To Your Lasts Death

Someone give this guy a hand.

(2020) Animated Feature (Quiver) Starring the voices of Morena Baccarin, Ray Wise, William Shatner, Bill Moseley, Dani Lennon, Damien C. Haas, Benjamin Siemon, Bill Millsap, Florence Hartigan, Tom Lommel, Steve Geiger, Tanya C. Klein, Jim Cirile, Ruairi Douglas, Charles Wyman, Jason Axinn, Paige Barnett. Directed by Jason Axinn

 

Animated features tend to be fantasy or science-fiction oriented. There are dramas and comedies, to be sure (particularly from Europe), but for the most part there are elements of either one of those genres involved. It makes sense that the horror genre would also be fertile ground for animation, but surprisingly, very few animated features have gone that route.

In this opus, Miriam DeKalb (Lennon) has survived an unthinkable ordeal that has seen all of her siblings killed. Suspected of involvement in the grisly demise of her family, Miriam has been held in the prison wing of the hospital as interrogations by the police have illustrated their disbelief in her story. Then, she is visited by the Gamemaster (Baccarin), an alien being who is able to control time and puts on entertainments in which high-end clients bet on the outcomes. Miriam is given the opportunity to go back 24 hours, armed with the foreknowledge of what is going to happen, and attempt to save her sister and brothers. Should she choose not to, it is likely she will never know freedom again.

24 hours earlier, her father Cyrus (Wise) had gathered them together – sister Kelsey (Hartigan), and brothers Ethan (Haas) and Collin (Siemon) to inform them that he is dying. But rather than using the opportunity to draw the family closer together, their deranged old man – a wealthy arms manufacturer whose run for vice-president of the United States was torpedoed by his children when they informed the press of his many moral failings – chooses to take his revenge for that indiscretion and kill all his children. Sounds kind of medieval (or at least Biblical) to me.

He has locked up the office building and staffed it full of gunmen and set up lethal traps tailored to the weaknesses of each of his children. Miriam tries desperately to tell her siblings what is coming, but that only makes them suspicious that she’s in collusion with Cyrus. To make matters worse, the Gamemaster is changing the rules by changing events from how Miriam remembers them. There are no guarantees that she herself will survive, let alone save her brothers and sister from the maniacal machinations of their father.

Axinn spares no bloodshed and why should he? It’s not like he has to pay for additional fake blood. The problem here is that the various scenarios for each sibling comes off as kind of a lame retread of the Saw series, only much more heavy-handed. Considering that the sky is the limit when it comes to animation, it’s a bit of a drag that Axinn didn’t go more over-the-top here. It feels like a failure of the imagination.

Shatner guest stars as the narrator here and his dialogue is truly cringeworthy. You may be forgiven if you give in to the urge to fast-forward through his narration. It’s not Shatner’s fault; it’s just florid writing. Even Meryl Streep would have a tough time making the narration sound any better than Shatner does.

There’s still plenty of gore to delight the most exacting of horror lovers, and certainly if on the one hand one wishes for a little more originality, the execution of the various torture porn scenes are right on the money and at least as well done as any in that genre. I suspect that most hardcore horror fans and Adult Swim fans are going to find this delightful. It certainly is an idea whose time has come. I just wish the writers would have taken a little more care to utilize the medium to their advantage better.

REASONS TO SEE: Gloriously violent and gory.
REASONS TO AVOID: The story lacks ingenuity.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a ton of bloody violence and gore, rape, nudity and more profanity than you know what to do with.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The animation was hand-drawn and took five years to complete. The filmmakers used Archer and Metaloccalypse as inspirations for the animation style.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Hoopla, Vudu
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/29/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 67% positive reviews. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Saw Franchise
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: The Estate

New Releases for the Week of April 1, 2016

MEET THE BLACKS

(Freestyle Releasing) Mike Epps, Bresha Webb, George Lopez, Mike Tyson, Zulay Henao, Lavell Crawford, Perez Hilton, DeRay Davis. Directed by Deon Taylor

The Black family has moved into Beverly Hills. Considering that the Black family is actually a black family, that doesn’t go over well with the locals. And when the Purge comes (yes, this is a spoof of the Purge), you know who everyone in the neighborhood is gunning for.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror Spoof
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for pervasive language, some sexual material, violence and drug use)

Embrace of the Serpent

(Oscilloscope Laboratories) Nilbio Torres, Jan Bijvoet, Antonio Bolivar, Brionne Davis. A shaman, the last of his tribe in the Amazonian rain forest, forges a relationship with two scientists who are trying to find a plant said to have miraculous healing powers in the jungle. Filmed in black and white, this stark and moving film was the Brazilian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the most recent Oscars, making the final five.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a featurette and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: NR

Eye in the Sky

(Bleecker Street) Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, Phoebe Fox. It started out as a surveillance mission, locating and observing members of a terrorist cell in Kenya. However, it is discovered that a massive suicide bombing is about to take place and the mission turns from an observation mission to a kill mission. Then even that is complicated by the appearance of a 9-year-old girl playing in the yard. The moral implications become a metaphor for the nature of war in our time.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Most larger multiplexes throughout Central Florida
Rating: R (for violent images and language)

God is Dead 2

(Pure Flix) Melissa Joan Hart, Jesse Metcalfe, Ernie Hudson, Ray Wise. When a Christian teacher honestly answers a question about Jesus in the classroom, it causes a storm of controversy that threatens her job and may forever banish Christianity from public classrooms…oh, who am I kidding? This drivel is for viewers of Fox News only.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Christian Paranoid Fantasy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for some thematic elements)

I Saw the Light

(Sony Classics)  Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen, Cherry Jones, Bradley Whitford. This is the story of Hank Williams, one of the greatest and most influential figures in the history of country and western music. His meteoric rise to fame was only matched by the catastrophic effects of that fame on his health and personal life.

See the trailer, clips and premiere footage here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for some language and brief sexuality/nudity)

Marguerite

(Cohen Media Group) Catherine Frot, André Marcon, Michel Fau, Christa Théret. Loosely based on the life of American Florence Foster Jenkins, this is the story of Marguerite Dumont, a wealthy matron living in the Paris of the 1920s. Fancying herself a singer, she is blissfully ignorant that she can’t sing a note. Nonetheless determined to put on a charity recital, she enlists the help of a reluctant maestro to train her for the event, not realizing that none of her friends and family have the heart to tell her the truth.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for brief graphic nudity and sexual content, and a scene of drug use)

The Lazarus Effect

Olivia gets a little Wilde.

(2015) Horror (Relativity) Olivia Wilde, Mark Duplass, Sarah Bolger, Evan Peters, Donald Glover, Ray Wise, Scott Sheldon, Emily Kelavos, James Earl, Amy Aquino, Sean T. Krishnan, Ator Tamras, Liisa Cohen, Jennifer Floyd, Bruno Gunn, Scott L. Treiger. Directed by David Gelb

There was a horror movie back in the 60s that was somewhat ironically titled Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things. In the decades since, we have learned that adults pretty much shouldn’t either.

Zoe (Wilde) and Frank (Duplass) are young doctors in love. Well, actually they’re more like medical researchers than actual MDs but you get my drift. Along with young researchers Clay (Peters) and Niko (Glover) they have created a formula that, with judiciously applied electricity (shades of Frankenstein) can extend the life of the dying, allowing doctors more time to repair what is killing the patient and saving lives. They bring in a comely videographer named Eva (Bolger) to document their impending breakthrough.

Except it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. Instead, it revives a dead dog. Brings it right back to life, and even cures the cataracts which were the cause that the dog’s owner had their pet put down for in the first place. Cause to celebrate, no?

Well, not quite yet. For one thing, the dog is moody, refuses to eat or drink and is mostly lethargic except for bouts of absolute mother humping menace that have the researchers freaked out, particularly the e-Cig puffing Clay who is normally the prankster of the bunch. He’s a little freaked out by the pooch who certainly looks to have a bit of the devil in him.

Well, their research also has the effect on the marketplace as well. The small pharmaceutical company which underwrote their research at the university has been gobbled up by a bigger one who really want their Lazarus formula. The smarmy CEO (Wise) shows up to collect it, which because Frank, the author of the grant proposal, didn’t read the fine print on the contract, is entitled to lock, stock and barrel, although the comely videographer manages to spirit Fido away before the vivisectionists get hold of him.

Frank is quite properly cheesed off about the whole situation and in a fit of pique, decides to recreate the experiment while their equipment is still in the lab. So late one dark and stormy night – well, it’s a night anyway – they sneak into the lab and attempt to revive one last frozen but dead dog.

But something goes horribly wrong and if you’ve seen the trailer, you know exactly what it is and without going into too much detail, they are forced to conduct human experiments a little sooner than they had intended to. However, what they don’t realize is that the Lazarus formula plucks the soul right out of the afterlife and if that afterlife happened to be Hell, then the thing that comes back isn’t quite human and isn’t quite happy about it. A childhood trauma becomes the basis of a hell all of the team is going to go through, alive or not and before the night is over there will be a lot more bodies available to use the Lazarus serum on.

This is a short but sweet little thriller clocking in at well less than 90 minutes which is a good thing because I don’t think the story could have sustained a whole lot of extraneous business. Most of the action takes place at the lab (although a few scenes take place in the lobby of the building, in the office of the dean and in the apartment that Zoe and Frank share) which may be the most underlit medical lab in the history of college research facilities. You half expect the Boogie Man to reside here on a permanent basis.

Duplass, who has become something of an indie film darling for the movies he’s co-directed with his brother Jay (Baghead, The Puffy Chair) as well as his television work on The League and more recently the HBO series Togetherness. He’s actually pretty charismatic as an actor and he works really well with Wilde, who has been on the verge of breakout stardom for awhile now. In a lot of ways it’s frustrating to watch Wilde who is so very good in most everything she does and she’s just so close to making the next level but the right role to put her over that hump eludes her. This isn’t the movie that will do it, although she is very, very good in it.

The movie was made for next to nothing and relies more on practical effects than on CGI for the cool factor. Horror fans are going to find this a bit light on scares, although there are a couple of good ones. What is to be commended is that there is a great deal more character development than is typical for low-budget horror movies. What is to be condemned is that the film’s plot relies overly much on smart people – these folks are educated after all – doing dumb things. Even the scientifically challenged like myself could have told Frank and Zoe that their bright idea of recreating the experiment so that they could prove that the research was theirs would end badly.

There’s stuff here to like, but there is also a lot of stuff here to not. My big problem is that the atmosphere of fear that is vital to any horror film just isn’t pervasive enough. I can forgive a movie that starts slowly and builds to a roller coaster of a climax, but The Lazarus Effect is more of a kiddy coaster that could have used a few inversions and taller lift hills to give its audience a better ride.

REASONS TO GO: Duplass and Wilde make an attractive pair. Does a whole lot with a little.
REASONS TO STAY: Smart people doing stupid things. Not as scary as I might have liked.
FAMILY VALUES: Gruesome subject matter, intense horror violence, some sexual references and a surprisingly small amount of merely mild profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie was actually filmed in 2013 and was scheduled to be released by Lionsgate. However, internal management changes at the studio led to the movie being shelved for a year and a half with Lionsgate selling the U.S. distribution rights to Relativity although they did retain the overseas rights.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/12/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 14% positive reviews. Metacritic: 31/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Flatliners
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Home of the Brave

Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie

Tim and Eric’s Awesome Movie…Great Job (not!)

(2012) Comedy (Magnet) Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, John C. Reilly, Robert Loggia, Jeff Goldblum, Will Forte, William Atherton, Erica Durance, Michael Gross, Ray Wise, Matt O’Toole, Todd Wagner, Twink Caplan, Mobin Khan, Jon Baggio, John Downey Jr., Bob Odenkirk, Bill A. Jones, Ronnie Rodriguez, Nancy Stelle. Directed by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim

Humor is a very personal thing. What makes you laugh may not even get a chuckle out of me and vice versa. That’s what makes comedies hard to write film reviews for and even harder to make movies of. Doing a comedy right is a lot more difficult than doing a drama right. It just is.

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are best known for having an Adult Swim sketch show a few years back called Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! It had (or looked to have) a budget that made your most recent YouTube submission look like Avatar. However, the sense of humor possessed by Tim and Eric couldn’t remotely be called conventional. I decided to watch a couple of episodes of the show before tackling the movie and had to stop. I didn’t want to taint my potential appreciation of the movie as I found the show to not be my cup of tea. Hopefully the movie would be better.

Tim and Eric have taken a billion dollars from Tommy Schlaaang (Loggia), the chairman and froth-at-the-mouth face of Schlaaang Industries which is itself kind of a Murder, Incorporated kind of business, to make a movie. God knows why these guys would have gotten anybody to give ’em a hundred dollars let alone a billion but y’know. Anyway, the movie which was supposed to star Johnny Depp instead stars a Johnny Depp impersonator (Rodriguez) and is only three minutes long.

So where did the money go? Mostly on things like a suit made of diamonds for the Depp impersonator, helicopter transportation to and from the set for the directors and drugs. Tim and Eric know they have to pay back the billion but how is that even possible? So they go on the lam and an opportunity drops itself in their laps – eccentric billionaire Damien Weebs (Ferrell) will pay them a billion dollars if they can get the dilapidated S’Wallow Valley Mall back on track.

This won’t be an easy task. The food court is staffed by a man-eating wolf, the stores in the mall are the sort that won’t attract any business (used toilet paper?) and the only people who ever go there are the homeless and the crazy, like Taquito (Reilly), the nearly-always runny nosed consumptive whose temperament is roughly the same as an angry hornet. There’s also Allen Bishopman (Forte) whose sword store is not benefiting from the reign of Tim and Eric and he wants vengeance.

Now on paper it sounds like it could have potential and that’s essentially what kept me going. I kept waiting for something to make me laugh but there really wasn’t anything. Opportunities are squandered and they have a habit of driving jokes into the ground much like stubbing out a cigarette with a stiletto heel until all that’s left is a lipstick smudge.

I’m going to hazard a guess that most of this duo’s audience is in their early to mid 20s and are mostly male. Although I fulfill the latter part of the equation, I’ve left my mid 20s behind in my dust. There’s a very cultish feel to this stuff and if you like their show, that’s all good. It’s just that if you don’t like their show this isn’t going to hold any appeal to you whatsoever.

There are a ton of celebrity cameos of varying degrees of amazing but for the most part this is a movie you endure more than enjoy. It just wasn’t for me and I’m guessing it isn’t for a lot of you either. I will give it points for being quirky and having the balls to try and go outside the box but sometimes when you go outside the box you get eaten by a man-eating wolf.

WHY RENT THIS: If you liked their Adult Swim show, you’ll love this. Fine premise.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Falls flat. Not really for anyone except for their own cult following.

FAMILY VALUES: Plenty of crude and sexual humor, graphic nudity (briefly), drug use, some comic violence and lots of foul language..

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Rodriguez, who plays the Johnny Depp impersonator, is actually Depp’s photography double.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: On the Blu-Ray you’ll find a screensaver and a parody EPK-type feature called Good Evening S’Wallow Valley.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $201,436 on a $3M production budget.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Kentucky Fried Movie

FINAL RATING: 4/10

NEXT: RoboCop (2014)

X-Men: First Class

You can tell it's the 60s: they're playing chess on an actual chessboard.

(2011) Superhero (20^th Century Fox) James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon, January Jones, Rose Byrne, Nicholas Hoult, Oliver Platt, Jason Flemyng, Alex Gonzalez, Zoe Kravitz, Matt Craven, Lucas Till, Caleb Landry Jones, Edi Gathegi, James Remar, Rade Serbedzija, Ray Wise, M. Ironside, Bill Milner, Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Romijn. Directed by Matthew Vaughn

It is a failing of humanity that the things we don’t understand, we tend to fear and the things we fear we tend to destroy. This is what leads to genocide, and that kind of hatred and malevolence can have unintended consequences.

Erik Lensherr (Milner) is the son of Jews who have been taken to a concentration camp, displaying great power over magnetism when angered. A Nazi scientist (Bacon) notices this and determines to find out how he can use Lensherr as a weapon for the Third Reich. In order to force Lensherr’s co-operation, he executes his mother in front of him.

After the war, the adult Lensherr (Fassbender) goes on a rampage, hunting down Nazis who had anything to do with his torture, with emphasis in particular on the scientist who now goes by the name of Sebastian Shaw. His powers still only manifest when he’s angry but he’s not yet grown into the powerful mutant he will become.

Charles Xavier (McAvoy) is graduating from Oxford and has become an expert on human mutation, o much so that he is approached by Agent Moira MacTaggert (Byrne) of the Central Intelligence Agency to give expert testimony to the higher-ups of the CIA, including a skeptical agency chief (Craven). It seems that MacTaggert has been chasing Sebastian Shaw as well, and witnessed the telepathic powers of his associate Emma Frost (J. Jones) and the teleportation powers of Azazel (Flemyng), one of the associates of the Hellfire Club that Shaw runs. Xavier brings along Raven Darkholme (Lawrence), a young orphan his family adopted. When Xavier’s scientific presentation fails to impress, he reveals that both he and Raven are mutants; he a powerful telepath and she a shape-shifter.

They are taken charge of by an eager, jovial section chief (Platt) who has built a facility for the study of mutants, only without any mutants. That changes when one of the scientists working for them, Hank McCoy (Hoult) turns out to have hands for feet and has animal-like powers. He discovers a kindred spirit in Raven, who like Hank longs to be normal-looking (Raven in her natural appearance has blue skin, golden eyes and brick-red hair).

During a government attack on Shaw’s boat, the government is foiled by Azazel and Riptide (Gonzalez), a mutant who can generate tornado-like windstorms. Shaw, Frost, Azazel and Riptide escape on a submarine that Shaw had built inside his boat despite the efforts of Lensherr who arrives mid-fight in an attempt to murder Shaw, who recognizes his old pupil.

Xavier rescues Lensherr from drowning and recruits him to be part of the government team. Lensherr really isn’t much of a team player, but his growing friendship and respect for Xavier keeps him around. They realize that since Shaw has a mutant team that can easily wipe out even a military attack, a mutant team of their own will be needed. Using Cerebro, a computer that enhances Xavier’s telepathic abilities and allows him to “find” mutants, he and Lensherr go on a recruiting drive, allowing him to find Angel Salvadore (Kravitz) – a stripper with wings, Darwin (Gathegi) who can adapt to any survival situation, Banshee (C.L. Jones) who can project sonic blasts that allow him to fly and also act as sonar, and Havoc (Till) who fires lethal blasts out of his chest.

Shaw finds out what Xavier and Lensherr, who are now going as Professor X and Magneto (suggested by Raven who’s going by Mystique, while McCoy is Beast), are up to and orchestrates an attack on his new recruits, killing one and recruiting Angel to his cause. Shaw, who sees the mutants as the next step in evolution, is up to no good – he is the one who has through subtle and not-so-subtle influence in both the Soviet Union and the United States, created the Cuban Missile Crisis in hopes of starting World War III, from which he and his fellow mutants would rise from the ashes to rule the world. Xavier and his X-Men (a play on G-Men bestowed on the group by MacTaggert who is their CIA liaison), must stop it despite the group’s youth and inexperience.

Vaughn, who has done the superhero thing before with Kick-Ass (he was originally supposed to direct the third X-Men movie but dropped out because he didn’t think he could finish it in the time allotted by the studio) and is also the man behind Stardust, one of my favorite movies of recent years, does a pretty spiffy job here. He has a great visual eye and has done this as essentially a James Bond movie from the 60s with superheroes. It’s a brilliant concept that he doesn’t always pull off but manages to enough to make the movie interesting.

One of the main reasons the movie works is the chemistry between McAvoy, Fassbender and Lawrence. These are three talents rising in the industry – Lawrence already has an Oscar nomination for her stellar work in Winter’s Bone – and all have enormous potential to be stars. McAvoy plays the contemplative Xavier with an even keel, rarely raising his voice or seemingly getting excited but that doesn’t mean he isn’t emotional; it is amusing to watch him trying to pick up girls with his line about mutations at various Oxford pubs.

Fassbender is much more intense as Magneto, making the pain of his childhood palpable but well-covered by layers of anger. His need for revenge has driven him to hate all humans, wanting to forestall another Holocaust-like fate for his fellow mutants. The leadership of the CIA and the military will certainly not assuage his paranoia much.

Lawrence does Mystique as a troubled soul, whose power is wrapped up in deception but yet yearns to be perceived as normal. She develops an attraction for Magneto despite Beast’s obvious crush on her, and she is very much attached in a sisterly way to Xavier.

The movie goes a long way into showing how Xavier and Magneto went from the best of friends to the most implacable of foes. It also depicts how Xavier was paralyzed and shows the founding of his school where the X-Men would eventually be based. While Wolverine and an adult Mystique make cameos (both very playfully done I might add), the mutants from the first trilogy of the X-movies largely are absent.

Fox has made no secret that they plan to make a new trilogy starting with this one. The question is, will I want to see the next one? The answer is a resounding yes. While the 60s atmosphere that was created was rife with anachronisms (the miniskirt, which is clearly worn by several characters and extras during the film, wasn’t introduced until a few years after the Crisis for example and the soundtrack is rife with music that wasn’t recorded until afterwards either), the feel of the Bond movies is retained and that makes the movie special.

The action sequences (particularly the battle with the Russian and American fleets with the mutants that ends the film) are well done. As summer superhero movies go, this is definitely a cut above, although lacking the epic scope of Thor earlier this year. It certainly is a promising reboot of the franchise and continues the run of quality Marvel films that we’ve been getting over the past five years. Hopefully Fox will continue to follow Marvel’s lead and keep the quality of this franchise high.

REASONS TO GO: Great action sequences and good chemistry between McAvoy, Fassbender and Lawrence.

REASONS TO STAY: Doesn’t capture the period as well as it might have.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s some partial nudity and a few mildly bad words, along with some action sequence that may be too intense for the youngsters.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Fassbender and McAvoy both appeared in the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers” early on in their careers but haven’t appeared together in the same project since.

HOME OR THEATER: The action sequences are huge and need a huge canvas.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: Outlander