People bitch about how video games get a bad rap, but these days so many action movies are built around this concept that make them live action video games. It’s impossible not to hate on video games when so many action movies want to convince us that they really could be if a studio tried hard enough. Take “Redline” a movie thankfully obscure due to a poor release date and terrible publicity, but is really just constructed like a video game. We have cut scenes, colorful characters, bosses, and various drivers all of whom are introduced with profiles and name inserts by heroine Natasha who takes great pains to give us back story without the script ever having to do the work to good old fashioned storytelling.
Next Caller (2009)
Beware skeptics. If you have a radio show and you’re daring to tap in to the supernatural, the odds are you’re going to get knocked the fuck out by some spooks and ghouls. That’s the case for Handsome Billy Bob Brown, the local shock jock in town who causes trouble by pissing people off and has been handed the duties of covering outlandish topics like UFO’s and the after life. Patrick Rea seems to be building a compendium of short films that could work as a horror anthology if given enough time and clout and I’d definitely buy it.
Cool Hand Luke (1967) (Deluxe Edition DVD)
The first time I ever saw “Cool Hand Luke” was on cable, on a Sunday evening, edited, and filled with commercials. And yet all of the quality managed to be retained in spite of the obvious differences a network version would possess. And it still managed to earn its place as one of my top ten movies of all time. Possibly one of the greatest movies ever made embodying everything that a good movie for men should be made of. From clever dialogue, male bonding, some of the most memorable sequences ever filmed (Newman really ate fifty eggs?), and social undertones that I take away after every viewing. Lucas Jackson is that embittered war veteran, the man who is considered a war hero and yet hates his country with every inch of his being.
American Pop (1981)
Ralph Bakshi’s “American Pop” is not so much about a story as it is about music and the power it holds. As trite as it is to say, Music is the soundtrack of our lives, and as such has a power over us to help us cope, help us think, and is the key to our memories and fates. “American Pop” is not so much the story of many men through history originating from a faithful Jewish man who refused to vacate his temple during the raiding of Russian Czars one day, it’s more the evolution of music and how the people in and around the transformation are but a mere microcosm. From a Canter to a Vaudevillian, to a piano player, “American Pop” may be the exploration of music but Bakshi also manages to convey how it’s served as a source of love and emotion for a long line of men craving some sort of love and affection in their lives.
London Betty (2009)
This is the same dude who did “Bikini Bloodbath”? While I’m always up for comedies that dare to be anything but the same old indie comedy crap, Thomas Edward Seymour can never really decide what kind of movie he’s making. At times he strives for Troma gross out comedy, then he tries for inexplicable touching sub-plots and then he’ll go for the bargain basement slapstick that was a lot funnier in his previous film. “London Betty” isn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but I was definitely counting the minutes and waiting for it to end.
Babylon A.D. (2008)
Mathieu Kassovitz’s “Babylon A.D” is a very ambitious science fiction film setting down on a mainly foreign land where depression has hit all countries and crime runs rampant. The best way to sum it up would be Vin Diesel playing Riddick by way of “Children of Men” with a heavy influence of “Escape from New York.” In other words, there’s not much originality in this piece, and it shows. While derivations are a prerequisite these days, you can’t help shake the feeling that 20th Century Fox wanted a more commercial approach to “Children of Men” and that involved dispensing of the thick social commentary and replacing it with a more standard prophesized little girl with amazing powers of mind manipulation.
Video Game Movies That Should Have Rocked, Part Two
Tomb Raider/Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
Format: Live Action
2001, 2003
WHY IT SUCKED:
I personally wanted a Tomb Raider movie that was an honest to goodness new wave adventure thriller with a woman who showed she was nothing like Indiana Jones in spite of the influences. Instead with “Tomb Raider” we were given a very cheap knock off of Indiana Jones with the style of a music video while “The Cradle of Life” was a cheap knock off of a James Bond Flick except… very, very boring! Hell, not even the manly manliness of Gerard Butler and his Scottish accent could help liven the tedious and utterly boring affair that was “The Cradle of Life.” Angelina Jolie just couldn’t seem to understand what made Lara Croft such an individual as well, thus Croft ended up just being a glamorized version of Jolie.
As for the much hyped “Tomb Raider,” the finished product is a huge disappointment opting, once again, for a comedic hint among all the proceedings on screen. Croft is given a comic relief sidekick, and even when she’s hanging from her ceiling shooting bad guys, you can’t help shake the feeling that director Simon West just isn’t taking this seriously; it’s hard to believe too, since he’s one of the forces behind the brilliant “Keen Eddie.” Take the finale in the tombs where Lara confronts those shambling statues, or when Lara is riding her dog sled without a sled, or the goofy cameo by dad Jon Voight. “The Cradle of Life” seemed to want to bore the audience in to a coma so as not to let on on how really awful it was, and surely enough, not even sending Croft globe trotting could make a sequel worth sitting through.
REBOOT?
Most definitely. With a better grasp on individuality and why the game was so beloved, as well as casting an actually British actress who has the bod and the skills, then I think the movie has definite reboot quality only if the studio realizes that the game was so epic because it was its own monster, not a lame “Indiana Jones” wannabe. The “Tomb Raider” series is filled with so much material to make Lara Croft a banner screen heroine.
House of the Dead
Format: Live Action
2003
WHY IT SUCKED:
Don’t ask me why, but when the trailer for “House of the Dead” first popped up on televisions around the US for a short time, we loved the way it looked. From the Bullet time scenes to the… other bullet time scenes, we dug the way it looked. Then we went to theaters to see it, seeking it out at the AMC here in Manhattan and boy, we were stunned at how awful it was. Not only was it an awful video game movie, but it was an awful movie, period. That was my first introduction to Uwe Boll, and my what a way to greet this here movie geek. Playing the original “House of the Dead” at my local theater, it wasn’t my bag, but it was awfully funny to sit through beat the zombies while wading through the paper thin story.
Boll on the other hand never featured a house in “House of the Dead,” brought together a large cast of really bad actors, while good actors like Clint Howard and Jurgen Prochnow were just given some of the worst material with no hope of ever salvaging these roles. Aside from the truly bad direction, there’s also Boll’s idea of humor that never pans out the way we think. Prochnow’s character is actually named Captain Kirk. No seriously. Howard wears an over sized yellow slicker the whole time on film. One character gets burned on his face and spends more time literally crying about his disfigured face than he does the walking dead outside their doors. You can’t make this stuff up and this was only the beginning of the terror train that is Uwe Boll, Hollywood’s Clown prince.
REBOOT?
Let sleeping corpses lie.
Resident Evil
Format: Live Action
2003
WHY IT SUCKED:
I’m pretty surprised that with the release of the movie there wasn’t a game adapted from the film to fit the mythos set by WS Anderson, because it’s been done with the likes of “Street Fighter.” But then, the “Resident Evil” games were never this stupid before. Though history has revised itself a bit, the reviews for the entire “Resident Evil” movie franchise has been considerably mixed but to me the “Resident Evil” movies are of varying quality. “Resident Evil” is sucky, “Apocalypse” is garbage, and “Extinction” is crap. Hey, I said varying quality, but extremely varying quality.
The trilogy as a whole has been nothing but a pastiche of scenes from different better horror films like “Aliens,” and Anderson has made a habit and ritual of stealing from Romero by blatantly copping scenes from “Day of the Dead” and “Dawn of the Dead.” All the while he insists on a hard R, but most of the violence is blurred, off screen, or left in the dark for us to imagine. “Land of the Dead” was frowned upon for leaving most of the gore in the shadows, and the “Resident Evil” movies are never any different. Then there’s Milla Jovovich who simply refuses to go beyond her shtick as the bastard child of Ellen Ripley and the Terminator while there’s never actually a Residence in the Resident Evil movies. I could go on and on but we have reviews on the site for “Apocalypse” and “Extinction” to fill you in.
REBOOT?
George Romero wrote a script that was pretty damn good. Sure, Chris was a Native American, but that was one of the few deviations from the source material and in the end I’d rather have a 90 percent faithful adaptation from George A. Romero, than a 40 percent faithful adaptation from Paul WS Anderson. I think there’s still potential in Romero’s script. I wouldn’t be surprised if ten years from now, we get a reboot. I can hope.
Doom
Format: Live Action
2005
WHY IT SUCKED:
This should have been a piece of cake. A guy is alone on Mars with a planet of demons and zombies due to hell’s portal opening up and killing his comrades. But that’s not what we got. Instead we were given a very boring, very dumb, and utterly sucky piece of MTV horror dribble that took its sweet time presenting forward motion in terms of plot and characterization. Instead “Doom” felt like a cheap retread of the “Resident Evil” movies with a plot involving scientists and monsters and walking stereotypes by the tune of “Aliens” walking in dark danky tunnels of water to confront a monster covered in darkness lacking any and all effect.
The only time we actually get the feeling that this is a “Doom” movie is when Karl Urban’s character awakens from consciousness and through a first person perspective walks through tunnels and halls firing at monsters and zombies jumping from all corners. Beyond that and the appearance of the BFG, “Doom” is a really tedious little quasi-horror film based around popularity of Dwayne Johnson who couldn’t save this lackluster effort if he tried.
REBOOT?
I think a reboot has definite possibilities. Stick it to the actual plot, give us a more obscure cast and you just may have a great horror actioner here.