Ferocious Planet: Nibbles more than it bites...

Run! Bad career moves are right behind you!After suffering through Your Highness and it's total lack of funny, when I sat down to watch Ferocious Planet the next day my expectations for anything to ever be good again were way, way down there.  That's probably why I found enjoyment in this hollow ripoff of Savage Planet (which didn't have much to inspire with itself), or any other B-movie offerings that came before it.

This wasn't horrible.  The graphics on the monsters were pretty good.  Not as good as the DVD cover would have you believe, but that's typical.  I can forgive less than stellar CGI when there are other elements that keep my interest.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of, at least in the beginning.  Naturally they start getting picked off one by one, so we get down to a core group for the majority of the movie pretty fast.  John Rhys Davies barely makes it to the first commercial break, but that's just as well.  He's better than a movie like this and it makes me wonder if he takes these roles because he thinks they'll be fun, or if he's just that tired.

What really won me over was the well placed humor through the whole movie.  Finally a newer movie that gets it!  Fine, give me melodrama, give me action, even some blood and gore.  But make sure you break it up with some humor.

It's not even over the top humor.  It's surprisingly subtle things all throughout.  One liners here and there, looks exchanged between the characters, and just simple dialogue between them, as well.  It makes you feel a little more at home in this parallel dimension they got themselves thrown into, and  makes the threadbare script just a minor annoyance.

Most notable of the cast besides John Rhys Davies is poor bastard Joe Flannigan, of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis fame.  He's also so much better than a role like this, but he plays it with charm, so you can't help but root for him to survive  until the end (and what will surely be an even more pallid sequel).  He's the main reason this movie had some warmth, depth, and humor.  I look forward to seeing him in what will surely relaunch his career, Spore.  Sadly for Mr. Flannigan, it looks like a movie right up my alley, so I'm not  holding my breath for a sudden jolt in his fame after it airs.

Overall, Ferocious Planet had a lot more going for it than many movies of its ilk.  It had a decent cast, halfway decent writing, well placed humor, and pretty cool looking beasties.  It was certainly a better way to spend an afternoon than the last movie I paid good money to see.

The Descent: Well, it plunged me into a dark void with no escape...

Hour long setup for a whole lotta gore for the sake of gore.

At least it's not zombies. That's the only thing I can say positive about The Descent. Otherwise it's just another 'gore for the sake of gore' horror movie, this time featuring ravenous cave creatures that are mostly human, a little bat, and all ugly.

Okay, another difference between this and boring zombie flicks is this makes you sit through about an hour of set up where the characters emote about one character's tragic loss of her husband and child, and how they feel bad they didn't stick by her during the tragedy when she needed them the most, but hey, why don't we just get drunk and go spelunking to make up for it? Then we have to watch these women find a cave entrance, maneuver themselves deeper into it, let one of them have a panic attack when she gets stuck, and then have everyone else get all pissed off (rightfully so) as they realize the gal who coordinated the trip decided to take them into uncharted and dangerous territory.

Finally when things begin to happen, it's nothing more interesting than cave creatures that want to make them into meals. Yes, it's horrifying. Yes, it's bloody and gruesome. Yes, it would be a horrible way to die. But it's nothing original, even with the albino humanoid creatures who stalk their prey by sonar like a bat, and can crawl all over the cave walls and pop out of any place the director thinks will make you jump.

Through it all there is still all this angst among the characters as one of them finally realizes through her dense fog of grief and anti-depressant medication that her dead husband cheated on her with one of her friends. That it's the friend who decided they all needed to wander around a cave that no one ever made it out of alive before, well, that's just icing on the cake, since you need at least that much to get any kind of emotional connection with these characters.

Maybe I went into this with the wrong expectations, and that's why I'm so thoroughly unimpressed. But my expectations were so low it only would have taken a few good lines, one sympathetic character, or anything original in the horror vein to make me sit up and take notice, instead of grab another cup of coffee to try and stay awake. I see the rave reviews of this, and I just don't get it. Is it because the main characters all have British accents? Is that why other people think this is a class act of a horror movie? Or is it the long, drawn out setup before you even get a glimpse of the cave dwellers? All I saw was a bunch of tripe better suited for a 'chick flick' about how someone gets their groove back than the backbone of a horror movie. Then all I saw was gore for the sake of gore, cheap tricks to try and make me jump, and an ending that just made me roll my eyes and say out loud, "Well, that was just stupid."

This is definitely a movie I won't own on DVD, or watch ever again. I was curious about it because of the hype, but now I know that The Descent is just another movie that didn't live up to it. I need more than just 'beastie wants to eat me while I cry about my feelings', and The Descent barely even delivered that.

Locusts: At least it had Lucy Lawless...

Whole lotta bugs, not a lotta plot.

Sigh. Why are so many movies I'm watching lately so bad, and not in a good way? I thought for sure that Lucy Lawless could carry any movie, and she does admirably well, but she is the only good thing about this made-for-CBS television movie. Made-for-tv isn't a sure fire sign something is going to be watered down, bland, and generally sleep-inducing, or even poorly written with every cliche you can think of thrown in. However, Locusts: Day Of Destruction does nothing to fight that stereotype I have formed in my mind.

It starts off promising. Two young people enter a lab where experimental locusts are secured. She's the lab assistant, and brought her boyfriend along so he can see the cool place she works before they go on their date. One of her tasks is to put a ficus plant in with the locusts, and naturally she decides not to don the protective gear. The locusts swarm her, start biting, she freaks out, but still manages to shout the code to the door to her boyfriend. She emerges no worse for wear (and surprisingly doesn't release any locusts like should have happened), and her boyfriend teases her about the giant grasshoppers. A little funny, a tad too cutesy for my taste, and one of the few entertaining moments of the whole affair.

It goes downhill as soon as Maggie Reardon (Lawless) is shown interacting with her husband, Dan, played by Dylan Neal. Now, I'm sure Dylan Neal is a talented actor, but something about a made-for-television movie must force you to listen to directors telling you to embrace your feminine side too tightly. The characters are having troubles in their marriage (boo hoo), and part of it stems from Maggie taking a very successful, very demanding, job with the Department of Agriculture. Her hubby whines about how he turned down a great job so they could be together and so they could settle down and start a family. Then in a slightly later scene when Maggie confesses she has to go out of town for her job instead of staying to talk with him, he snivels some more about how neglected he feels, and how he needs to put some space between him and her so he can sort things out. With so much estrogen pouring out of him, I started my period early.

Setting aside my hearty dislike for Dan's character, there are plenty of other things that just bored me and nothing more. Maggie naturally has to confront her former teacher, who is experimenting on locusts, and fires him. During the dismantling of the lab, some of the bugs are smuggled out, others escape, and the plague ensues. Government cover ups begin, finger pointing abounds, someone in the military suggests just poisoning the remote areas of Middle America despite the loss of human lives it would result in, and others mention the ten plagues of Egypt. Somewhere during all of this trite melodrama Maggie discovers she's pregnant, and we get another scene actually entertaining. Lucy Lawless displays her comedic timing as she's on the phone to her father telling him about it, and makes incoherent babble mixed with crying a poignant commentary on a successful woman realizing she's knocked up.

As a testimony to the lack of imagination found in mainstream television, a sequel called Vampire Bats was made, and released Halloween of 2005. I'm sure Dan is just as whiny and 'god-I-just-want-to-smack-you'-able as he is in the first movie, and I'm also sure the premise is just as weak and tired. I'm also sure that as soon as I get my hands on a copy, I will sit and watch it, because I am that masochistic when it comes to bad movies.

If you're a fan of Lucy Lawless, Locusts is worth a viewing, if only out of respect for the hard work she put in on it. Otherwise, don't bother, not even for the completely ludicrous ending where the locusts are destroyed because every American pitches in and turns off all of their lights. Trust me. It's nowhere near as cool or funny as that sounds.

You have been warned.

Caved In: Prehistoric Terror: a.k.a. "How big bugs survive with no viable food source"

They don

For a giant bug movie, this isn't too bad. It's got a ton of CGI-ed prehistoric looking beetles, making me not-so-nostalgic for a crappy apartment I had in Denver years ago featuring Armageddon-resistant cockroaches. These creepy-crawlies move and swarm like the real things, and range from small to gargantuan. They even have little beady red eyes which are so cute on the puppet forms they use to attack the actors with.

The cast features Christopher Atkins of The Blue Lagoon fame, emerging to fight off creditors by starring in Sci Fi 'not so original' movies. He plays the father to a family-run tour guide service to the rich. Angela Featherstone (the shallow girlfriend from The Wedding Singer who made Van Halen break up by wearing their t-shirt) is the mother of the clan, who speaks French and wields pump action shotguns like a pro. Chelan Simmons and Stevie Mitchell round out the family as the spoiled daughter and slightly dim, but likable son. One thing I really found amusing in the the movie was how often the daughter got splashed with disgusting bug goo as the mother blew them to pieces. She didn't look amused after the third hit, but funny thing, I was laughing my copious butt off.

The story starts off with a mining incident in 1948 where only one man survives a prehistoric bug attack. He also manages to emerge from the mine with a map to the location of a huge cache of emeralds. This cache is what the bad guys are after. David Palfey plays your typical greedy bad guy, who is supposedly the grandson of this survivor, and gets the map. We're not clear of his relation to an old guy with a leg missing that he is shown negotiating with over property at the beginning of the film, but facts aren't what make a bad movie good, so I can overlook this confusion. The tour guide father gets enlisted to show the way around the mine, much to the irritation of the rest of his family who expected a 'real' vacation. The money is good, so they go, and his family has the use of a dead man's lake house while he earns the fee.

Christian Popa plays a brutal lackey left in charge of the family while the dad guides his crew around an abandoned mine. The daughter and the lackey start flirting with each other, and you wonder why the mother isn't being a bit more forceful in keeping them apart. You'd also think the parents would be more concerned that their younger son is off wandering a strange countryside, and doesn't check back in for a few hours. Fortunately there aren't child protective services available to ask these sorts of questions, so the storyline progresses.

Of course it's revealed to the naive father that he's leading a gang of thugs on a treasure hunt rather than a group of thrill seekers wanting to explore a mine. His family is held hostage based on his continued cooperation. The bugs begin attacking, so the story quickly picks up a more energetic pace.

The bad guys have brought along laser rifles, which is handy to have for blasting through rock, and big bugs. The rest of the storyline is pretty far-fetched, too, but it's still fun. The characters don't seem quite right, and there are coincidences that even I rolled my eyes. When the mother and daughter are surrounded by beetles, they happen to get the father on the radio in time for a shrill cry of help from the queen beetle to ring out. The attacking beetles hear this on the radio, and rush off to help their queen, saving the mother and daughter. Okaay... Plus you wonder how the bugs have survived so long underground with no source of food? Cannibalism can only get you so far. But you also get groaners of one liners like 'He said he had a splitting headache...' when someone gets their face bit in two by a beetle, so things balance out in the end.

There's a lot of entrails and goo, so I wouldn't recommend this for dinner and a movie. I would recommend it for a good way to waste a couple of hours of your day so you don't accidentally do anything productive!

Journey To The Center Of The Earth: a.k.a. "Let's Make Jules Verne Spin In His Grave"

If the movie had anything as cool as the cover, we

Why was 2008 picked by two separate groups of people as the time to make movies only remotely based on a classic Jules Verne book, yet still name the films after it? What forces conspired to call out to the spirit of Jules Verne and beg him to come back from the grave to kick the asses of the uncreative people behind these atrocities? Maybe I'm still stinging from the big blockbuster version I paid money to see in the theaters, and am still retching from the straight to video version I just watched. Maybe that's why I'm so mortally offended, and am contemplating the formation of a consortium designed to wipe this desecration out of the memories of the universe.

It's sad that Greg Evigan felt the need to drag his daughter, Vanessa Evigan, down with him on this one. Her career wasn't suffering badly enough already? C'mon, Greg, even if she asked you for a role, as a father you should protect her from something which so clearly can destroy her.

She was in the company of Michelle Pfeiffer's sister on this sinking ship that could never be called seaworthy no matter how sarcastic you're being. Poor DeeDee Pfeiffer got cast as a fidgety, annoying scientist who can't decide if she needs to wear her glasses or not, so took them on and off no less than five times in one minute. (I counted.) Even if I'd heard of her before, I won't remember her fondly after this, assuming I can't eradicate this experience from my consciousness as soon as this review (warning) is written.

The rest of the cast is no less injured by their appearance here. There's no real plot, so there's no real script, so there's no real dialogue, so you're just pounding your empty coffee cup against your head so you can feel something other than the pain in your left eye as you endure until the end because you're that stubborn. There's a bit of CGI to distract, but it has no purpose other than diverting your attention from a train wreck. They skimp on the monsters on top of everything, so this is a complete waste of time.

How they got away with naming this Journey To The Center Of The Earth when there's so few parallels to that story is beyond me. It's more like The Core than anything, but that's not a plus. The writing just goes through the motions. No one bothers to question why the sky is such a pretty blue when you're 600 kilometers below the surface, or how one of the team members stuck there figures out exactly where they're at by looking at a piece of quartz rock.

At first you think this movie will just be an excuse to show athletic women in tight fitting outfits running around and firing guns at T-Rexes and flowers. Then they throw in the ex-couple to go rescue them. Then they keep flashing back to this guy in a military uniform who is supposedly waiting for this demonstration of the transporter to be completed. The 'tension' between the characters is a farce, and so easily resolved I gave myself a concussion slapping my hand against my forehead in frustration. At the end, there's no resolution to any open issues, and the survivors bounce back and go out for beers. That was the only thing I thought made sense, because I needed a stiff drink after surviving this, too.

I could go on about how bad this movie is, rant how it sucked away two hours of my life, and left a wound on my tender psyche. However, I don't want to reinforce bad movie making behavior by giving this 'film' too much attention, so I will just ask that you all ignore it. Don't even look it up on Google. Let's make sure it fades into the ether as quickly as possible, and hope no one thinks there's 'room for a sequel.' If I hear that there will be, I'll start taking applications for membership in my consortium straight away.