Zombie movies are the order of the moment for so many filmmakers working right now, and it’s tough to really find any good zombie entertainment. How do you take a pretty tired concept and turn it in to something interesting or worth investing your time in? Shockingly director and writer Mitch Cohen found a way. Rather than basing his entire short zombie movie on zombies, he instead explores the more humanistic element of the apocalypse, centering on a small group of people trying to survive, and how one seemingly irrelevant young man becomes their savior.
Mercenaries (2014)
You have to give it to the Asylum. Not only did they beat the studios to the punch on the female “Expendables” movie, but they cast actual brawlers for the roles of their titular Mercenaries. While Hollywood may be going for wafer thin women on their own version, “Mercenaries” brings aboard a lot of the obvious suspects of what a female “Expendables” movie should rightfully be composed of. Cynthia Rothrock is the leader, and the heroes of the film are Zoë Bell, Vivica A. Fox, Nicole Bilderback, and Kristanna Loken, while Brigitte Nielsen pulls up the rear as the film’s villainess. It’s a very impressive line up for a movie with seemingly half the budget of “The Expendables.”
Tekken 2: Kazuya’s Revenge (2014)
Good news, everyone! We got a “Tekken” sequel! We didn’t ask for one, and it’s likely a lot of people forgot there was a live action movie, in the first place, but we got a “Tekken” sequel, anyway. This isn’t so much a sequel, though, as it is the production company taking all the left over parts and producing a follow up with almost no plot, or characterization. Not that the “Tekken” games had much of the former, anyway. But fans of “Tekken” (all five of them) will be annoyed to see that Jin is nowhere to be seen, Heihachi is only a small player in the narrative, and now series antagonist Kazuya is the main hero of the sequel. Hey, no one’s paying attention, so why be loyal to the games?
The Walking Dead: The Complete Fourth Season [Blu-ray/Digital]
Season four of “The Walking Dead” is a big leap forward for the series, in where it re-captures a lot of the dread and urgency of season one, while also rebooting the narrative once more. After the big war in season three where the group managed to beat an army by cunning and sheer luck, Rick and his surviving group from Hershel’s farm, along with the remnants of Woodbury, have now settled down in the prison, and have built a respectable society for themselves. Rick is now committed to farming alongside Hershel as his apprentice, while he’s also focused most of the time on giving Carl a childhood, however twisted it may be. The series has a good time with misdirection, and begins the season premiere with Rick outside the prison farming and listening to music, drowning outside noise. As he turns to look back at the prison, we cut to a wide scene of the walking dead clutching the gates in droves only inches from Rick. Try as the survivors might to pretend otherwise, the world is still for the dead.
Youngblood (1986)
I have a history with “Youngblood” as I do with a lot of movies from the eighties. It was one of those movies that always played on local television and all I remembered about it was the idea that hockey involved a lot of fist fighting, and methodical fist fighting at that. “Youngblood” was always that really entertaining sports movie that was more about the idea of the male spirit than the sport of hockey itself. It’s not the most sports oriented movie, but more a coming of age action flick with a hefty amount of romance, bromance, and typical eighties homoeroticism. And I still find it to be a raucous action drama, regardless of its age.
300: Rise of an Empire (2014) [Blu-Ray/DVD/Ultraviolet]
One of the biggest mistakes that “300: Rise of an Empire” makes is that it insists on imitating Zack Snyder’s style of filmmaking. Whether if by choice or by the order of the studios, director Naom Murro spends more time in the movie trying to copy Zack Snyder’s excessive slow motion and blurry flourishes, rather than actually trying to help this sequel stand out from its predecessor. Murro is so focused on convincing audiences that it’s legitimate extension of the original film, that he can never solve the movie’s biggest problem: The fact that it’s so utterly mind numbingly dull. The movie spends a lot of time in the first twenty minutes reminding us of the first film that it can never really build momentum for its own narrative.
Agency of Vengeance: Dark Rising (2014)
Surely, “Agency of Vengeance” is a silly movie, but one that’s often really indecisive about itself. Sometimes it aims for a straight forward horror actioner, and then other times it seems to mock its own premise, with goofy meta-storytelling. When a character is confronted with an evil minion asking “Why are you doing this?” he responds “Because. I’m the bad guy.” In either case, I wasn’t aware this is a sequel of a 2007 movie called “Dark Rising: Bring Your Battle Axe” which seemed more fantasy oriented. Thankfully you don’t have to track down that film, to see this one, as there are flashbacks and a lot of exposition to play catch up with.