Fear And Anger (Death Wish, 2018)

The seventies were a time of unrest and in some parts of America, high crime. Tough Guy Charles Bronson brought to live an everyman pushed to the edge by criminals who attack his wife and daughter. The original Death Wish spawned four sequels. Architect Paul Kersey journeyed through crime ridden neighborhoods to do what police could…or would not…do.

In Eli Roth’s remake, America’s favorite tough guy, Bruce Willis, plays Paul Kersey. In the original franchise he was a mild mannered architect. Here, we find Paul Kersey to be a skilled surgeon in the emergency room. The film shows Kersey to be a decent guy, but also one who backs down in confrontation. It also makes a point in one scene to show that Paul does not own any guns. But when his wife and daughter are attacked, the police start to seem a lot less effective. It eats at Paul and he becomes drawn to a local gun store.

After a couple false starts, Paul manages to foil a car jacking and soon follows it up by killing a noted drug dealer. The media erupts and Paul is nicknamed the Grim Reaper.

Many have noted that it is practically an ad for the NRA. But really, this film is more of a promotion of the fear that certain politicians foist upon us. Fears of rampant crime, violent drug dealers, foreign invaders and so on. And it is not that these things do not exist. But the film overhypes them.

Eli Roth uses his trademark subtlety with this one. The core of the film is revenge because “You touched my stuff!” This may seem harsh, but the daughter spends almost the entire film in a coma and her mother is dead. The women in his life are reduced to being stuff to drive his anger, fear and resentment.

The way the film ties up it’s story is just overly neat and tidy. Implausibly so. Roth plays lip service to the idea that maybe Kersey is in the wrong…but it is set dressing. It is painfully clear that we are to identify with and thrill over his violence and cruelty.

When I took the disk from the player…I really found the movie pretty unremarkable, fading from my memory. It follows the required rules of action movies…but it fails to make the character interesting or complex. This is not John McClane taking on terrorists whose plot he stumbled into. This is a predator going on the hunt, which is a lot harder to root for.

June 26, 2018 0

Fishies Pt 4 (Piranha 3D, 2010)

It is spring break in Lake Victoria and the kids are hear to party…get drunk, flash people, have sex…you know regular spring breakin’. The local sheriff (Elizabeth Shue)is trying to keep things in control, and needs her son Jake (Steven R. McQueen) to watch his younger brother and sister. Except he has been hired by Derrick (Jerry O’Connell) to take him and his crew around to the best Spring Break Locations. Derrick runs a website called Wild Wild Girls* and wants to take advantage of the crowds at Lake Victoria. Jake schemes, leaving his sibling home alone so he can hang out with Derrick and his group (including two Wild Wild Girls). Unexpectedly, the girl he has a crush on, Kelly, gets brought on to the boat.

A research team headed by Novak (Parks and Rec’s Adam Scott) arrives to investigate a recent earthquake. With the help of the Sheriff, they discover the earthquake opened an underground lake and has freed carnivorous fish. And then the race is on to find the fish and stop them.

Of course, you know they will not succeed and spring break is an all you can eat buffet. The fish work their way through the winding lake until they get to gorge themselves on swimmers. In spite of not being shown for critics, the critics were pretty generous with this film.

The reason is, the film does not take itself seriously. It is gleefully trashy and has fun with that. There is no message about ecology or anything. It is just about big and hungry fish. And people in swimsuits. The big sequence is a ridiculously over the top gore sequences as the Sheriff and Novak work alongside the deputies trying to save the Spring Breakers. The effects are largely very good (though some digital moments are pretty obvious) and the film is carnage candy.

The movie has a very firm tongue in cheek attitude. This is shown in it’s cameos, which are pitch perfect. Eli Roth is an obnoxious Wet T-Shirt Contest Host. Christopher Lloyd is a Doc Brown styled ichthyologist and the film opens Richard Dreyfuss slyly portraying his Matt Hooper character from Jaws.

The performances are really fun. Ving Rhames is enjoyable Shue’s right hand man Deputy Fallon. Paul Sheer is a goofy crony of of Derrick’s. And Derrick? O’Connell has one of the best lines of the entire film. He plays Joe Franc-uh Derrick with no fear of the edge of the ledge. I am a big fan of Adam Scott, and he is a lot of fun…it is kind of like he is playing a Action Ben Wyatt. Kelly Brook’s performance is no major star turn, but her character Danni is likeable and seems keen on getting Jake and Kelly together as a couple. Jessica Szohr is a lot of fun as Kelly, who is the kind of person to step up to the plate when challenged and when it is suggested she is maybe a bit uptight, shows Jake she is more than willing to cut loose. Probably the supporting cast member to get the short end of the stick is Crystal, played by Riley Steel. She has very little personality and pretty much is there to look good in a bikini.

This film should fall squarely into terrible, yet it has a lot of personality and makes for a real fun “Guilty Pleasure” movie.

*Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis wrote an angry letter to the producers and Jerry O’Connell repeatedly said he was playing Francis…upon threat of a lawsuit, O’Connell changed it to “For Legal reasons I play someone loosely based on Joe Francis”.

October 28, 2016 0

Clowning Around (Clown,2014)

There have been many horror films that mine the scariness of clowns. Jon Watts (Cop Car, Spider-Man: Homecoming) tries to find new ground. And in some respects, he does. Let me begin by saying, if your greatest fear is that a clown will devour your kids? You may want to stay away from Clown.

The film begins with devoted father Kent trying to locate a clown costume when the clown hired for his son’s birthday cancels. He stumbles on one hidden in a house he is helping renovate.

Donning the outfit, he appears at the birthday party and is a hit. He falls asleep on the couch. When he awakens the next morning, he cannot get the suit off. he tries, including using a box cutter and a small hacksaw. None of this works, and the costume remains.

His wife tries to help and successfully removes the nose, but it is is as if she removed part of his actual nose. She questions if he has died his hair, and they discover the wig is now more like actual hair. As things progress, Kent finds himself changing, and the more he changes, the more he desires a special new food source. He tracks down a man who appeared to have owned the suit previously. This old man proceeds to explain that the clown is inspired my a mythical monster that would lure children from the village and eat them. He would eat five children, one for each month of the year. The man promises to help Kent…by beheading him.

Kent flees his family and hides in a motel. Despondent, he attempts suicide. This sequence is a bit amusing because when he shoots himself in the head, the blood spatter is rainbow colored. The demon inside starts to gain greater and greater control. His wife is desperate to help him…and she finds herself in a terrible situation of temptation…can she make sure he gets his last child? Can she sacrifice a child to get Kent back?

The movie is somewhat light-hearted at the beginning, and Andy Powers is both sympathetic and funny. But when we lose Kent and he is the beast, the film’s tone gets brutally dark. There is no way for a happy ending where Kent is redeemed, as he eats four kids in the film, and there is not really coming back from that.

The make-up is quite good and the design of the clown as Kent changes is creepy. Overall, I found the film to be entertaining, and the good stuff is better than the problematic stuff. Clown was made in 2014, and while it has opened throughout the world, it was just released this past September in the U.S. I am not sure why it sat on the shelf for a couple years, as much worse films have gotten released in a timely fashion.

October 14, 2016 0

Chewing Up the Social Justice Warriors

So, Eli Roth wanted to sock it to Social Justice Warriors with his new flick the Green Inferno. He claims the kids in the film represent SJW, whom he characterizes as not actually doing anything other than re-tweeting “this is wrong” or posting memes on Facebook.

This is not an uncommon accusation… SJW are usually lumped in with “Hash Tag Activism”. The problem is, this criticism is oddly over confident. It presumes that Eli Roth and other critics know the truth about what people really do. I think to a certain extent, this is projecting. People who do not do anything resent being told they should care, and they decide that, like them, the person re-tweeting actually is not doing anything to make the world a better place.

The irony in this of course is that his characters are trying to do something to improve the world. They are active, not just re-posting stuff on face book. His movie is about young people trying to do good and then dying horribly for it. Funny enough, there is probably room for an argument that his film is an indictment of self righteous white imperialism (one of those things SJW like to complain about, amiright?!). Or white liberal guilt…but the idea that it is condemning people who just re-tweet stuff? Seems a lot shakier.

I am honestly not sure about this film. For one, I am not a huge fan of the whole Cannibal Horror Genre to begin with. And honestly, I am not sure I can see what Eli brings to it that makes it worth sitting through. This is not a slam on Roth…I cannot really see what can be brought to the genre that is giving us a new option. But that may not be Eli’s goal. And it may certainly be I am wrong and the film is an intense and terrifying trip. I am open to being wrong in my expectations.

July 14, 2015 0