill anyone and everyone who might even show the slightest hint of opposing him. One of the emperor’s subjects has an idea for a new weapon that could solve all of the emperor’s problems. The flying guillotine is created, and a group of young men are chosen to train exclusively with the deadly weapon. Assassinations happen, but doubt starts to tickle the minds of some of the young assassins. A few of them have second thoughts about what they’re doing, and that doesn’t sit well with the emperor. Most of the second half of the movie follows one of the young men who tries to flee and go into hiding. 

It’s a really good story that feels pretty expansive. We get to see this young man, Ma Teng, in a number of different phases in his life. The thing that separates this the most from Master of the Flying Guillotine is how the focus is on the characters rather than the weapons and fights. There are, of course, many fun fights in The Flying Guillotine, but they are results of character-driven moments more than simple plot shenanigans. 

I really enjoyed The Flying Guillotine and look forward to watching the sequel which is also on Netflix!

 

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The Wind A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Wind – A Movie A Day #88

I recently learned about The Wind from a playthrough of a short video game created as a teaser before the movie came out. Here’s what I saw:

I thought this was a great idea. I mean, I imagine only a fraction of the people who played this saw the movie, and only a fraction of the people who saw the movie know the game even exists, but for those of us who love small, retro-styled indie games AND small, western-horror indie movies, this was the perfect scenario!

I saw the video above only a few weeks ago even though it was posted almost a year ago. After seeing that though, I stumbled upon the movie in my local video store just a few days ago. It was like it was meant to be.

So I’ve played the game and I’ve watched the movie. I’m happy to say I like them both. The game really is just a teaser. There’s not much too it, but the atmosphere is great. Retro-styling might be trendy (and it certainly is), but I think that aesthetic works really well for a movie like this. The simple graphics and mostly empty, black screens evoke a lonely and sparse game world. There’s not much to interact with besides things that want to kill you and the things you need to protect yourself from death. The Wind (the movie) is a western set on a lonely frontier with very few people and wide open fields. The only things the characters really have are what they need to survive, and anything else is a luxury. Like in the game, their existence is spartan and harsh.

I could go on about how surprisingly well the game represents the tone of the movie, but I’ll move on. The movie focuses on a woman, Lizzy, who lives with her husband, Isaac, in a small house on the frontier. There is only one house even remotely close to where they live. Other than that, there are wide open plains and rolling hills as far as the eye can see. The movie starts with Lizzy and Isaac’s only neighbors, a husband and wife, suffering a tragedy. In the aftermath, Lizzy is left home alone for a few days. The rest of the movie follows Lizzy as she tries to protect herself from something (or some force) that exists out on the frontier. As Lizzy deals with daily and nightly visits, the background of the story is filled in through flashbacks where we learn what led up to the tragic beginning of the movie.

While the plot focuses on Lizzy growing increasingly scared and paranoid about whatever mysterious force is outside her house, the movie, metaphorically, is really about a woman’s experience on the frontier. There’s a short video on the DVD where the stars, the director, and the writer talk about what they saw they movie as, and they spoke about wanting to show what it was like for women in these western stories while the men are off doing manly things. I’m paraphrasing of course, but basically they wanted to create the side of the story we rarely get to see. More specifically, I saw it as a female-focused narrative about the loneliness and hardships that come with being transplanted from society to the harsh realities of making a life almost literally from the ground up.

Lizzy is strong and more than capable, but the introduction of her young and inexperienced neighbors threatens to unbalance the life she and her husband have created. Small things can be life or death when living on the frontier, and the movie shows that the balance, whether it’s the physical or mental side of it, is often delicate. For Lizzy, her unbalancing is filtered visually through her thoughts on religion and demons, as well as her own personal tragedies.

So what I’m saying is, you can watch this movie as a huge metaphor for life on the frontier, or you can watch it as a supernatural horror movie. Or both. Any way you watch it, I think The Wind is a good movie. I AM kind of partial to westerns and horror movies, but still, I think it’s worth watching even if you just have a passing interest in those genres.

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