"Centurion A.D." - - Trash Can v. Belt Man

What do you get when you take Christina philosophy about life after death, mix it with European mythology of the Wandering Jew, and add in a dash of modern day conspiracy theories?

Why, you get the best opening to a movie ever!

Yes, Centurion A.D, has it all, even a woman being beat to the beat. Luckily, our hero has trained so much by beating a hanging trash can that he is able to save the day.

But who is our mysterious hero? Why does he hate trash cans so much? The second question is never answered, but we soon (not soon enough) learn that actor/writer/director Brian Reed Garvin is ARCHER STONE, a man with a plan to  . . .well, do something.

"The Signal" - - Call Waiting

You can't have it both ways. You can't have a "deep" movie and then ask the audience to turn their brains off when something stupid happens.

Case in point: about an hour or so into the terribly paced and unimaginative sci-fi thriller "The Signal," one of our characters has robot forearms and he punches the ground. We then see a slo-mo explosion as guards start getting tossed by the shockwave and instead of being wowed by a cool moment I was wondering how his shoulder wasn't instantly dislocated.

Why robot forearms? Why not replace the whole arm? What about the upper body?

What is the signal? Who sent it and why?

Is this Kristen Stewart?

No, not the plank of wood, the girl in front of it.

None of these questions and more are left unanswered during this dull flick. (Maybe the Kristen Stewart one would have been answered during the credits but I couldn't watch any more.)

"Transformers: Age Of Extinction" - - Really, dude? Transformium?

It probably won't surprise any of my regular readers that I'm a fan of Michael Bay's "Transformers" series. Now, before you hipsters choke on your $100 scarfs, first let me say this: Why is it that people who hate "Transformers" seemed to love "Pacific Rim?" They're the same movie, except in "Transformers" I can actually see what is going on instead of watching two . . .somethings wrestle 10 miles beneath the ocean surface. They both have the same flaws (awful humor, boring "character" development). So why does "Pacific Rim" get a pass.

*I think you should know how bad this movie is if I'm comparing it to Pacific Rim, but let's continue on anyways.

"The Human Race" - - More Like Human Waste

Oh man, I seriously don't know where to start with this one, so I'll just take this moment to let you know "The Human Race" has an actor named Creep Creepersin as The Blob. That's all the info we are given. AND THERE ARE NO BLOBS IN THE MOVIE! There's several fat people, but which one is Creep Creepersin? And does Creep really exist or is it an inside joke? Well, according to IMDB he does. Creep Creepersin has directed a mind-bogglingly 35 films since 2006 and even has a kid named Cyle Creepersin. And Creep Creepersin was in a band called, you guessed it, Blind Melon. No, just joking, the band was named Creepersin.

Dude, I'm sure you're a cool guy and all, but despite what IMDB says, I don't think you exist.

"Pac-Man And The Ghostly Adventures: Mission Impacable!" - - Devourer Of Souls

So, yes, I know. What did I expect when I rented something called "Pac-Man And The Ghostly Adventures: Mission Impacable!", right? Well, I guess I kind of expected a movie. After I rented it (Redbox Exclusive!), I took a look at the running time. 66 minutes. OK, it's a short movie but that's whatever. I figured it would be 60 minutes of Pac-Man eating stuff. I used to watch the cartoon as a kid so let's pop this in and see what's in store.

"Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Watch Past Here."

An experienced movie viewer can tell you that you can judge a movie by the trailers accompanying it. So when I say trailers for a trilogy of cheap "Jungle Book" movie, one for another trilogy of "Donkey Kong Country" movies that look like they were rendered on a Nintendo 64, and *ugh* "Primates Of The Caribbean," I knew I was in too deep.

"Robocop" - - This Tin Man Has A Heart, But No Brain

Oh Robocop. How you influenced so many childhoods with your reckless violence. Back in the 80's and 90's, it was normal for an R-rated film to be made into toys and cartoons for kids. Rambo had his own cartoon, Aliens had it's own toy line, and Robocop had not one but two cartoon series along with a slew of action figures.



 "Robocop. Robocop. Roboooooooocop. Robocop. Robocop, Robooooocop. Oh Yeah. Robocop. Robocop. Robooooooooooocop. ROBOCOP!" Just in case you missed the lyrics.

So it's a little odd that an ultra-violent movie about the overreaching arm of corporate greed can become an animated series were Robocop has enough gadgets to have him promoted to Inspector, and then in turn become a PG-13 movie that spends half of it's time using animation in lieu of practical effects. But again, we're talking about an industry that turned a dark horror movie about a man eating plant into a Broadway musical, then back into a movie, then eventually into this:

My favorite episode is when the dentist
showed up high on laughing gas and pimp slapped Seymour.

But we're not here to discuss Hollywood's need to regurgitate it's product into every available medium. That's obvious and it's been said a hundred times over. The question is: "Is Robocop (2014), on it's own, a good movie?"

The answer, sadly, is no.

"Trailer Time" - - The Visitor

I've never heard of this movie, but it looks amazing. I'll be sure to review it as soon as I get a copy.

"Pacific Rim" - - Failed At What It Wasn't

"Pacific Rim" is an average movie. And that breaks my heart.

On a scale of 1 to 10, no scratch that. It's better to compare it like this. "Pacific Rim" is near the same level of the first "Transformers" movie. It's loud and dumb, the characters are just broad shades of nothing, and every one speaks their lines like they're reciting them for the movie trailer. There's nothing special about this movie,  this movie just exists, and if it never existed, we never would have missed it.

Here's the thing, though. I'm old enough to remember seeing "The Matrix" opening night at the movie theater. And I'm watching it, and back then we didn't have all these movie spoiling websites and nerd gossip, we just had the commercials. And the commercial was: "What is the Matrix?"



"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself." That was it, those were the ads they aired, you had no idea what the movie was about. They just showed you all those crazy action scenes and it just set your brain on fire. 'No movie can be that cool,' I thought to myself.

But as I'm watching "The Matrix" for the first time opening night, I realized I was watching something important. This was a movie that was a bench mark for my generation. It was the cynicism of the 90's portrayed as "The Agent" and "The Matrix" as literal constructs. Grunge music and gangster rap were both a "fuck you" to the mainstream. "The Matrix" was blowing up the ivory towers of suits and ties and telling us that it was all an illusion.

The Internet was new to us, we didn't know where it was headed. "The Matrix" embraced the mystery in a New Wave cyberpunk fantasy. It blasted Marilyn Manson across TV ads that played during episodes of family sitcoms.

Instead of the beefy action heroes of Rambo and the Terminator, it gave us a computer hacker named Neo, and Trinity, the (gasp!) female action hero who starts the film off by kicking ass. No disrespect to Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley, they're also in the action hero hall of fame. But they start off as women who turn hard over the course of their films. Trinity knows her shit from the get-go. These heroes were us. Even if we could never be as strong as Arnold, we could be the Chosen One. It was about fate. It was about believing you could do something, even if reality said it couldn't be done.

We could learn kung fu.

"The Matrix" was the beginning of a new era of action films. I'm not saying it was the best movie ever, but it did change things. I remember walking out of it, mind blown, and I knew the new "Star Wars" movie was coming out soon but I didn't know how it would compare to this film. And when "The Phantom Menace" did come out it seemed so old fashioned. It was like hearing Nirvana play a live set for the first time and then walking across the street and going to a Bon Jovi concert. Things had changed, and there was no going back.

So here's my beef with "Pacific Rim," and it's *sigh* you know, the movie is what the movie is, it's boring and dumb. There's one real monster-in-the-city-robot-kicking-ass action scene in it, but most of what you see in the trailer is a montage of the first five minutes of the film. The bulk of the movie is people talking about how much they want to get in giant robots and beat up monsters and the last twenty minutes they get in robots and beat up giant monsters under the water in the dark. The end. That's my review.

Here's my issue, though: That is not what this movie should have been.

I'm not going to go piece by piece and pick apart the plot, I'm not going to try to say I could make a better movie . . .but this movie should have been important. It could have been, easily, the "Matrix" for the post 9/11 generation.

Giant monsters destroying cities. Unneccsarry carnage, people are dying and we don't know why. We don't know how the creatures are getting here, or why they want to kill us. But they just won't stop. It happens over and over again. The people on the ground hope the solidiers know how to save them, the soldiers hope they survive another battle with an unrelenting enemy.

As I was watching this movie, I realized most of the audience would be about this girl's age, watching those towers fall, and being just as helpless as she was.
















But she grows up in an uncertain world where terror can strike at any moment. We grew up as well, and while our monsters didn't come from the ocean, they came from everywhere else. They attacked our temples where Sikhs worshipped, they attacked our movie theaters and our elementary schools and our marathons.

I would have loved to see more action in "Pacific Rim" but imagine a subplot where the first creature got out as a mistake, and it gets blown up. So why are they sending creature after creature? To avenge what the aliens perceive as the murder of one of their own. Give it some political weight. Why not have the creatures' overlords say "You know what, manifest destiny, we are here to make this world a better place. Oh by the way, worship us or die." Or just have them be crazy monsters who have no agenda, just like the crazy guys who stab 20 kids at school just because? Instead we just get "Oh they want to invade us because resources/that's what they do/blah blah blah" same old crap we've already seen in the Avengers, Man of Steel, War of the Worlds, etc, etc.

And if the Kaiju were the personification of terror rather than stock movie monsters, the Jaegers would represent the best of us. They are the ones to stand up against this terror. But we all have to work together to build them. We all have to have the political will to put all things aside to stop evil. It takes two pilots to operate but it takes a nation to build them. Instead the movie starts off with some stereotypical bureaucrat saying "Oh, we're cutting your funding in 8 months to build a wall" so the good guys have to sell monster guts to get the money to repair their trillion dollar war machines. Ridiculous.

How we move forward as a nation is going to be based on the actions of those kids who grew up post 9/11. My generation, like "The Matrix" itself, is too cynical. We believe by it's very nature that the system is corrupt so how do you cure the cancer of a system that worships cancer? The generation behind us, the Baby Boomers, is too invested in the system, so they have everything to lose by change. They will do nothing. So what will the kids who are growing up now do?

The moral of "Pacific Rim" is even though America makes a shitty robot that is almost a decade older than every other country's robot, it's still the best cause America. It's ok for two adult men to fight over "the honor" of an adult woman even though that's one of the leading causes of death among men in real life. I'd love to see Trinity put up with that kind of macho bullshit.

This generation needs a "Matrix." It needs a movie that tells them "Shit happens, and it's going to keep happening, until you do something about it."

"Pacific Rim" is not that movie.

"Robot Holocaust" - - They Prefer The Term "Robot Shoah"

"Robot Holocaust" is by far one of the most charmingly bad films I have seen. It is so bad you will spend most of the movie shaking your head in disbelief that this movie was not only made but has somehow survived to this day as a relic of the 80's movie scene.

After "Star Wars" made a splash as a fairly low budget sci-fi hit, the market became inundated with films trying to capture that same vibe. Movies like "Krull," "The Last Starfighter," and "Ice Pirates" along with countless others (well, I'm sure they could be counted if I had the time) tried to ape that special magic that turned "Star Wars" into a historic franchise. Few, if any, were successful.

But "Robot Holocaust" was such a poor attempt that it has succeeded in becoming a checklist for bad 80's sci fi movies.

1) Terrible Special Effects

There are very few laser guns in this film so the worst of the special effects are the matte paintings which are so bad it defies explanation.

2) Terrible Locations

A lot of these movies took place in castles made of plywood or shot inside industrial complexes. "Robot Holocaust" combines the steam works of Freddy Kruger's boiler room with the availability of anything outside.

3) Terrible Acting/Script

Most movies of this ilk don't have acting even half as bad as "Robot Holocaust." As you may have seen in the above video, Queen Valeria had all her lines from this movie edited into 2 videos. Yes, that's right, that 9 minute video up there has a sequel of some of the worst line delivery in sci fi history. She's gorgeous though, so it's bearable, to a point. But she's only one of ten actors you have to put up with as they give their best effort to read the worst lines.

God she's gorgeous

Ok, so moving on, so what's awesome about this movie? Why would I say "Watch this?"

For all of this movie's faults it won me over. It was like watching a group of middle schoolers stumble through a school play and, halfway through you want to leave, but something happens . . .something clicks, and you find yourself cheering at the end.

This movie has, oddly enough, the same set up as "The Matrix." Robots were built to be slaves for humans but they revolted. Now they force the humans to power them (by mining ore) and a hero name Neo shows up to save humanity.

On his journey he meets three young resistance fighters, an amazon queen, and a barbarian warrior who was raped by the amazon queen after his tongue was removed. (I can just imagine how bad his acting must have been to make the director go "Screw it, dude, you're tongue is ripped out, you got no lines.")

And of course, because it's the 80's, you have to have a gay robot!

That's not an euphemism either. This movie is very homoerotic, even by 80's movie standards. This movie makes "Top Gun" look straighter than Fred Phelps's ruler. The movie starts off with a five minute scene of two oiled up men wrestling as other men with suspiciously ripped shirts cheer them on. How did a bunch of slaves end up with shirts that are ripped to show off their abs? Where are they working, Penn State?

(Rimshot)

The homoerotic imagery doesn't stop there. When we first meet the mute barbarian he's tied up before being rescued by the heroes.

We get to see the robot, who seems to be stuck with the facial expression of someone who just saw this movie for the first time, fight through a cave of dicks.

Oh, you don't think those are dicks? Let's take a closer look.

So yes, this movie is very homoerotic which adds to that weird charm. It's a time capsule of a time where you could have a dick cave in your movie and people didn't really question it.

Anyways, so where this movie won me over was at the very end.

The heroes get their ass kicked. Hard.

This movie does not have a happy ending, and as I'm watching the final battle I realized I was actually concerned about the characters in this film. Over the hour and half of watching them fight mutants in Central park and a giant spider('s one arm), I had stopped shaking my head at the horrible film and began rooting for the characters. As they get killed off one by one, it starts to click that this will not end like "Star Wars" with swelling orchestras and medals and ceremonies. These characters are doomed even if they succeed in their mission.

This movie is bad, so bad that it's good. And at the same time, it's just good. It's charming and old fashioned and deserves to be watched even if you are laughing at it. In the end though, there is no laughter, just  . . .an odd silence and we are left with the lesson we've all be taught since time immemorial:

When the Robots have a Holocaust, nobody wins.

"Welcome To Blood City" - - Awesome Name, Weird Movie

"Welcome To Blood City" came out of a 50 pack of sci-fi movie I recently bought at Wal-Mart so that means 2 things: 1) I'm going to be reviewing a lot of sci fi movies and 2) A lot of them are going to be bad.

"Welcome To Blood City" or "WTBC" is an odd bird of a movie. It's a western/sci-fi/mystery film and it succeeds and fails on different levels depending on what genre is currently on screen.

The movie starts off in seemingly modern times, then it cuts to a group of five people stranded in the middle of nowhere with no idea of how they got there, just a note in their pocket.

That tells them how many people they've already killed.

From the get go, the mystery element is handled extremely well. That's a classic set up and a great way to introduce the protagonist, Lewis, because while the others share the info on their card he takes one look at it and tears it up.

One thing I should say before going on: the aspect ratio for this movie is terrible at least on this DVD so if you can't stand watching a few scenes framed like this:

then this movie may not be for you. It's not a big deal for me and I was engaged enough in the story to ignore it, but it did make me laugh every once in awhile.

The strangers then gets attacked by hillbillies who proceed to rape the female member of the group in what has to be (thankfully) the shortest rape in cinematic history. They are soon rescued by the sheriff of Blood City but it turns out they would have been better off with the hillbillies.







Ain't no love in Blood City.

Blood City is a Western town, complete with horses, saloons, and gunmen-o-plenty. All of them arrived here at some point in their lives and have created a society full of death and slavery. The slaves wear drab grey uniforms. The Citizens wear all black with a red cross emblazoned on their front and back, like a badge . . .or a bull's-eye.  New arrivals, like Lewis and company are slaves of the gun toting Citizens until they earn their freedom.

And they earn their freedom by killing a Citizen.

The town is tense. Everyone kills everyone but even killers have rules. You can kill your slave but not someone else's. You can only kill a Citizen if they have deliberately dishonored you. Survive 20 gunfights and you gain the status of "Immortal." You no longer fear death and you can challenge the Sheriff himself, played amazingly by the legendary Jack Palance as a disturbingly calm man who ignores the misfortune as those beneath him.

As a Western, this movie is great. It's tense, there's lots of backstabbing, shoot-outs, bar maids, and other Western moments to keep this movie going till the end.

But the sci-fi stuff . . .that's where the film slips. It doesn't get bad, it just seems to falter.

Without giving too much away, the story keeps cutting away to two scientist in a lab somewhere who are watching the events unfold in Blood City and they are keeping tabs on the latest group of strangers. One of them starts to fall in love with Lewis to the point where she is watching him have sex while her co-worker berates her.



(It's a crap shoot trying to get captions to work for me in Blogger, as you might have notice with past posts, so let's just pretend that picture had a witty caption and move on.)

Halfway through the movie I came to the conclusion that some producer probably had access to a Western town set but wanted to make a sci-fi film so someone whipped this script up. It's not a bad combo and there are some interesting elements to it, especially when people and weapons begin teleporting around Blood City, but the payoff is weak. I won't ruin it but it would be similar to trying to find the best surfer in the world by asking them to fly a plane. It doesn't really make sense.

"Welcome to Blood City" is definitely one to watch though, warts and all. It's a good start to search through my 50 sci-fi movie pack.

BONUS: Oh dude, I totally almost forgot this. I'm always looking on Youtube for clips and every so often I find something even better.

"Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong" - - This bong has issues, dude.

"Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong" is the follow-up to "Evil Bong 2: King Bong." And when I say follow-up I mean it's a direct sequel which means if you didn't see Part 2, you're going to be lost for a good half hour of this movie.

But let's back up for a moment. Let's chill. Relax a little. Let's just kick back and listen to the awesome ending credits song for this movie.




I love that song. Never heard it before watching this movie. It's always nice to find gems like that.

OK, back to the review. When you see a movie titled "Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong" you just have to watch it. Just like "The Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust" or (ugh) "The Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver," it's almost a gut reaction to pick it up. With a title that bad/clever it has to be at least worth watching for a few laughs. This movie was actually the reason I bought a 20 pack of movies (don't worry folks, only cost me $5). I thought "Even if this movie sucks the title rocks!"

And the movie is actually pretty good.

"EB3" follows the trials and tribulations of 3 stoners who, from the dialogue I have to assume have been in all three films. In this movie, they fight an Evil Bong who travels to Earth in a giant weed cocoon . . .





"I got 5 . . .million light years on it."



which crashes to the Earth. The result is creating a field of mind-controlling weed. Also anyone who touches the weed becomes covered in weed, and anyone who smokes from the Evil Bong gets transported to the Evil Bongs home dimension where alien women drain all their sperm to make a hybrid race. It's like Little Shop of Horrors meets the Blob meets my 20s.

Despite the fact the above plot sounds extremely stupid, well it is, but it's funny stupid. The acting is great, these guys really do seem like friends who care about each other's fate. That's the beauty of these low budget films: people do it for the love of making movies. Sure, they want to get paid, but they also want it to be fun.

I enjoyed watching this film. That's always the baseline I have for a movie. The movie did have a few big drawbacks though:

1)The sound mixing was a little dodgy and that's always a minus for me. You'll see me bring that up a lot in future reviews because it's always irritating to have to turn the volume up and down from scene to scene. This movie didn't have the worst (I'm looking at you, Ultimate Killing Machine!) but it did have issues

2) The movie relied heavily on the viewer seeing at least the second Evil Bong movie if not all three. By the time the second act rolls around the characters are spending too much time talking about past events that I started to tune out. Guys, think of your audience: half of them haven't seen the second movie and the other half did but don't remember it. Stoners aren't known for their recall abilities.

3) And this is  might seem like nitpicking but for me this was a huge issue:




That nurse. That damned nurse. She drains the life out of every scene she's in to the point where it's hard to listen to what the hell everyone else is saying. The nurse in this movie was beyond distracting. I don't know if she was cast for her looks but it definitely wasn't because of her screen presence or acting ability. She mimes her way through the remainder of the movie and every time she popped up on screen so did a migraine in my head. What is up with the whole mute thing? It's not funny. And then they cut to a close ups of her! She's like finding nothing but seeds and stems in your stash.

The movie was originally in 3-D so expect to see lots of people poking you in the face or oddly framed shots, but at this point it just adds to the goofy charm. Check out Evil Bong 3, but you might want to check out the first two beforehand.

"Starship Troopers: Invasion" - - A Movie Made For Me

If nothing in that fan-made trailer looked interesting to you, then this movie is not for you. I know some fans of the movie may say that none of the quiet moments are shown and those are some of the best parts, but here's the thing: you're either into these CGI movies or you're not.

Here's the funny thing though. I generally don't like them.

It's not that I have a thing against CGI it's just they are not entertaining or they are entertaining but age really, really badly.

I am a huge Starship Troopers fan, which is what got me to watch it in the first place. But I've had this movie sitting on my shelf since it came out last year and just decided to watch it today so that should show how uninterested I was in watching it. In comparison, I saw the original movie the day it came out at theaters and the DVDs of the sequels within a week of them being released.

So as a huge Starship Troopers fan, including the animated series which was also CGI, I loved this movie. Loved it. It was everything you wanted in a fourth film: action, sex, bugs, intrigue . . .the only thing missing was the social commentary the last three had. That's regrettable because I've always thought that was a strong part of the franchise. That aside, I would recommend this movie if you are either a ST fan or a fan of CGI films.

If you're not, well . . .

This movie does have some great ideas: In the beginning they introduce a cast of about 20, and then maybe another 20 of background grunts. A good 20 minutes of the film is getting to know these characters. By the end there's six people left. You assume the grunts are always going to die but when the people who you really like die in an instant with no hero's death? That's war.

One great small scene in that section is of a young trooper who had his arm bit off in the first battle. He asks the doctor to not report the injury but the doctor, who is also the same age if not younger, says that he has to. The trooper then asks if he could at least minimize the report so his parents wouldn't know how bad it was. That small bit of dialogue sets up these men and women as real people. They have families who worry about them and who they worry about. Very good stuff for a cartoon movie.

We get elements of horror as the Mobile Infantry troops investigate an abandoned starship. Without gravity control, the lifeless bodies of the crew float down the darkened halls. Body parts, both human and bug, move silently as the only sound is the clicking of magnetized boots.

We get action scenes right out of blockbuster video games with troopers shooting down wave after wave of vicious bugs, a boss battle with an evolved Queen, and starship on starship combat.

But again, if the above video is as exciting to you as watching someone else play a video game, this movie is not for you. To me, scenes like that are made for people like me and they get my blood pumping just as much as a live action fight scene. Some people don't find it exciting. To each their own.

As for me, I am glad to welcome this film into my library and to the Starship Troopers franchise. Now I just have to spend the next few years worrying about the reboot . . .

"The Sound of My Voice" - - Interesting Plot, Terrible Payoff

I get that this movie has its fans, and I understand why. "The Sound Of My Voice" is a well-crafted film with an interesting story and excellent acting. But reading the IMDB boards, there is a large number of fans who enjoy this movie simply for the ambiguous ending. And that's ridiculous.

Long before Leonardo's spinning top, movies have had "did they or didn't they" endings. I always thought everyone agreed that "The Wizard of Oz" was an actual journey to another realm. Recently though I've met a surprisingly large number of people who, discounting any sequels or prequels, who think that it was all just a dream. That's a valid viewpoint. I believe in all sorts of mumbo jumbo in real life and they don't so are actual beliefs affect how we interpret the movie.

But I don't know of anyone who loves "The Wizard of Oz" just because of the ending. Going back to "Inception," whether or not the top stops spinning is irrelevant because Cobb has grown as a person. If he is dreaming or not is not the point of the film. "Inception" is at its core a heist film using the mind as the prize. It makes the viewer a promise of a suspenseful action movie and it delivers.

"The Sound Of My Voice" is a mystery film that is never solved. All the evidence points to the fact that, yes, she actually is a time traveler. Between the secret handshake (actually a childhood game her mother taught her but when she goes back in time her mother is a little girl so the adult daughter plays it with the little girl version of her mom) OK I'm going to stop my train of thought right now because that last sentence shows the sort of acrobatics the movie goes through to prove she is from the future (the little girl/mother says "How did you know how to do that. I never showed that to anyone.") and then the movie ends with "BUT WAIT maybe she's just nuts!"

There's a federal agent who is out to stop the cult, but when we first see her, she is tearing apart a hotel room looking for listening devices. Why? Who knows, it was never explained. I assume it is because she was from the future as well, a sort of Timecop, but it's never explained because when you don't have an ending ambiguity will do.

I'm not knocking this movie just because of the fan base and their weird attraction to the belief "If I have questions after the film, it must be great!" I'm knocking it because it is a mystery movie, and it fails on that. It seemed like part one of a trilogy but if they decide to make another one, I will have to go back in time and stop the director before they even entered film school.

Or will I?

(IMDB user: BEST REVIEW EVER!)

"Fortress" - - Don't Dream . . .or Watch While You Have The Flu

The first movie I'm reviewing is coming out of our Wal-Mart 8 Movie Action Pack. It's the 1992 sci-fi thriller "Fortress" starring Christopher Lambert and . . .well that's when it gets hard.

See, when I watch movies like this, or movies in general, I like to go in blind. I'm the guy who rents movies without reading the back because when you do it gives too much away. Imagine if you saw Terminator 2 knowing nothing about it: no ads, no trailers, the only thing you know is from what you saw in Terminator. You would spend the first half hour thinking the T-800 is trying to kill John Connor. The movie is actually set up to make you think he's the bad guy until John Connor runs into the T-800 in the hallway of the mall.



Since apparently no one allows embedding anymore, here's a Lego version of the scene.

Anyways, the point is, going in blind is the best way to see a movie like this because well, because it is. A guy gets thrown into a prison. That's all I'm going to tell you.

This movie is grim. Like Motherless grim. I don't know if it was because I had the flu while watching it, but I felt totally hopeless. Christopher Lambert is an OK actor, but there are enough crazy characters surrounding him to distract you from his odd accent and robotic delivery. This movie has everything to make a viewer uncomfortable: male nudity, male rape, mind rape, female rape, mouth rape (by a robot), unavoidable pain, horrifying psychological torture, the list goes on and on. This movie is dark.

But it's good.

It's not Running Man good, but it's good. If you go in blind you won't know what's coming next. Not much in an M. Night Shyamalan way but in a Hunger Games way. "Oh they set the whole forest on fire, wow I didn't expect that but it makes sense" kinda way. I'm a Stuart Gordon fan, and the opening shot alone of a bleak dystopian future really sets the tone for the movie. It shows some bums in an alleyway, then the camera slowly zooms up to show a futuristic soldier overlooking the street, and then the camera pans up a bit more to show we are at a US border crossing; and the good guys are trying to leave the country. A nice progression of subtle steps, and that's pretty much all the backstory we get and really all that we need. World building doesn't need exposition when it's done this well. So I recommend this movie for anyone who likes bleak sci-fi with a little bit of hammy action thrown in. It's not one that you need to go out of your way to track down, but if you see it on TV or it's cheap, pick it up.


Imagine drinking cold medicine all day and watching this at three in the morning. God I hate having the flu.

"Convict 762" -- More like 76Booo!

"and . . .(looks around the room to make sure he's not hiding in the recording booth) Billy Drago." I can imagine Billy cornering the trailer narrator and saying "You tell anyone I'm in that film and I'll cut your throat!"

Yeah, this movie was lame. I won't worry about giving away plot points in this review like I avoided with my review of Fortress, but if you don't like spoilers, I'll give you some advance warning.

No, I lied. Convict 762 is a ghost. I think.

Here's the set-up: A spaceship crew (like Alien) has to land on a hostile planet (like Alien) where they encounter a hostile element (like Alien) that kills them one by one (like Baby Geniuses 2). The whole "mystery" of this movie is who is Convict 762? Is it the handsome guy who beats them up and runs away, or the weird looking old guy who beats them up and runs away?

Decisions, decisions.

The whole movie is set up so you don't know who Convict 762 is, but it could have been easily solved by just, I don't know, making the prisoners remove their clothes and look for tattoos.

OK, the more I write the more I'm remembering. The movie is them constantly fact checking these two men's stories, and the computer is like "Yep, that's the right guy. He really is a guard." but then at the end he's 762! And then there's this NSFW scene of the captain and one of the prisoners getting it on with some hot monkey sex . . .




Sorry, so sorry for that. Wrong video. But why does it have "convict 762" in it's search terms? Why would anyone . . .out of all the search terms . . .


If you got off on that video, you are on a government watch list now.

How many times did they show his back? 3? 4? But it's not until the end of the sex scene (which was hot before Alex Jones decided to re-dub it) that we see the DUN DUN DUN 762 tattoo on his back. And that's pretty much this whole move in a nutshell. It's all about misdirection, even if the misdirection directly contradicts what you have just seen two seconds earlier.

This movie isn't even so bad it's good; it's just lame. And boring. It had no sense of space. You never knew where the characters are at in relation to each other. When you look at effective horror/slasher/suspense movies there is a sense of location: here is the kitchen, here's the storage bay, here's the cockpit, etc. so when we see something happening in one location we know if the character we are watching is in danger as well, how far away rescue is, and so on. Alien did this well, hell the House on Haunted Hill remake did it well. It's not rocket science and on a low budget film with limited locations it should be easier. But sometimes in Convict 762 I didn't know they were off of the ship until they were banging on the airlock to get in.

So in Convict 762 a ghost? I don't know. Was it the guy from the sex scene with the 762 tattooed on his back? No. He actually just had that number on his back because Convict 762 scarred it on him, but then the other prisoner, the old weirdo,  earlier in the film was casting was a spell to kill Convict 762  (or something, he was just yelling "I'm going to kill Convict 762" and spreading dust around himself for two minutes straight) but then at the end HE'S Convict 762 but then at the very very end you see a video of the old weirdo explaining that YOU are Convict 762!!!!

No, I'm not making that up.



This is worse than the controversial Inception ending where I found out I was the top.