House of the Dead.

Review #2144: House of the Dead.

Cast: 

Jonathan Cherry (Rudolph "Rudy" Curien), Ona Grauer (Alicia), Clint Howard (Salish), Ellie Cornell (Casper), Tyron Leitso (Simon), Will Sanderson (Greg), Enuka Okuma (Karma), Kira Clavell (Liberty), Sonya Salomaa (Cynthia), Michael Eklund (Hugh), David Palffy (Castillo), and Jürgen Prochnow (Kirk) Directed by Uwe Boll (#1765 - In the Name of the King and #1924 - Alone in the Dark)

Review: 

Its funny to go backwards when watching an Uwe Boll for the third straight year. This is the film that got people to look upon Boll and say, "What the hell is this doing in so many theaters?" It is loosely based on the video game of the same name that had originally appeared in arcades from Sega in 1996. Apparently, plans for a film first came around in 1998 with the idea that Jesse Dylan would direct from a script that had the involvement of Dylan and Mark Verheiden (most known for scripts such as Timecop). The outline (as provided by a magazine of the time) apparently involved a small college town involving a zombie haven to go with deaths at a rave and "necro-warrior" nerds that rally to fight the walking dead. However, by the time production actually came around, here one is with Boll as director and a script of differing names: the screenplay was done by Dave Parker and Mark Altman (you may recognize him as the co-writer of Free Enterprise (1998), the rom-com involving fans of Star Trek) while the story was done by Dan Bates and Altman. 2002 saw Boll and his production company take charge with said script to make this film, which began production in Vancouver. This was the 8th feature film for Boll as a director, which had seen prior works of horror and dramas such as Heart of America (2002), which most people would probably associate with the DVD markets. A direct-to-video sequel came in 2005 that had Altman serve as writer for screenplay with one returning cast member but, well, no Boll as director (amusingly, Boll would do the sequels to his other video game films of the time). By that time, Boll was ready for his two-pronged 2005 experience of Alone in the Dark and BloodRayne. There apparently is a director's cut that adds in some dialogue and alternative takes to go with pop-ups and you know, I'm just not there for that, man. 

You know that label "so bad it's good"? Sometimes you just want to call that label a crock of crap, and I think you really need to find films like this to really test the theory that a film can be so bad that it could come back to enjoyably goofy to watch. But this is the third straight Boll film to leave me with more irritation than before I pressed play, and I find little redeeming factors beyond the fact that the movie is probably one of few video game adaptations to feature clips from the game that they are adapting (well, technically the film is meant to be a prequel of the first game, which means rather than having an agent name G as the lead, you have the rave stuff here). Someone apparently counted the amount of clips shown at 32! Even the B-movies from the 1960s had something worth following along with in their ambition, this movie just has the turn-table technique for 360-degree shots that make me want to roll my eyes in the same way. Blank slates being spooked by zombies has never felt so lifeless, but by God did Boll accomplish it here. You can predict every movement for 90 minutes but feel so tired when doing so that it doesn't even feel worth it to do so. I know it isn't the worst, because those who have seen Alone in the Dark know what true misery is, but it is up there in the turd mountain. Cherry looks like he would rather be stuck anywhere but here with such a thankless lead role that does him no favors. What's the point of setting up a thing about students looking for a rave if the characters are too damn boring anyway? Even the one shot of nudity just seems to be "okay, next". I swear, if you throw a dart board at a bunch of names of cheapie films, you could land on one with Clint Howard involved in some way with pretty good odds (he also happened to appear in Boll's two previous films). He doesn't exactly rein in a good performance, but I'm sure the checks cleared all the same regardless. Cornell and Prochnow would've been a more interesting pair to really focus on when it comes to scoundrels and people who shoot guns, and yet...you get the idea. If you can remember a single thing about the "villain" in Palffy, you deserve a medal, because the whole thing about "immortality serums" and hordes of zombies under his control is handled with about as much grace as a dirt road with broken glass all over. As a whole, it is a Uwe Boll movie with little to show for its efforts, as it is the kind of thing that looks and feels way cheaper than $12 million. How could anyone approve of this? Well, 20 years have gone by and I certainly can't say that people are going to look upon this film as a lost classic, they just will see it as bland trash to throw onto the pile.

Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.

Tomorrow: God help us, Wired. 

Final Destination 2.

Review #2137: Final Destination 2.

Cast: 

Ali Larter (Clear Rivers), A. J. Cook (Kimberly Corman), Michael Landes (Thomas Burke), David Paetkau (Evan Lewis), James Kirk (Tim Carpenter), Lynda Boyd (Nora Carpenter), Keegan Connor Tracy (Kat Jennings), Jonathan Cherry (Rory Peters), T. C. Carson (Eugene Dix), Justina Machado (Isabella Hudson), and Tony Todd (William Bludworth) Directed by David R. Ellis (#437 - Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco)

Review: 

You may remember Final Destination (2000) came from a spec script by Jeffrey Reddick that would've been proposed for The X-Files if it wasn't for the fact that he had a suggestion to pitch it to New Line Cinema (which led to ensuing writing contributions by James Wong and Glen Morgan). The resulting film was such a success that New Line approached Reddick for a sequel. He agreed while Wong and Morgan (unavailable due to other projects) were replaced by J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress. If you would like an impression of what I thought about that first film, here goes: "Cardboard cut-outs getting killed with Rube Goldberg-type deaths is still cardboard cut-outs getting killed. The curse of knowing the potential for death could have made an interesting movie, really. That, or maybe it really was something suited for television." 2021 me did not have much patience for the original Final Destination, of course it took me two years to return to this series. Actually, he thought of a movie where instead of a bunch of bland cutouts led by a guy who looked like a nerd until it became more apparent that "Death" really was coming for them, time would be best served by just making that character a real loser. Two years later, I have come up with one other idea that was inspired by viewing this cheap sequel: a killer that goes around offing people in a manner that look like accidents just so that way he can get people to believe that Death is coming for them (if you have seen a film or story that is based on any of those premises, that is cool, because, well, you won't hear me whining).

Okay, so you can't just say a movie is not good just because it doesn't have the premise better than the one you imagine in your head. But you can say it is not a good film if it doesn't do anything to improve on the original beyond perhaps diving into what might as well be ripe for parody. Maybe I should've seen it coming before, since I never really thought much of naming a character "Clear Rivers" the first time around until I thought, wait, really? I think the only time I felt anything with this film was in laughing at it rather than with it, such as the case of one death scene: a teen spooks some pigeons, which leads to them buzzing by a crane operator that leads to the operator dropping a windowpane right on the teen that reminds me of a Roadrunner cartoon. The scene where a guy decides to just use a gun to try and shoot himself only to have it not fire even with six bullets is probably the only spooky idea presented. Other than that, if you've seen the first film, you basically have seen the second film. I'm not even irritated of what I see here, I just find it hilarious that you retain two castmates from the first and only use them to basically serve as exposition (it amuses me that Larter's character responds to being flipped off by leaving the padded and safe asylum to lead to exposition because [insert reference here]). Wasting Tony Todd the second time around should be a crime, but what do I know? Anyway, the acting is the kind of cut-and-dry stuff you would expect, mildly involving but not nearly enough to make me remember an iota of who these people are. Even Larter seems bemused to be there, as if the only thing worth doing is saying exposition and looking ready for the last check to clear. The death scenes are, well, deadly, which is more of a compliment to the one who had to sketch out how a man will get killed as a result of throwing junk onto pavement minutes earlier (that, or how CGI logs will make a bigger crash than real logs, obviously). You might think I should be more fair with the rating, because, hey, it's not that much better or worse than the original. You know those latter Sherlock Holmes movies Roy William Neill did? Watching those eleven films in all of their average-ness is far more tolerable to write about than being fair to junk like this.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

next up: Night of the Living Dead...remade.

Goon.

Review #1693: Goon.

Cast: 

Seann William Scott (Doug "The Thug" Glatt), Liev Schreiber (Ross "The Boss" Rhea), Alison Pill (Eva), Jay Baruchel (Pat), Marc-André Grondin (Xavier Laflamme), Eugene Levy (Dr. Glatt), David Paetkau (Ira Glatt), Kim Coates (Coach Ronnie Hortense), Richard Clarkin (Gord Ogilvey), Jonathan Cherry (Marco "Belchie" Belchior), Ricky Mabe (John Stevenson), Georges Laraque (Huntington), Curt Keilback (Rod McCaudry), and Larry Woo (Park Kim) Directed by Michael Dowse.

Review: 

There is plenty to go around when it comes to hockey, the good and bad. Referees, dubious team management, the feasibility of a sport that can be wracked with head injuries, and the innate ability of bad timing within television broadcasting. But, I imagine there is something interesting to say about the role of the goon, an enforcer that is tasked with responding to violent play in kind. On the one hand, one doesn't really want to see their guy get decked out and potentially suffer short-term injuries or even worse in the future. On the other hand, the violence is what one can dig when it comes to seeing goons take one out on each other for the good of their team. There are plenty of examples to list, such as Slap Shot (1977) with the Hanson Brothers (played by real-life hockey players Jeff Carlson, Steve Carlson and Dave Hanson). Of course, there is also the case of enforcer John Scott, a beneficiary of voting for the NHL All-Star Game (via fan online voting, which as a fan I deem embarrassing for all leagues despite doing it anyway, mostly for baseball), or infamous enforcers like Marty McSorley and Todd Bertuzzi, but the real life inspiration for this film comes from the exploits of Doug "The Hammer" Smith, who co-wrote Goon: The True Story of an Unlikely Journey into Minor League Hockey with Adam Frattasio. Smith played for seven teams over the course of six seasons after being encouraged by Frattasio to try enforcing after boxing with the Golden Gloves; Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg (who you might recognize as the co-writer of films such as Superbad (2007) with Seth Rogen) wrote the screenplay for the film, one mostly shot in the province of Manitoba, and it seems appropriate to have a Canadian at the helm for director with Michael Dowse, directing his fifth feature (his most notable feature was likely his first with FUBAR (2002), a cult hit shot in digital).

So, here we are with a hockey movie for folks who want a few raunchy chuckles while seeing quite a few fights and blood to spare from the ol' hockey game. Strangely enough, this was not actually a hit with audiences upon initial release (making just barely half of its $12 million budget), but it became a bit of a hit with video releases that ended up with a sequel being greenlit in Goon: Last of the Enforcers (2017). There is probably a small comparison to be made to films like Slap Shot or Superbad (2007). I guess this can be a compliment, despite the fact that what we have here is a warmly crude average movie. It is probably the strangest example of a movie that is so earnest in its attempts at balancing heart and grimey charm. When it comes to "Canadian nice", I'd say this is a pretty good example of it, at least for a movie featuring a guy who finds his calling in beating folks up on the ice rink. Look, I care about what I see here, but I don't feel that I care enough beyond just saying it is okay - I think it is the cult hit effect, where if one hears about the notices, the expectations sometimes just won't meet the (loose) reality. The best things about the movie are Scott and Schreiber, really, and that generally will result in a good thing if one is up for it (because the journey is what matters most), and I guess it is interesting enough as a sports movie to go with some chuckles for a mild 92 minute movie. Scott plays the lead role with earnest curiosity that rolls with a film parading clichés as one might expect without being swept into staleness, friendly to what goes on around him. Schreiber provides a useful contrast within the theatrical ice-hitman in careful brooding interest amidst the fights. Pill serves fine with her offbeat chemistry when paired with Scott, which works alright for small moments off the ice. Baruchel gets to play the loudmouth, which might prove familiar for those who follow a sport intently (in theory). Grondin eventually ekes a few interesting moments, although really it is Coates as the blathering coach that generates the most interest (again though, sometimes the cliché roles work the best). As a whole, the hockey action is fine, the comedy and the atmosphere prove fine, the fighting is relatively reliable, and yet here I am wondering why I didn't really think of it as anything pretty good. It is as inevitable as when one watches Slap Shot, but somehow there is something more involving in that film that I can't quite quantify. Maybe it is the sensibility of the filmmaker (George Roy Gill vs Dowse), or maybe it is something more, but when it comes to hockey movies, there are a few good ones one can sport out and consider for fun. In that regard, Goon makes for a useful experience to sit around with, hearty enough in sticking its love letter to a hockey goon fit for the Canadian flavor.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Ah yes, the Stanley Cup is upon us once again. Tampa Bay, Montreal. Easy choice: Go Habs.