Before “The Punisher” ever graced the big screen director Michael winner’s 1974 revenge flick brought to screen a psychotic man armed with a hand gun avenging his family who suffered a wicked fate by the hands of senseless crime. In a time where violence and rape was rampant in New York City, “Death Wish” is still a surprising little thriller that not only puts on display the grim and grimy depths of the Big Apple in the seventies, but the descent in to sheer lunacy one mild mannered man takes when his wife and daughter are attacked and raped in their apartment. The thugs get away but protagonist Paul Kersey’s wife dies and he’s forced to bear witness to his daughter lose her sanity due to the severity of the attack she and her mother endured.
Category Archives: Movie Reviews
Toy Story 3 (2010)
What many are assuming is the final installment in the “Toy Story” franchise (until Disney assigns these characters to a new child protagonist) is an otherwise classy and entertaining finisher to what has been a three part exploration in to childhood and the doldrums of growing up and getting rid of the past. While the child audience has taken great joy in the adventures of Buzz Lightyear and Woody for the last ten years, like every other Pixar production it’s about much more than what’s on the surface. “Toy Story 3” much like its predecessors is about recalling a more innocent time and the relics of our past having to face that they’re just not needed anymore.
Knock 'Em Dead Kid (2009)
Director Christopher L. Golon’s coming of age drama could very well be mistaken for your average mumblecore flick that is storming independent film festivals of late. With a gritty realistic sense of direction, dialogue flows from the cast with startling energy. “Knock ‘Em Dead Kid” almost feels like something specifically tailor made of the more high brow festivals. While I did appreciate Mr. Golon’s appreciation for naturalism and depicting the reality of everyday monotony, he’s often much too obsessed with staging sleek scenes and character interaction to bring us on course for the actual story which involves protagonist Bret realizing that he’s outgrowing his friends and must move on and grow up. Channeling the likes of Larry Clark, director Golon follows these individuals around town as they walk around, chatter endlessly about their sexual preferences and engage in sexual activities with their lady friends.
The movie sets up a particular conundrum as its progresses as when we’re focused on Bret interacting with his friends he’s natural and down to Earth, but when we finally get to key scenes involving his development, especially one where a party guest approaches and flirts with him, the dialogue is noticeably stifled and stilted. The actors overplay their roles too strongly, and they never feel like they’re genuinely interacting, just going through the motions for Golon’s dialogue, and it restrains an otherwise potentially engrossing little slice of life. While I’m sure there are reasons for it, Golon never quite manages to stage the more important scenes in the movie well enough. If two characters are interacting he keeps one off frame, he sloppily cuts back and forth, and there isn’t a lot of dynamic when they’re being confronted.
Especially in the scene where Bret is approached by a cop questioning him about the beating he and his friends gave one of their rivals the night before. The ultimate weight on Bret is downplayed considerably as he never seems to be really disturbed about the fact that the cops may be on to his part in the beating which could mean definite jail time, and when he does obsess over it, he seems very calm as does his girlfriend who plays it off instead of offering the idea that what he did was horrible whether it was justified or not. There are elements that are unusual like the weird cutting away from Bret and his girlfriend to a montage when they’re discussing the incident in the beginning of the film. And of course there’s the female antagonist threatening to turn Bret over to infidelity which ultimately feels arbitrary and present just to create obligatory conflict in a story that already has a hefty portion of it.
I was never sure where to stand with Bret so I wasn’t positive if I should root him on or just wait for his downfall. Was he having trouble grasping his maturity and responsibilities or was he just a grade A prick? I juxtaposed the premise here with that of “Saturday Night Fever” and with some tweaking, Golon could have the same story with the same power. In the aforementioned film you could sense Tony Manero trapped in irresponsibility and stupidity to the point where he’d had enough and decided to grow up, but with Bret, I could never figure out what he had in mind and what he wanted to do with himself. Golon has on his hands a script that could work given better circumstances.
It’s a story with themes that requires actors with much more presence, and emotional turmoil and they sadly don’t deliver such promise in key sequences that should have been turbulent but are otherwise haphazardly conducted and rendered irrelevant to the overall result of Bret’s situation. While not a waste of time, “Knock ‘Em Dead Kid” isn’t as good as it has the possibility to be, and I hope Golon tries again with this premise in the future. Director Christopher L. Golon has the right idea and the right themes present for a movie that combines Larry Clark and classic mumblecore for a potentially great coming of age drama, but sadly its lack of focus, wonky editing, and uneven acting drown out most of its promise. It’s not the worst effort I’ve ever seen, but it can be so much more with a tightened second cut.
Splice (2010)
Vincenzo Natali’s science fiction Frankenstein tale of 2010 may and will eventually be misunderstood by a greater portion of the movie audiences expecting a simple monster flick about an experiment gone awry. While in essence it is just that, “Splice” is much more an on the nose satire of parenting and the intervening of the drug industry raising children, and the dynamic between father and daughter and mother and daughter. Ultimately while sometimes absurd and just filled with dark twisted humor, “Splice” offers the question if children are born and develop in to chaotic monsters, or if their parents and their own insecurities and misery eventually turn them in to such beings. What starts out as two scientists forming a bond with their own special creation turns in to a battle between two feminine species for the love of a man who begins to form unusual and abstract feelings for the both of them.
Shock Invasion (2010)
Another leg in Frank Sudol’s “Budget Gore Series” of animated genre entries, and the final cut out style animated movie from BlackArro, “Shock Invasion” is pure Frank Sudol available solely for the open minded genre buff where in Sudol channels Bakshi in a gore soaked science fiction tale that is about as creative and surreal as Sudol can be. Going from zombies, to demons, now on to merciless aliens, Sudol enlists his mini-budget and vocal talents to animate a sick little gem that chronicles the fight for survival of a group of rag tag denizens of a futuristic city. Ral Foster awakens one day to discover his entire city has been infested by aliens who have taken over the living and can inhabit their shells.
Plague Town (2008)
Adding to the continued xenophobia themed horror sub-genre, “Plague Town” is a movie that acts as a form of torture on its movie viewing audience implementing some of the most absolutely irritating and obnoxious characters I’ve ever seen put to a horror film, ever. Director Gregory tries to bring us in at eye view on a family of travelers who are griping and bitching at one another with some issues that have yet to be resolved. But that attempt to add these warring characters to the fold of horrific freaks on the Irish countryside works against him as there isn’t a single sympathetic character in the lot.
Mortal Kombat: Rebirth (2010)
At the end of this, I don’t know if I’ll be writing a review for a fan film, a review for a promotional reel for a director shopping around to sell this new vision or just a glorified game promo for an up and coming new game of the “Mortal Kombat” universe, but as someone who played this game religiously, I had to offer up my thoughts. I can only imagine someone sat down in front of a monitor, was watching “The Dark Knight” and said: “We have to take this approach.” And what we inevitably have is a grim and grotesque take on the Mortal Kombat universe.