Queen Of Cheese

Cheesy effects and great actors. What a combo!

Sweet, mad as a hatter Sean Connery is the only reason I sat down to watch the classic train wreck that is Meteor. Already old enough to feel he needed to wear a toupee, but still exuding that Connery charisma, he holds his own against other stellar actors who got suckered into this thing.

Meteor was plagued by all sorts of problems, mostly due to the folks behind it having grandiose dreams of a blockbuster, but not enough resources or people skills to pull it all together. Sadly for them, this was a flop back in 1979, but for the Queen Of Cheese sitting down to watch it finally in 2009, I loved it.

Meteor has all the elements that make a great B-movie disaster/science fiction flick. We have astronauts all the way out in a spaceship near Jupiter and Saturn. We get to see them converse with space command back on Earth, with absolutely no delay. Spiffy technology since there’s at least a few seconds delay just between Earth’s orbit and the ground! The acting aboard the space craft as a deadly meteor heads their way is awesome, too, especially with the cheesy lighting effects to simulate combustion. We get more questionable science as a comet zips through an asteroid belt and drags some big rocks with it, and one at least five miles wide ends up on a direct course with Earth, along with some baby meteors just big enough to cause lots and lots of damage, including destroying a ski resort, causing a tidal wave, and other general mayhem.

Even more ludicrous is the science behind how the meteor is going to be stopped. The U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. both have secret, illegal space weapons with nuclear missiles, originally pointed at each other. The plan is to cut through some political b.s., provide some political posturing, but ultimately aim those missiles at the meteor instead, coordinate a launch that will divert the giant mass away from the planet, yet not just break it up into smaller, just as deadly pieces that will hit us anyway.

Really, it’s not the bad science or laughable attempts at a political or military drama that will keep you watching this thing. It’s the heavy, ominous music that sounds every time the meteor is seen rolling slowly, inexorably on it’s path of doom. It’s the long, drawn out sequences as the missiles are readied for launch, again with overbearing, giggle inducing music throbbing away, making sure we know this is a serious moment we should all take pride in as citizens of the Earth. Or something.

The acting of the main cast is definitely more than this film deserved. Sean Connery is the bitter scientist sucked back in to save the day. Karl Malden is his friend and liaison who does his best to stand between him and the paranoid military man played by Martin Landau. Brian Keith plays a very convincing native Russian scientist, delivering his lines in an accent that makes you forget all about that diabetes-inducing show, Family Affair. Natalie Wood is beautiful and smart as his English translator, and Sean Connery’s tepid love interest. Henry Fonda takes a brief turn at being President of the United States, naturally being more noble of character than any real politician would be under those circumstances. The tons of secondary characters are all top notch, adding alternate touches of humor and melodrama. Even some of the silent, just in the background characters are a riot, including a duo of ladies in a caved-in subway scene who are doing their nails with looks of ultimate boredom as they await rescue.

There have been lots of disaster movies before Meteor and tons after, and arguably Meteor is not well done. However, there’s a certain charm to it with it’s over the top music, above average acting, and laughable premise of how the world would be saved from a crisis like this, not to mention the overtly phallic symbolism in all those nuclear rockets (which the movie lingers on for several minutes longer than necessary to simply say it’s ‘dramatic’). It’s got the 70’s hair, the 70’s wardrobe, the 70’s attitude about politics, the military, and science, and an awkward, unrequited romance between a young Russian translator and an ‘old enough to be her grandfather’ American scientist. It all adds up for a popcorn-munching couple of hours. In the end, if the looming meteor rolling towards you doesn’t make you giggle a bit, you’re not watching this for any of the right reasons!

Tags: action flick, b-movie, Brian Keith, disaster flick, disaster movie, giggle factor, Henry Fonda, Karl Malden, Martin Landau, Meteor, Natalie Wood, sci fi, Sean Connery

Gather round! You can watch your career nosedive with this flick!

I wanted to love Star Runners. It has a lot of potential to be a wonderful, riotous good time. It obviously took its inspiration from Firefly/Serenity, Starship Troopers, and even a little The Fifth Element. Problem is it didn’t run with the blatant ripoffs, and tried to pretend it had an original idea. That only works when you have an original idea. When someone can point at the screen and dissect the movie into categories based on what film it was ripping off, you don’t have an original idea.

What frustrates the holy heck out of me is Star Runners could still have been saved. If they’d embraced the cheese factor (which was evident in the movies that obviously inspired it) and went for laughs, I would have been a happy camper. Instead the writers got all serious with political intrigue and character self-sacrifices and genocidal atrocities. Even that would have been alright if they’d not taken so much time to setup this up as a ‘buddy’ movie, promising a rollicking good time as the main characters get captured by the government, and then sent on a covert mission to retrieve a mysterious crate. Naturally they open the crate to find a frozen, naked, woman inside who wakes up with no memory. We’ve been introduced to a couple of interesting secondary characters in the middle of a space bar that is blatantly a pale ripoff of Star Wars‘ Mos Eisley. We should be in for a ton of fun as the trio of characters make a run for it.

Nope. It gets all serious after that with just a few one liners here and there to break up the monotony. And it is monotonous. We get a space pursuit through a wormhole into uncharted space, a crash landing, tiresome arguments among the survivors, a mysterious abandoned base that the survivors realize was populated by their kind, and then bugs. Lots of giant bugs. While interesting on the surface, as the movie progresses it’s all ‘by the numbers’ and I kept checking how much time was left in the movie.

One thing that wasn’t wrong with this movie was the acting talent. We have Connor Trinneer playing the would-be swashbuckling captain, Ty. He waffles between playing by the rules, breaking them as is convenient. He’s charming and likable, which is good since he’s the main character. Then we get a horribly wasted James Kyson Lee from Heroes fame. He’s the sidekick, basically, and is portrayed as a smart guy, but with a few gaps in the common sense area. He’s the funny guy who points out the obvious. There’s also relative newcomers, Aja Evans and Toni Trucks. Aja Evans plays the tough girl who is stuck with our wayward gaggle of people after they crash land. She has more to her than meets the eye, and when we learn her real role, it’s one of the few interesting twists in the whole affair. Toni Trucks plays the ‘Leeloo’/'River’ sort of character, the gal who was frozen, wakes up with no memory, but oh, she’s really special, and not just because our heroes see her naked. Toni does alright with this character, but a better actress could have made her shine despite this script. The rest of the supporting cast at least add positives to this mess, but it’s just not enough to save it for me. Not even my favorite bit actor, Todd Jensen, lifted my spirits enough to say ‘Well, maybe it’s not that bad…’, because, well, it was that bad.

For a throwaway movie this is at least watchable, especially if you go into it knowing it’s going to be a mish mosh of other movies you’ve watched, and probably loved. But when it’s all over, you’re going to feel a strong urge to watch some quality sci fi, maybe pulling out Star Wars or even Spaceballs, because Star Runners is a train wreck that will linger in your consciousness, and make you doubt that good sci fi ever existed.

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, Aja Evans, b-movie, Connor Trinneer, Firefly, Heroes, James Kyson Lee, Serenity, space bugs, Star Runners, Starship Troopers, The Fifth Element, Todd Jensen, Toni Trucks

Cool shark graphics, horrible English dubs, and cheesy fun!

There’s just something about a shark attack movie I can’t resist. When it’s a German made flick with horrible English dubs, that just melts the cheese into a bubbly fondue.

In this case we have Shark Attack In The Mediterranean. A man, Sven Hanson, is trying to keep his life together after losing his wife in what we’re told is a horrific shark attack. His teenage daughter is into jet skies and stealing people’s boyfriends (even though she does it so sweetly, and the current girlfriend is such a snot you can hardly blame the guy), and rolling her eyes at her father. His best friend is head of the local police force, with a wife wasting away from cancer. Our hero flies a helicopter, and his latest passenger happens to be an attractive marine biologist, Julia Bennett, arriving on the island to help with cancer studies involving lots and lots of sharks. We now have our basic setup of conflict.

Right off the bat we get a young girl (horribly dubbed with a voice too young to fit the actress) setting the stage by telling a tale of tragic love that ends at the bottom of the ocean. The girl is with her family, all tourists in this Mediterranean paradise who wanted to cage dive with sharks. Well, the sharks aren’t biting, so the captain of the boat decides to drag the cage, with the tourists still inside, along the bottom to a more dangerous spot where sharks are guaranteed. The cage gets caught on the bottom, the rope breaks, one of the tourists cuts their hand, and they’re suddenly surrounded by an awesome display of fluid shark graphics. Even knowing it’s got to be fake, it really looks cool, and eerily realistic, including sharks biting at the cage trying to catch a nibble of fingers and other parts.

So our pilot and his passenger come along in the nick of time to save the day. It gives us a chance to see that they have a lot in common, and to make it clear they’re going to be love interests. We also get a chance to see our hero be an over-protective father when he sees that his daughter is part of the crew of the ship in such dire straits. Arguments ensue, we get some melodrama over the father wanting to move back to Germany and the daughter not wanting to go, and the police friend stepping in with his sick wife to talk about living every moment instead of living in the past. Good stuff, and probably very well acted, despite what the voice actors would have you believe.

But the meat of the story is about a megalodon. It’s entirely unbelievable how a renegade scientist came into possession of a megalodon, although believable that it then escaped. However, the ensuing graphics are so very cool I can forgive all of this movie’s plot holes. You really need to watch the movie so you can hear first hand all of the flawed science, but more to see the CGI of the megalodon as it cruises the Mediterranean. There’s a scene where the hero is basically fishing for it with his helicopter, and the megalodon grabs a hold of the lure. We get several minutes of slick, believable underwater scenes of the shark rolling and thrashing, putting the folks at Discovery Channel to shame.

There’s also plenty of humor throughout Shark Attack In The Mediterranean, provided both by the ludicrous storyline and by secondary characters that are riotously exaggerated. Humor is what’s missing from a lot of B-movies lately, and this was like a breath of fresh air for me. Finally, another movie that doesn’t take itself so seriously, and revels in the cheese!

Shark Attack In The Mediterranean isn’t terribly original, but it’s fun, and has the best shark CGI I have seen. Surprisingly there’s no gore, which made me happier yet. A little blood, a flash of a body, but nothing horrendous trying to gross you out. Basically this is a well done B-movie about a prehistoric shark come to life, and was worth every second of screen time. If you love Shark Attack 3: Megalodon in all of it’s cheesy glory, you’re going to enjoy this movie for all the right reasons!

Alright, the trailer is in German, but it’s the effects on the shark that make this movie so cool to watch!

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, action flick, b-movie, German to English dub, giggle factor, megalodon, Patriq Pinheiro, popcorn munching afternoon, Ralf Moeller, Shark Attack In The Mediterranean, shark attack movie

Awesome. Simply awesome!

I came so close to dismissing The Gamers: Dorkness Rising when Netflix suggested it. But there was something about the idea of a bunch of adults sitting around playing D & D and taking it way too seriously that called to me. Not that I ever played D & D, mind you, but I knew plenty of people who did.

This independently made movie by Dead Gentlemen Productions is actually a sequel, but with more money behind it. For an independent film, the special effects are pretty slick, the costumes well designed, and the sets very authentic. It looked like they rented out a Renaissance fair location in the off season, or something.

The story centers around a man trying to write a Dungeons & Dragons module, but having problems finishing it because his buddies screw around while playing, so they never actually get to the end of it. In his frustration he tries to keep them under tight control, which in turn makes them figure out more outlandish things to do to undermine him and screw around with the game even more.

Early on the writer decides to invite one of the player’s ex-girlfriends to join the game, feeling that new blood, and an intelligent female at that, would help. The fact he obviously has a slight crush on her doesn’t hurt his cause. So they all start a new game with the experienced players laughing at the newbie’s choices for her character (”You only have 81 hit points!”), at least until a scene where she slays all of the foes in one turn. The bickering and bantering back and forth is what drives the movie, even with the entertaining medieval yarn being spun for game play.

To add to the ludicousness, one of the other players decides he will play a female in the game, and keeps arguing that this character isn’t evil, but merely “chaotic neutral”. This is in doubt whenever the sorceress does things like blow up a farmhand just because he’s taking too long to give directions. In the game world this character flips back and forth between a gorgeous blond woman, and the player in drag.

This isn’t a high octane movie by any means, but I was glued to the screen the entire time, and laughing most of my way through it. Between a gender-bending sorceress, newbies kicking ass, a bard that constantly gets killed (begging the question why anyone would want to play a bard) in between seducing every female character he meets, a warrior priest who tried to be an elf on top of that, and a goody-two shoes warrior trying to keep them all under control, the game play is a riot. Even for someone not all that familiar with the intricate workings of D & D, you’ll get the idea just from the arguing among the real world characters.

There’s just enough drama from the real world to keep things from dragging. One of the players (the ex-boyfriend) is just plain a jerk, and the type of guy who screams about the rules until the rules put him at a disadvantage. We get glimpses of the players out in their ‘real world’ to give a little background, but there’s never too much to get us sidetracked from the real heart of the movie: the new module being written.

The Gamers: Dorkness Rising is extremely well written. The actors, all unknowns, play their parts to the hilt. This is a wonderfully done independent movie, and one I will be adding to my wish list on Amazon.

For anyone who has ever played D & D, Magic: The Gathering, or any of those role playing games, or even just known someone who did, this movie will entertain you, maybe make you cringe as you see yourself in some of the characters, and will give you a strong urge to pull out that dusty box from the closet you’ve refused to acknowledge for so many years. The Gamers: Dorkness Rising is a Queen Of Cheese “must see”!

Tags: Dungeons And Dragons, giggle factor, independent movie, movie review, role playing games, The Gamers Dorkness Rising

I would have loved it if it weren't just another stupid zombie flick...

Campy dialogue. Ridiculous plot. Absolutely no scientific validity to things like launching yourself into the air with a bazooka and surviving, let alone being able to fire a machine gun attached to a stump of a leg. There was tons of things about this movie I really liked, even loved. Yet I didn’t love it. In fact, I was glad to finally have it be over. And why? Because it was another stupid, lazy zombie flick.

I just can’t get into zombie movies. They bore me to tears, and make me feel ripped off. There’s no real thought put into a zombie movie. Gas, toxic chemical, weird voodoo or something of that sort is turning people into flesh eating, mindless fiends that are only stoppable by cutting them to pieces, shooting them to pieces, or otherwise reducing them to goo. If you get bit, you’ll become one, too. Mankind is doomed. Whatever.

There’s no cool villain to root against. Often we get pointless deaths just to provoke some kind of a reaction from the audience. Barring that, the movie relies on lots of splatter to get a reaction. I’ll give Planet Terror nods to that. There is plenty of gore for the sake of gore, which is another lazy fallback that makes me yawn.

This movie frustrated me to no end because it has cheese all over it. A go go dancer calls herself Cherry Darling and wants to be a stand up comic, yet gets insulted when people point out her name sounds like a stripper. Then when she loses a leg she cries “How am I going to be a stand up comedian now?” That’s just beautiful! Then as she’s walking around with the leg from a table as a prosthetic, the renegade soldier ordering her around calls her “Peg.” Priceless! There is a ton of cornball dialogue and character interaction that make me laugh, but then it all went to rot when I had to deal with the damn zombie/people turning into zombie scenes.

Plus, the story drags. Maybe it flowed better in the shortened double feature version, but the full length just keeps going and going and going with lots of diversionary scenes with secondary characters just meant to fill up time. Yes, they’re interesting, but the movie could have been over at least half an hour earlier, and I wouldn’t have been disappointed.

I do appreciate the uniqueness of how this movie blends 70’s stylings with modern. The costumes are full-on 70’s, the cars are sweet classics, but then we have people text messaging all over the place. It gives the whole thing a surreal feel. The addition of little details like “missing reels” and the simulation of old projector film adds to the right atmosphere.

The cast all do great in their roles, no matter how scattered and small they may have been. Naturally Rose McGowan steals the show, between being “I can’t help but hate her” beautiful, and having the right delivery for her cheesy, cheesy lines, and being able to shoot at people with her leg and make it look believable. There are tons of cameos, as well, including Bruce Willis and Quentin Tarantino.

If this just wasn’t a zombie and gore for the sake of gore story, I would be a happy camper. However, it is a zombie and gore for the sake of gore story, so no matter how many cheap laughs it gave me, Planet Terror will never be a movie I watch again, let alone own. If you love Robert Rodriguez movies and zombies and gore, you’re in for a treat. If you’re like me and demand a little bit more from your cheese, you’ll be disappointed, and a little nauseated.

Tags: gore for the sake of gore, Grindhouse Presents Planet Terror, movie review, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Rose McGowan, zombie movie, zombies

A lot of cheese, and a lot of fun!

I think I enjoyed The Spirit for all the wrong reasons. I have never read the comic books, so I didn’t have to worry about being horrified at how they were translated to screen, which is a complaint I’m reading from hard core fans. What I got out of this movie, however, was a long giggle fest, and my full daily allowance of quality cheese.

Right off the bat you know this is going to be a little awkward. We get a long soliloquy from The Spirit, played by Gabriel Macht, as he leaps across rooftops. He’s going on and on about how he loves the city and the city loves him, to the point where you wonder how long it’s been since The Spirit has been with a real girl. It’s so over the top, I started picturing another comic book hero, translated to small screen, The Tick, in his place, and didn’t feel I was very far off in my comparison.

Then there’s a long, drawn out fight scene between the bad guy, The Octopus, played by Samuel L. Jackson, and The Spirit. Silken Floss, The Octopus’ accomplice, announces that they’ll be there all night, so everyone may as well leave. The fight just keeps going, the banter gets ridiculous, and someone ends up with a toilet smashed over them. I think we may have a tone set here, folks, but it works for me!

The jist is Denny Colt was a good cop shot down in his prime, but miraculously rises from the grave to become The Spirit. He then hides his true identity, including from his former loves, the bad girl Sand Saref whom he loved from childhood until a terrible accident tore them apart (plus her lust for sparkly things), and the goody goody gum drops doctor he dated right before he died, Ellen Dolan. You know Ellen is the ‘real’ thing just because her name is normal. The Octopus has the same amazing healing abilities, but is going for true immortality, and doesn’t care if he destroys the city in the process of obtaining a vase with the blood of Hercules to get it.

The storyline is interesting, and doesn’t drag. This, however, is only because this is so over-the-top, comic-book-brought-to-life that you’re giggling too much to get bored. Some of the monologues are just plain weird, but it all fits the feel of the film. The characters are mostly ridiculous, overblown stereotypes, but there is some depth when it’s needed. Is Sand Saref a villain, or just a girl who likes her jewelry too much? The Spirit has become a notorious womanizer, who loves cats and his city, but does he ultimately love Ellen Dolan? And does Ellen Dolan really not recognize her dead boyfriend as she tends to The Spirit’s wounds?

Then there’s characters like Silken Floss, played to the hilt by Scarlett Johansson. She’s beautiful, brilliant, and just having fun being the right hand of the bad guy. Plus her line of “I have a lucrative business, and I’m great eye candy!” really sums up the movie. The film is glossy, very reminiscent of Sin City, but be careful you don’t look too close. There’s not a lot of substance holding this up, and it will shatter under any scrutiny or criticism.

Over the top characters, slick backdrops, funky black and white with red thrown in details, and lots of cheesy dialogue add up to a good movie for The Queen Of Cheese. It’s not great, and not worth running out to own a copy unless it’s on a super sale, but it is definitely worth sitting down with a big bowl of popcorn and no distractions so you can catch all the cheesy goodness!

Tags: action flick, action movie, Eric Balfour, Eva Mendes, Frank Miller, Gabriel Macht, giggle factor, Jaime King, Samuel L Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Scarlett Johansson, The Spirit, The Tick

Pretty to look at, but not a lot of depth...

I was curious about this particular adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl, which I enjoyed reading so much despite (and maybe because of) plenty of artistic license with history. I was disappointed the movie left out so much of the novel, changed “facts”, and presented us with a husk of the great historical fiction the writer delivered.

The Other Boleyn Girl is certainly beautiful to watch. The costumes are gorgeous, hair and makeup, and all the little details just so. The settings are lush, shots of the castle are done in such a way that it looks ominous, just in case you forget that this isn’t going to be a tale with a happy ending. But there’s no substance here. The script is the usual tripe we’ve heard in every other ‘historical drama’. This should have been a dark drama about political intrigue, an emotional tale about two young sisters pitted against each other to further their family’s interests, and an interesting examination of societal mores, including incest and homosexuality. Philippa Gregory’s novel is certainly much more in depth, and while I understand the need to cut for time, what they chose to cut weakened the overall story instead of getting to the actual meat.

All that being said, I enjoyed the movie. I guess I’m just not picky enough about these kinds of films to be mortally offended that a good book is reduced to a cheesy movie. The dialogue is often stilted because they were trying to make it sound all historical and dramatic, so there’s some cheap chuckles for me there. Seeing the attention to detail on the costumes in comparison to the story also amused me. What did impress me was the quality of the acting.

Eric Bana plays the notorious King Henry VIII, although he barely gets enough screen time to develop his character. He plays the younger, still physically attractive Henry, and rolls with the script that portrays him as a man willing to toss aside his kingdom’s well being just to get a pretty young thing into his bed. Jim Sturgess plays the Boleyn sister’s brother, George, who is also horribly underused. But since his character in the book is torn by his painfully loveless marriage to Jane Parker, his emerging homosexuality, and inappropriate fascination with his sisters, I guess filmmakers were too nervous to tackle those issues. What little we see of George is well played, however.

The other Boleyn family that we see are the father, mother, and uncle. The father and uncle are stereotypes, with the father loving his daughters, but letting his ambition override this to let them be whored out. The uncle is just a sleaze. The mother, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, is polar opposite to her character in the book, and actually loves her daughters, and speaks out on their behalf. Again, all characters are acted well, despite major script limitations.

Then we have the sisters. I truly didn’t think Natalie Portman could pull off the Anne Boleyn of the novel, who is portrayed as cruelly conniving and ambitious, and viciously jealous of her sister, Mary’s, ‘good fortune’. The movie tones Anne down quite a bit, making her more sympathetic, and giving Natalie Portman a chance to prove she can act, despite not being allowed to in those last Star Wars movies. She is believable as an ambitious, strong willed young woman willing to do whatever it takes to become queen, yet still loves her sister and brother, and the daughter she gives birth to. Ms. Portman, I am duly impressed.

Scarlett Johansson plays a sweet young Mary who is put in front of the king after Anne blows her first chance. Once again I was surprised at how well this actress did with the role. She could have gone all “Mary Sue” on us and been so sweet that you want to slap her around. Instead she shows us a young woman who initially resists being used as a pawn, then falls in love with the king, and then is cast aside for her sister. Through it all she shows us her anger at her family, and especially her sister, for these betrayals, but makes us believe that she still loves Anne without making Mary look like a doormat.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie. If I hadn’t read the book first, I would have enjoyed it more because I wouldn’t have known how much they butchered it. But cheese is cheese, and while not as trashy as Showtime’s The Tudors by any means, this has a soap opera appeal I can’t stay away from. I will seriously consider adding this one to my permanent collection.

Tags: Eric Bana, Henry VIII, Historical Drama, JIm Sturgess, King Henry, Kristin Scott Thomas, movie review, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Tudors

The Earth has to deal with a serious case of sunburn, or something...

The world is in danger again. This time the plot focuses on global warming, and how much methane is in our atmosphere. I promptly got distracted by jokes about cow farts, and don’t really know the ultimate outcome.

I remember Solar Attack decides that the way to save the world is to shoot nuclear missiles at the North Pole. Okaaay…. Sounds reasonable in a B-movie world, I guess. Then there’s something about Russians versus Americans, and all that old Cold War conflict coming to the surface now that an American billionaire used Russian technology to launch his personal manned craft into low orbit, but it blew up, killing an American astronaut/pilot, and everyone wanted to blame the Russian technology, but it was really because of a huge “coronal mass ejection” that lit the methane in the atmosphere on fire and incinerated him, and then the billionaire knows what’s really going on but no one will believe him now, but he has friends with Russian subs so he takes matters into his own hands to save the world… and stuff.

All I really remember is that after a slew of disaster movies in my recent viewing history, this one at least didn’t have a precocious kid that needed a healthy dose of discipline and a lesson in manners. This one at least didn’t have a contrived treacle-filled sub-plot about family sticking together through tragedy, or society trying to carry on in the aftermath of disaster. This at least just stuck to questionable science, showed plenty of pretty lights to make sure we know there’s lots of “coronal mass ejections”, and a requisite fist fight/action scene or two.

It just didn’t keep my interest, however. I don’t think it’s all the movie’s fault. I think it’s because I’ve seen so many of this genre of film in the last few days, and just got burned out. I know I fell asleep a couple of times trying to watch it, but there wasn’t anything going on that made me sit up and take notice. It’s just another typical “we’ve got to save the world…again” movie.

I watched it mostly for Mark Dacascos since he’s sunk to the level of Casper Van Dien and Lorenzo Lamas. Decent actor, has plenty of action star chops, but he’s not so good that he can rise above mediocre roles like this. Sometimes he’s funny, and then sometimes intentionally so. I also watched it for Louis Gossett Jr, an actor I feel deserves more respect than a movie like this. I didn’t watch it for anything else except a morbid curiosity about how bad this would get.

To sum this up, I tried to watch yet another disaster movie, and got absolutely nothing out of it, including an even halfway decent review. I’ll give it another try in a few months and see if my “disaster movie tolerance level” has subsided, but I don’t have high hopes that anything will save this movie for me.

In the meantime, I’m eagerly awaiting my next movie from Netflix, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, and the following trailer will tell you why!

Tags: disaster movie, Disaster Movie Tolerance Level, Joanne Kelly, Louis Gossett Jr, Mark Dacascos, movie review, Solar Attack, solar flares, Solar Strike, Sugith Varughese, We Have To Save The World Again

Really needed more beasties...

Merlin And The Book Of Beasts is another stretch of the story about King Arthur, Camelot, Excalibur, Guinevere, Knights Of The Round Table, and all the rest of those medieval romantic sort of tales. It’s been years since King Arthur’s death, and presumably that of his son/enemy Mordred. Merlin has ensconced himself within the forest with magical booby traps to keep the world away. We see a group of knights traveling into this forest, seeking him out, with one knight conspicuously with their face guard down at all times to hide their true identity. Right off the bat with a cheap trick like that to keep you from knowing we have a warrior princess in our midst, I’m bracing for huge disappointments, even after an opening sequence featuring killer butterflies.

So we quickly discover that Princess Avlynn is our mystery knight, and she wields a satisfactory sword. She manages to come face to face with the antisocial Merlin, explains the world has gone to hell at the hands of a dark wizard, they need his help and wisdom, and so on and so forth. They banter back and forth, James Callis playing Merlin with the proper demeanor, but with a distracting, annoying affectation to the delivery of his lines. If he had dropped the overly forced deep and gravelly thing, I would have enjoyed his performance a whole lot more. Laura Harris plays Avylnn well enough with the lines she’s given, but I was so distracted by how unnatural her hair looked that I paid more attention to that than anything she said or did.

But I digress. Avylnn ends up calling Merlin a coward because he refuses to help her, she rejoins her party, they travel along a road only to be attacked by a dragon soldier, and Merlin makes his completely anti-climactic entrance to save the day and join them after all. From here on out it’s just a matter of sitting with a cup of coffee and hoping for some better beasts than what we’ve seen so far.

We get some decent Gorgon action, but that’s about it. I was really hoping for lots of beasts being unleashed onto our heroes so they could pass the time more entertainingly by battling them. Since the plot left me so cold, some cheesy CGI action would have warmed the cockles of my heart, and made me more amenable to thinking this wasn’t just a waste of my time, and the actors’.

For a typical Camelot regurgitation, this was tolerable. It just wasn’t what I expected. From the previews I expected fights among warring sorcerers complete with lots of pretty lights. I expected lots of wondrous creatures of myth and lore. I expected more than what looks like a wig ready to fall off our heroine if she thrashed around too much, and certainly more than an uncomfortable plot line revolving around Mordred wanting to do his half-sister.

I never watched enough of the newer Battlestar Galactica to form an opinion about James Callis. However, from what I saw in Merlin And The Book Of Beasts, I think he was holding back and going against his instincts to play Merlin the way someone else wanted him to. The rest of the cast does admirably well with their roles, to the point I’m frustrated at such a waste of talent. This is yet another movie that should have been really cool, but falls just short.

What’s missing from it? I think it’s passion. This was more of a ‘by the numbers’ medieval/Camelot/Merlin story than anything else, and no one seemed excited to be part of it. Even the CGI-ed snakes on the Gorgons’ heads looked like they were bored. That came across to me as a viewer, and that with the lack of cool beasties guarantees I won’t bother snatching up the DVD when it’s released.

Merlin And The Book Of Beasts is worth one viewing. Sadly, that’s about all it’s worth.

Tags: Avylnn, b-movie, Battlestar Galactica, Camelot, descendants of knights of the round table, Excalibur, fantasy movie, Guinevere, James Callis, King Arthur, Laura Harris, Merlin, Merlin And The Book Of Beasts, Mordred, movie review, Sword In The Stone

In space, no one can hear you act in a bad movie...

Jack Scalia deserves better than this movie. He must have been desperate for work back in 1996 when Dark Breed was made. He got shoved into a tiny pigeonhole of a character who potentially has a lot of depth, except the writers were afraid to venture into the deep end. He’s a decorated war veteran with strong feelings about how other vets are treated, takes the lives he saw lost very seriously, takes his job very seriously, and still loves his astronaut ex-wife. He now works for a shadow agency of the government which sent him up to a secret space station to retrieve astronauts previously sent there. And by retrieve, apparently that meant retrieve the bodies. He faced off against an ugly alien, and still has horrible nightmares about the experience. With all this back story we should have a richly developed character, and an interesting story.

We should, but we don’t. It’s not that interesting of a movie, even with aliens possessing the bodies of astronauts who went up in yet another secret space launch, only to crash back on Earth. We have bad aliens who want to hatch their eggs and destroy the planet. We have a good alien who also possessed an astronaut (the ex-wife of our main character/hero) who is out to fight the “Dark Breed.” Why they’re the “Dark Breed” and she’s not is never explained. Or maybe it was, but I missed it because I was too busy downing another cup of coffee to stay awake.

There’s a little gore, a little violence, and a lot of action, so that at least is pretty cool to watch. There’s a ludicrous scene where the good guys are driving off in a van that has a giant dish satellite on top of it. The dish falls off the van and drags behind it, slowing them down. Jack Scalia’s character tries to cut it loose, but in the process ends up sitting in the dish and basically road surfing behind the van. Kowabunga! Or something…

There are some laugh out loud funny moments. One of the aliens gets loose from his restraints after being captured and put in a hospital for observation. The human host ends up running around and making sounds that I’m sure were supposed to be terrifying, but I swear to god was just a recording from a hog calling contest. A little difficult to take that part as seriously as they meant it to be. There’s also plenty of stereotypical military jargon that I doubt is actually authentic. Plus one of the officers is a lovely young lady with non-military approved hairstyle, and way too much makeup. The banter among the good guy characters is often funny, but not always intentionally so.

Another scene that cracked me up was when the astronaut possessed by the good alien meets our hero in a diner. The waitress is nonplussed by the yellow eyes and stilted vocal patterns. She’s too busy being snarky to her because the alien is wanting to order pizza for breakfast. None of the other patrons are even paying attention to the lady in an astronaut’s jumpsuit with the U.S. flag all over it, although I’ll admit that part is probably true to life.

Dark Breed had a lot of potential, but fell very short of it. There’s a lot of angst going on with the astronauts possessed by the “Dark Breed”. They are cognizant of what is happening to them, and what the aliens are making them do, but are powerless to stop it. There’s a tense scene where the humans are temporarily in control of themselves while the aliens are presumably resting, and they debate whether they should kill themselves while they have the chance. As soon as a gun is raised the aliens yank control back, and two of the three actors play it off wonderfully while the third seems to be too distracted by the uncomfortable yellow contact lenses he was forced to wear.

I watched this one strictly for Jack Scalia. I was hoping for a cheesy performance like I got in Kraken: Tentacles Of The Deep. I was disappointed. There is a lot of cheese here, but there’s good cheese, and then there’s cheese that’s just so stinky you can’t even be in the same room with it. Dark Breed falls somewhere in between.

Trailer contains some blood and gore. But, if you watch it, it’ll save you 90 or so minutes, because they put most of the film’s major points in it!

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, action flick, alien movie, astronauts possessed by aliens, b-movie, Dark Breed, Jack Scalia, movie review, We Have To Save The World