You have to appreciate Zack Snyder’s ambition for at least trying to tell a story. The man has proven himself in many regard, and with “Sucker Punch” he tries his best to deliver crowd pleasing entertainment that won’t polarize his fan base. The problem is, he never lets us in on the fact that deep down “Sucker Punch” is just a teenage melodrama disguised as a genre film. Sure it’s a journey of the self, and the mission of a group of young women to take on robots and monsters, but they’re all just metaphors.
Category Archives: Movie Reviews
Driller: A Sexual Thriller (1984)
Oh boy I knew I was in for something special when I received “Driller” in the mail with the address barely completed and the return address basically missing. The very fact X Rated Alley received this beauty of a horror porno called Driller is one thing, but to deliver it in mysterious packaging is the icing on the cake. I had an idea of what I getting in to upon looking at the deluxe packaging for Mr. Creepo’s “Driller” from 1984, a veritable porno spoof (and carefully constructed one at that so as to prevent legal issues) of Michael Jackson’s iconic Thriller. For those unaware (and how could you not be?), Thriller was a cultural sensation of the eighties and continues to be the go to for the template for epic music videos to this day. The plot basically boils down to a thirty minute movie that doubles as an amazing music video with a catchy song. A young couple in a movie theater walk home one night and find themselves in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and must fight their way out. Cue one of the most amazing musical numbers of all time, a shockingly incredible dance number involving drooling groaning zombies, and compelling narration from Vincent Price.
Scream 2 (1997)
With “Scream 2” you can pretty much sense Craven and writer Williamson struggling to create a sense of atmosphere that they did with the original. And the movie series that claims to dodge the slasher clichés while also mocking them, eventually became so clustered with attempts to bring audiences a new experience they pretty much relied on clichés and a formula they streamlined in the original. We have someone offed in the beginning, we introduce the old cast, we get to meet a new cast of characters, someone is killing the cast members, Sydney has to find out who or whom is doing the killings, a load of red herrings are thrown at the audience, there’s the obligatory thought that perhaps one of the original three cast members are behind it, and then there is the grand stand off in the climax where we’re given a bunch of “gotchas!” Officers and all authorities are also immensely useless.
Obsolescence (2011)
I really wish I could have enjoyed Jacob Bilinski’s short film about reality shifting and perceptions of romance in the end, but with the run time and premise often foggy both in its intent and ability to deliver its hook, “Obsolescence” often feels instead like a practice in monologue reading than it does an actual short film. From minute one I found myself fairly unimpressed by the line reading that occurs as “Obsolescence” is much more focused on the hook that leads in to the final confrontations than it does actually telling its story about a romance that may or may not have been pre-orchestrated to fit a goal for its characters to focus on.
Battle: Los Angeles (2011)
In the past three years there has been a boom in versus films. And that’s primarily attributed to the boom of the direct to DVD industry that relies solely on gimmicks and plagiarism to fuel its economy and one of the primary cash cows of the market is the versus gimmick. We’ve seen every monster fight every warrior this side of folklore and what we see with “Battle Los Angeles” is pretty much soldiers versus aliens. In fact with less money and star power, Jonathan Liebesman’s film could very well have been titled “Aliens vs. Soldiers,” a roughneck balls to the wall action science fiction film that just doesn’t try too hard to bring us in close to its characters.
Scalene (2011)
Margo Martindale is amazing. That was my first reaction upon viewing her portrayal as the mentally anguished mother Janice Trimble in Zack Parker’s brutally demented and compelling revenge drama “Scalene,” a movie about points of view and how sometimes our own is all we need to get us through the night. Martindale commands an ingenious movie about the end of a tragedy and the beginning of lunacy where mom Janice Trimble is forced to confront many issues in the run time of the film. One of which is the possibility that her mentally disabled son brutally raped a college girl.
Drive Angry (2011)
Who knows why a movie about the lone ranger from hell flopped in 2011? No one will ever know. I attribute it to the lack of big name draw and exhaustion with Nic Cage from general movie audiences, but nevertheless, “Drive Angry” is an ambitious and admirably raucous grindhouse throwback that takes the battle of heaven and hell and brings it to planet Earth where a dad comes back from hell to keep his daughter from going to the stomping grounds of Satan. “Drive Angry” is a movie that… well, it’s a movie. It’s a movie that is there and it has no idea who the hell it’s supposed to be marketed to.