What's that in the distance?...Is that what's left of our careers?

Okay, after being absent in my oh-so-valuable reviews of all that is cheesy in the world of B-movies, I’m finally back to a level of free time which allows me to indulge in this irresistible fixation of mine. The first movie I chose to review sadly has no deep meaning for me, no grandiose karmic communication I felt had to be imparted to an unsuspecting world. Nope. It just happens to be what was in my DVR for me this weekend.

So here goes a review of MegaFault, another venture from Asylum Home Entertaiment which has a lot of potential which was allowed to all shake to the bottom while the CGI team tried to make the graphics more believable. There was a lot to work with this time in the way of the cast, including Eriq La Salle, of ER fame (as well as one of my favorite 80’s movies, Coming To America), Bruce Davison (X-men and a schnike-load of other work), Brittany Murphy (whose “girly” movies I’ve never liked, but could appreciate her fortitude in working opposite of Ashton Kutcher), and Paul Logan (who others may say isn’t a plus, but whom I loved in Komodo Vs Cobra). To the credit of the cast they all played their parts very well. Maybe too well for a movie of this limited caliber. There wasn’t any sense of fun at any point from any of the cast, except an occasional smart-ass line delivered by the background actors. I know this is a disaster movie, but it’s a very far-fetched disaster movie, and one put out by Asylum Home Entertainment. C’mon folks, I know it’s not as fun of a premise as Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, but roll with the punches and revel in the cheese factor!

I think the seriousness that “end of the world” movies incite is what turns me off of them. There seems to be a fear of making fun of anything, no matter how ludicrous the storyline gets. We have a man who specializes in blowing up mountains, named Boomer, and when he takes out a mountain, it causes a giant crack across North America, pretty much dividing the United States in two as it tears through the earth. The military enlist cute little Dr. Amy Lane who has no problem leaving her daughter and husband behind to go investigate the earthquakes, and then get called upon to calculate where the military should fire this secret weapon they have in space that can (wait for it….) start earthquakes! Back to the old “cure amnesia” theory of halting a crisis, whereby you simply have to start another earthquake in the right spot and the world will remember it’s real name is Alice, and she has a dog named… I mean, you’ll stop the first earthquake.

Not to be outdone, the cure then weakens the mantle. Naturally we then get a mega volcano that has to be stopped by blowing up a whole bunch of stuff, ’cause, well, they were running out of reasons why Boomer needed to keep hanging around.

There’s not much of substance along the way, but you do end up liking Amy Lane and Boomer, because they’re played by actors who know how to create empathy. Again, it’s just misplaced for a little movie like this. They’re acting like they’re going for an Oscar instead of just trying to keep their careers in forward momentum.

The special effects here are typical Asylum. Not horrible, not great, but still just bad enough to elicit a giggle. I think that’s why I keep watching Asylum’s movies, because at least half of them I can get through as a result of that cheese factor. The other half (such as The Terminators) are so bad I can’t get past the first thirty minutes, despite my stubborn, masochistic nature.

If you’re a fan of disaster flicks, you will probably enjoy Megafault. If you’re a fan of cheesy movies, you’ll be left wanting (and feeling a little sorry for Brittany Murphy and Eric La Salle).

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, action flick, Asylum Home Entertainment, Brittany Murphy, Bruce Davison, Eric La Salle, MegaFault, Paul Logan, You Poor Bastard

With a title like that, you know it's gonna be cheesy!

Once in a while I just feel like a very tame movie with lots of cheesiness, even at the risk of some awfully saccharin moments. When the movie features Christopher Lloyd, to boot, I can’t resist, and willingly plop myself on the futon to waste a couple of hours on a family-style scary film.

When Good Ghouls Go Bad is based on the R.L. Stine book of the same name, which, like all of his other works, I never got around to reading when I was in the proper age demographic. It’s set in Walker Falls, Minnesota, a town which hasn’t celebrated Halloween for twenty years after the tragic death of Curtis Danko, the local outcast. The story goes that Curtis created a sculpture so frightening that only the devil himself could look upon it. It goes further to claim that a message written by the dying Curtis swore revenge upon the town if they ever celebrated another Halloween. When a local boy saw the statue, he was rendered blind for three days, so no one else dared to look upon it. They covered it up and placed it in the crypt where Curtis Danko was laid to rest.

So poor Danny Walker ends up moving to town with his father, who grew up there, so his father could fulfill his dream of reopening the chocolate factory. His grand plan involves bringing in German investors and putting on a huge Halloween festival. In a town that is too terrified to celebrate Halloween, that poses a problem, and a handy conflict point. Danny gets picked on at school, naturally, and hears the frightening tales of Curtis Danko. Only his crazy grandfather, who insists on being called Uncle Fred, provides him some much needed protection and companionship.

Uncle Fred is a big fan of Halloween, as well, so he quickly becomes the focus of the town’s rage, along with his well meaning son. Odd things begin to happen in the town, and Uncle Fred meets a sad fate. As only a family-style movie can do, this tragedy turns into a lot of slapstick comedy, and Christopher Lloyd shines.

This isn’t anything that original, but it’s a story told with such a joire de vie that it doesn’t matter. We have a bunch of precocious kids with half-heartedly stern parents, allowing them run of the town to try to bring Halloween back for themselves. There’s a very tame romance between a single mother and a single father, just enough to keep the parents watching alongside their kids. But mostly there’s a lot of slapstick, a lot of cheese, and a lot of giggle factor, especially as the ghouls and zombies start walking around town doing their thing. Our creepy monsters are done up about as well as typical Halloween decorations, which just made me laugh all the harder. Glowing LED eyes, foam skeletons propped up and jiggled around on sticks, lots of smoke and fog… You’ve seen it all at that one house every neighborhood has that goes all out for Halloween.

In the end everything works out the way it should in a perfect world, where the good guys get their just rewards, and the not-so-good guys get their comeuppance in a nice, tame way. In real life there would have been arrests and jail time, but we’ll just overlook that for the sake of a nice, tame, escape from reality.

If precocious kids just give you a headache, steer a wide path around When Good Ghouls Go Bad. However, if you’re a Christopher Lloyd fan like I am, give this a viewing and enjoy him obviously enjoying himself. There are also a ton of secondary characters that provide plenty of distraction. Obviously this is a movie you can also sit and watch with your own little ones, if you have them, but if you don’t, there’s no shame in giggling your way through an afternoon watching something a little sweet, barely scary, and so very, very cheesy.

Tags: Brendan McCarthy, Brittany Byrnes, Christopher Lloyd, Curtis Danko, Fox Family, Halloween, made for tv movie, R.L. Stine, Roy Billing, Tom Amandes, Walker Falls

Lots of action, lots of cheese, lots of fun!

If you go to see G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra expecting a plot, you’re completely missing the point of a summer blockbuster like this. You’re supposed to be going for a good time, to see lots of action, cool C.G.I., and some cheesy, cheesy goodness! There’s sort of a plot here, but it’s threadbare, just enough to hang the goodies on. For The Queen Of Cheese, that was plenty for a rip roaring good time, one making me anxious for those two sequels Dennis Quaid is already lined up for.

The cast is huge, so that is a bit distracting at first, but once things get moving you’re able to stay focused on the main group. There are also a couple of cameos in pivotal roles, such as Jonathan Pryce as The President Of The United States, and Brendan Fraser as Sergeant Stone, responsible for whipping the two newest Joes into shape. Otherwise we have several character on the good and bad side to keep up with, and every single one of them was cast very well.

On the good guy side we naturally have Dennis Quaid as General Hawk, the man in charge of the Joes. He’s likable and charming, as only Dennis Quaid can be. Already on his team is Breaker, played by Saïd Taghmaoui, Heavy Duty, played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, the awesome Snake Eyes, played by Ray Park, and the surprisingly not-irritating Scarlett, played by Rachel Nichols. Freshly recruited are Duke, played by Channing Tatum (who I still giggle over being in Step Up), and Ripcord, played by Marlon Wayans. This whole bunch have good chemistry together, making them a lot of fun to watch. All of the players keep their roles subdued, since an over the top performance would have just been lost in all of the over the top action and C.G.I. I was happy that the story skipped over a whole bunch of “you’re the new guy and don’t deserve to be here” crap they could have done. They hinted at it briefly, but quickly glossed it over to make them a team.

On the bad guy side we have a bunch of actors who get to have a lot of fun being bad. Christopher Eccleston (Dr. Who) plays James McCullen (and future Destro). Lee Byung-hun plays Snake Eyes’ rival, Storm Shadow, with lots of spectacular fighting as a result. Sweet little Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the evil Cobra Commander, and does it so well I didn’t recognize him. There’s a small part played by the wondrous Arnold Vosloo as Zartan, a master of disguise. They weave his part in well, and leave it hanging wonderfully for the sequels. And because it wouldn’t be G.I. Joe without The Baroness, we have Sienna Miller playing it to the hilt. There’s an awesome fight scene between The Baroness and Scarlett which goes above and beyond the typical “we have to have a girl fight” scene.

Okay, there’s a plot in here somewhere, but I didn’t really care, since I was so distracted by the wonderful explosions and tons of great action. It centers around nanotechnology and missiles built to exploit them. Naturally they’re dangerous weapons and end up falling into the wrong hands, and then the good guys have to chase them. There’s an underwater military base, some sweet gadgets and vehicles, and lots of firepower. What more do you need, really?

Despite a lot of folks giving G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra negative reviews, it still opened number one at the box office this weekend, and I think has secured the production of those two sequels. The action is intense, but I think even younger viewers won’t be overwhelmed by it, and will just be delighted at all of the eye candy in front of them.

I will be snapping this up on DVD the week it’s released, I enjoyed it that much, and will be in line opening weekend when the sequels do come out. I highly recommend giving this a viewing while it is on the big screen, and checking any high expectations for complex plots at the door. Go in expecting what I did, which is a cheesy good time with lots of giggle factor, and you will be very, very entertained!

Tags: action flick, action movie, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Arnold Vosloo, Baroness, Brendan Fraser, Byung-hun Lee, Channing Tatum, Christopher Eccleston, cobra, Dennis Quaid, Destro, Duke, G.I. Joe The Rise Of Cobra, giggle factor, Grégory Fitoussi, Jonathan Pryce, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marlon Wayans, movie based on a toy, movie review, Rachel Nichols, Ray Park, Ripcord, Saïd Taghmaoui, Shana 'Scarlett' O'Hara, Sienna Miller, Stephen Sommers, Zartan

Giggles galore!

As soon as I saw the title Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, I knew this movie was meant for me. I laughed my way through the wooden acting, and the frugally dispersed CGI of a cool looking Mega Shark and Giant Octopus. I even went so far as to watch the “special features”, and those were even funnier. The “outtakes” give one actor about five minutes more screen time than the two minutes he actually had, because he couldn’t get one of his three lines right. Listening to the four main actors discuss the movie is almost painful to endure. They try to talk it up, but look in their eyes. They’re dying inside as they do so. Three of the four don’t even get enough courtesy to have their interview conducted inside a nice, quiet room where you can even hear them. But that’s okay. For Debra Gibson’s segment I was too distracted by the guy working behind her who kept showing butt crack every time he bent over. The funniest extra was the short clip with the “cinematographer”, especially as he tries to get the poor camera person to help him demonstrate a cheap, but effective, technique to mimic a submarine being thrashed around.

But the special features weren’t what drew me in. It was the ridiculous plot, passable (I’m being generous) acting, and whiplash-inducing blips of CGI. C’mon, people, a giant shark takes out a passenger jet in mid-air! And attacks the Golden Gate Bridge! Show me that in the previews and you know I’m going to be salivating to watch the rest of what passes for the movie.

Sadly the previews give away the best parts, but this is such a train wreck I will be buying myself a copy when I see it cheap enough. $19.99 definitely is not cheap enough, but get down to the $7.99 range, and I’ll be reminding people about it at Xmas time.

So what’s all the hub bub about? Debra Gibson is an ocean scientist who is exploring underwater. She notices whales going nuts and crashing themselves into icebergs. This in turn knocks away enough ice for her to catch a glimpse of two prehistoric creatures locked in mortal combat, just before they come back to life and zip away into the murky depths. Giant sized incidents occur around the globe, including an attack on an oil rig, and our fun little plane munch. Governments naturally get involved, and our lovely scientist finds herself caught up in it, along with her former professor, and a forced love interest in the guise of a fellow scientist from Japan. After some lame science, an even lamer excuse for the main characters to have sex, and an even lamer resulting hypothesis about pheromones as a result of that sex, we’re off on a monster hunt.

Really, don’t bother trying to figure out the plot. It’s the same old stuff with government conspiracies, scientists saving the day, and narrow escapes thrown in. This is a low budget (comparatively) movie, and it shows in the small cast and limited sets. I’m actually pretty impressed with how much bang for their buck Asylum gets for their bad movies, and don’t mind how much they recycle things between them. I’m watching for giggle factor and cheese, and Asylum delivers at least one time out of five.

For the beleaguered cast I have to give props for at least having fun with the movie. Yes, in their little interviews they may be taking it a little too seriously, but at least that didn’t filter too much into the actual movie. There’s a lot of tongue in cheek delivery of lines, and I get the feeling that they were trying not to roll their eyes as they said most of them. Debra Gibson isn’t the best little actress in the world, but she’s definitely not as bad as some I’ve seen. She holds her own against poor bastard Lorenzo Lamas, who sounded like he really wanted them to kill off his character so he wouldn’t have to risk a sequel. Her professor, played by Sean Lawlor, is the believable mentor. The love interest, played by Vic Chao, plays his role a little too “this will get me an Oscar, right?”, but he’s still very likable, and has decent chemistry with Gibson.

All in all, Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus is a giant waste of time. However, it’s a funny-groaningly-bad-leave-you-giggling-and-feeling-slightly-guilty-about-finding-it-so-funny, giant waste of time. And for the Queen Of Cheese, that’s good enough!

Tags: "Not So Original" Movies, Asylum, b-movie, creature feature, Debra Gibson, giggle factor, Lorenzo Lamas, Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, Sean Lawlor, Vic Chao

Look out! It's a floating triangle moving very, very slowly towards you!

Blue Demon is yet another entry into the “demonized shark” movie category. A secret lab funded by the government is researching ways to control sharks to do their bidding. The scientists believe they are doing work to benefit mankind, but unbeknownst to them the government has other plans. Plus, there’s someone hijacking their project with deadly results. dun, dun, dun, dun!

That’s about as serious as the movie gets, and I was so very happy to sit and waste an hour and a half of my time on it. It has a lot of goofy extras to it to provide much needed humor, and doesn’t go for the gore factor. This is a funny, good time movie with a decent cast to back it up.

I’ve made it clear that I think Dedee Pfeiffer is very difficult to tolerate onscreen for more than a few minutes at a time. She’s twitchy. She’s fidgety. I think they keep messing with her dosage. But in the very cheesy, gloriously ludicrous Blue Demon, she fits wonderfully! Her cutesy act isn’t nauseating. Her overly-caffeinated persona makes sense as a quirky scientist who’s just a bit too smart to speak with us ‘regular people’, let alone have more than basic social skills. Plus, she’s balanced out very nicely by her co-star, Randall Batinkoff, who plays her long suffering, potentially ex-husband. He’s the anchor that lets your eyes focus while she vibrates and hums herself practically into another dimension.

The rest of the cast all fit this odd little movie just perfectly. We have Josh Hammond playing a weird little lab assistant named Avery that you keep expecting to start talking about surfing, but plays with the computers instead. There’s also Danny Woodburn who plays the uptight, possibly corrupt, boss to our lab gurus, Lawrence Van Allen. He easily steals every scene he is in, and it’s not because he can’t help but stand out because he’s so much shorter. He’s got remarkable screen presence, and makes his character the most believable of the lot as he yanks food out of their hands because they’re not paying attention to him, and alternates between making the lab gurus lives hell, and needing an antacid to deal with them.

Then there’s our big, bad, evil military character, played by Jeff Fahey. He plays a character named, of all things, General Remora. Right there you know for a fact this movie is not taking itself seriously, which is why I love it so morbidly. Jeff Fahey plays it to the hilt, clenching cigars, spitting out orders, seething with righteous indignation when he’s questioned. He’s out to create a military weapon, gosh darn it, not out for a day at the beach!

But the cast is just the icing on the cake of Blue Demon. The “short bus” special effects are a riot, and almost painfully bad. I swear to god the shark fins in the water scenes are just waterproof cardboard cutouts painted black and on the slowest motor they could find. When people are frantically trying to get out of their way, I checked my watch several times just to make sure I hadn’t fallen into some kind of slow moving time warp. In all of those scenes I could have gotten up and microwaved another bag of popcorn and not missed a thing.

The little bit of CGI they went for is actually pretty good. They give the sharks expressions, and have them zip back and forth (not unlike the frenetic pace of Ms. Pfeiffer). Yes, it’s so obviously blue screen out of the water it’s laughable, but it just adds to the cheese factor, so I forgive.

If you’re tired of shark movies that flash way too much chomped flesh at you, Blue Demon will be a pleasant respite. If you’re also tired of movies taking themselves too seriously, especially when they should know better, this will be a breath of fresh air. And if you’ve been given a headache trying to keep up with Dedee in other movies, I think you’ll be as shocked as I was at how tolerable, and even likable, she is in Blue Demon.

With Discovery Channel airing Shark Week, Blue Demon should be on your watch list to help get over all that darn reality and education they insist on adding to their quest for ratings. It also has the added bonus of plenty of giggle factor! This is a Queen Of Cheese “must see”, or at least “must watch once, and wonder what the heck is wrong with that Queen Of Cheese to think this is watchable…”. Enjoy!

Tags: b-movie, Blue Demon, cheese, creature feature, Danny Woodburn, Dedee Pfeiffer, giggle factor, Jeff Fahey, Josh Hammond, movie review, Randall Batinkoff, shark attack movie, Shark Week

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

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