Category: General

Another in a long line of remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

It only occurred to me as I was watching this iteration, but these are Zombie movies. And the thing about Zombie movies is: they scare me, and I like them.

Let me get this one thing out of the way: I really don’t like Nicole Kidman.

Let me get this other thing out of the way: Some stupid shit happens in this movie. (The CDC guy is a fracking maroon. And you remember how 28 Weeks Later was grim? The Invasion isn’t.)

Now, this is another one of those bastard movies that isn’t necessarily good, but isn’t even remotely as bad as I expected – in fact it was quite entertaining, and… yes… I liked it. In fact I think I don’t even hate Nicole Kidman anymore.

If you’re at a loose end of an evening you could do much worse, but if you’re going to risk it you’d better move quickly as The Invasion will be beating a hasty retreat from theaters in 3… 2…

Just 5 minutes long, this Pixar produced CG animation is the story of a young alien’s ‘license to abduct’ test… Of course the catch is that the operation console isn’t very userfriendly. Pity the teenage kid in the beam.

Released in conjunction with Ratatouille, but I’m sure you can find it on YouTube or *cough*, and you should try – this is quite possibly the best short Pixar has ever produced. Good enough, in fact, that I can even forgive them the Wilhelm dropped in at the end.

Spoilers: I’m pretty sure he fails the test.

I’ve read a lot of Philip K. Dick, but I’m not sure if I’ve read his short story The Golden Man, on which this Nicholas Cage produced and lead movie is (very loosely) based.

But you don’t really need to be directly familiar with Dick’s work because you’ve already seen a shit tonne of his stuff in film form. Let’s start with the big one: Bladerunner? NO? You must be kidding. How about Minority Report, or Total Recall, or A Scanner Darkly? Fine, fucking Paycheck then.

Generally, I must confess, I like my science fiction sane (kooky is fine), and if there’s one thing our Mr Dick wasn’t, the wasn’t was sane. And if there’s one thing the movies based on his stories have been, it’s loosely.

So let’s call this a digression and move on. Bygones.

If you’ve seen the ads for Next, you’ll know already that it sucks. There’s no doubt right? I mean, those glasses things (bit of a shout out to A Clockwork Orange, yeah?) are goofy as shit. And in context, in the movie, they are completely pointless. It has Nicholas Cage in every goddamn minute, and if you’ve seen as many Nicholas Cage movies as I have, you’ll already know what he looks and sounds like, so why bother looking at him for another 90 minutes? As to special effects, well there are quite a few, and honestly the CG just isn’t so great.

So, as we’ve established, this movie sucks.

But this movie doesn’t suck.

How can this even be possible? Don’t ask me, but it’s true.

Whether the precognitive fight scenes, dozens of Nicholas Cages on screen at once, pink clouding hotties, or … I don’t even know what else. But what I do know is that Next has taken a big gulp from the crazy jug, and I’m down with it.

Bask, my brother, bask.

(But only on Tuesdays, because on Tuesday… Well, on Tuesday Next is just $9.50.)

I came, fairly quickly, to think of Rise as nothing more than a poor imitation of Blade – though I confess that it’s not exactly the same. For instance, instead of a hot black guy, here we have a hot Asian chick (Lucy “far too hot to make this awful a movie” Liu), and instead of being a daywalking half-vampire on a mission to kill vampires she’s a daywalking newbie-vampire on a mission to kill vampires.

Not only is Rise completely predictable from beginning to end, but Rise is completely predictable from beginning to end. And P.S. when everyone expects her to kick her way out of the cold storage in the morgue? Maybe you should just cut away to another shot, or perhaps have your hands cut off, instead of being so damn predictable.

It might be true that vampire movies don’t get counted as horror these days, so it could be that I was expecting too much when I thought maybe I’d be scared at some point, but Rise didn’t make me feel anything. If I can’t feel scared, it would only be fair that I could feel Liu, right? I can be quick. Promise.

Not expected:
Nick Lachey (yes, that one) in a role as a low-life hood. I must confess I could definitely watch more of Lachey lying dead on the floor of a barn with his jugular torn out. Far preferable to watching him suffer through another informercial, poor thing.

So I may have already intimated that I don’t know why Liu is slumming it in this piece of crap movie, but, on a similar note, just what the fuck is Michael Chiklis doing in it?

It could have been good. The cast, aside from the dreadfully cliche English accented vampire ‘boss’, is fairly good. There’s always room for a decent vampire movie – though they’re extremely rare. But you just need to make it well. And this isn’t well made.

Now, I think I have a theory on where to start looking when it comes to apportioning the blame: Not only is the director also the writer, but the director is also the writer of Snakes on a Plane! So. Enough said?

Really, truly, and honestly… Just don’t bother.

(I watched it so you don’t have to.)

Hot on the heels of Die hard 4.0 (‘Live Free or Die Hard’ if you live in WeirdAmerica) comes the last in the Bourne Trilogy.

Well I say last because there were only three books. That doesn’t mean they won’t try and make more movies, of course… After all, the Bourne movies really don’t have that much in common with the Bourne books: Bad-ass gets amnesia after being shot, hilarity ensues. That’s about where the similarities begin and end. For instance, in the books, in number three Bourne should be happily married and working at (as I recall) a university in the States. But never mind.

This time around, Bourne is after the folks who made him the man he is, discovering that Treadstone was only one project under a larger umbrella (Blackbriar) that covered all black & wet ops under curtain of deniability.

Lovely things: Bourne getting badly hurt and… lots of car chases. (Including one on a dirt bike, in which Bourne pulls off some awesome Trials style riding, very good stuff.)

Another lovely thing: The return of our Nicky. Such a darling girl. And the source of the most stressful sequence in the movie. Dear sweet thing.

Maybe a bit overdone: The shaky camera work. It frames the action well, but there was just too much of it.

I don’t want to drop any spoilers, so let’s just say: If you like action movies, you have to see this one.

(P.S. Dear girl at the movies by herself, sitting next to me on Sunday evening. You don’t read my website and will never see this message: but I think you’re awesome. I was the one that arrived with a couple of girls and made you move over one seat. Thank you for smelling like flowers and being so cool. I’d be happy to let you sit next to me in other movies in future. It’s too bad you ran off as soon as the credits started to roll, you were about to be met with the full force of a charm offensive.)