Director Johnny K. Wu thankfully doesn’t try to re-invent the wheel when it comes to “S: A Superman Fan Film.” Essentially it’s an homage to the classic tropes of the Superman mythos that tells its story under thirty minutes and uses its array of dazzling green screen effects and top notch costumes to get the job done in conveying a simplistic and rather meat and potatoes Superman tale. While at times a bit campier than I would have liked, “S: A Superman Fan Film” is a loyal and rather entertaining Superman fan film that pits the man of steel against his two greatest nemeses.
The Ark (2007)
Some viewers of Grzegorz Jonkajtys’s work may consider his films to somewhat pessimistic about the world, but I view them as a refreshing state of animation where we can reflect upon our own humanity for once. Not all animation has to have dancing penguins and talking teapots to be considered watchable. Most times animation can be used to reflect humanity as a whole. That’s what “Ark” essentially is. While it’s another post-apocalyptic tale, it’s also a meaningful one about one man’s struggle to stave off a disease that’s consuming his very essence.
Zombie Apocalypse (2011)
The Asylum never met a trend they didn’t hop on to for all the moolah in the world. Since zombies are all the rage and have become something of a culture in the world, The Asylum naturally jumps on the bandwagon to offer up their own view of what the world would look like under the rule of the walking dead. Or “zombies” as the characters call them. This time around director Nick Lyon is at the helm and brings us a movie that is not so much an original film so much as it is a pastiche of better sub-genre offerings.
Drive (2011)
Director Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 masterpiece may be one of the most misunderstood gems of the year. Rather than opting for a simple take off on the Ryan O’Neal classic heist film, he instead focuses in on the consequences of the choices made by criminals and the deeply meditative state of life that can ultimately be a reflection of the crimes we commit throughout our years. “Drive” feels almost like that lost jewel of the late seventies and early eighties, a film that focuses solely on the aftermath of crime rather than the crime itself and zeroes in on a sole individual whose own choices have come back to haunt him and ultimately put him in a position where he must seek redemption before the evil corrupts the only good in his life.
A Lonely Place to Die (2011)
After watching “A Lonely Place to Die” it’s a darn shame that Melissa George isn’t more widely acknowledged by American audiences. She has a unique striking beauty, a dazzling on-screen presence, delivers some truly strong performances, and plays a dashing on-screen heroine. After watching her in the hidden gem “Triangle” and now this near masterpiece of a thriller, I find it shocking that George isn’t a huge star in the states as she should be. She’s prone to playing strong often independent women and here she flexes her muscle and scowl with what can only be described as a teeth grinding thriller that will leave most audiences clutching their seats in agony.
The Three Musketeers (2011)
You can usually tell when you’re watching a Paul WS Anderson film. For one, you can often hear him salivating at the presence of his wife Milla Jovovich, an untalented waif of a woman who Anderson persists in turning in to an action star, placing her on the highest of pedestals. And secondly, most of the best fight scenes are filtered through some of the most painful slow motion imaginable. I’m still not sure what Anderson fetishizes more at the end of the day, Milla or slow motion, but surely enough he revisits both corners with his re-working of “The Three Musketeers.” Anyone expecting a sophisticated, adult, and masterful adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel will have to wait a lot longer as Anderson is mostly content with subjecting audiences to a brutally infantile and wholly bland version of one of the greatest stories of all time.
Scream 4 (DVD) (2011)
It’s funny. Even with all of the technological improvements and modern facets that Wes Craven implements with “Scream 4” for his new Ghost Face Killer, this 2011 output of the “Scream” franchise still feels painfully dated and utterly irrelevant. At a time where slasher films were once old news and horror was a dead genre, “Scream” came on to the scene and revived both the slasher sub-genre and the horror genre once more. But during a time where horror has become choked with new directors, original visionaries, foreign artists, and remakes galore, “Scream 4” feels much too little and much too late. “Scream” maintained a firm relevance through the years for quite sometime because it was a welcomed revival that brought to mind why we liked the genre in the first place. But with the film industry becoming more and more a bastion for the new filmmaker with at home technology that allows him to cut a film in under a year so easily, “Scream 4” doesn’t really do much for the genre. Had this entry arrived five years ago I can safely say that Craven would have surely been welcomed in to theaters by yours truly, but there simply is nothing left to do with the “Scream” premise.