Drag Me To Hell, initially, gave me no real reason to see it. Sure, I get that it’s “Sam Raimi’s return to horror!”, but for whatever reason, I didn’t care much about that. The trailers were pretty cut and paste by dopey horror flick standards and they gave me the impression that this would just be another stupid waste of time crappy movie. Heck, the movie isn’t even rated R! I mean, come on. So fast forward a bit and I hear from several sources that this movie really isn’t that bad at all and it’s at least worth seeing. Hmm, ok. Then I happen to read one short review of it that compares it to Raimi’s classic Evil Dead movies (torchbearers of intentially campy horror awesomeness) and my juices started flowing even more and I figured I should bite the bullet and give it a shot.
Boy, it’s a good thing I did.
I can think of nothing better to compare this movie to than Evil Dead. It’s got the same vibe ED does, it’s got the same cheese ED does, heck, it even has a bunch of effects that seems STRAIGHT out of an ED movie. Think of it as an Evil Dead for a new generation who has no idea who Bruce Campbell is.
The movie is basically about a girl who get’s a curse put on her by some freaky ass old woman and then has 3 days before her soul is to be taken dowwwn to hellllllllllll! What will happen? Will she be able to break the curse? Can she save her soul? These are all questions that you will be able to answer if you watch the movie!
It really is an entertaining film. It’s got a ton of tense jump-out-of-your-seat scenes and a handful of gross out, ‘oh that was just kinda wrong’ moments that as a serious horror fan I totally appreciated. Anytime you’re laughing at the same time as you’re totally grossed out, I think it’s a fairly good thing. I went in with relatively low expectations, and they were blown out of the water. I guess I should have expected Raimi to deliver, but I was a foolish doubter. Nobody does stupid/funny/creepy/cool like he does (expect maybe Eli Roth, but that’s neither here nor there right now). The bottom line here is I walked away impressed, and EVEN IF I had paid for the movie, I would have felt like I got my money’s worth.
Drag Me To Hell is a funtime movie explosion, so go check it out.
It even has a talking goat! Can’t beat that.
A few weeks ago, I shared with you atrailer for a film so awesome, so epic, so exciting that there was no doubt it had to be watched A S A P. Well thanks to a BEP affliate strategically placed within a movie rental location, my eyes have recently been able to witness this monster (PUN INTENDED LOL) of a film and boy oh boy…boy oh boy.
The trailer sets the scene perfectly..there’s a biiig ol’ shark and huge friggin’ octo hangin out there in the ocean and those two bastards are raising hell Stone Cold style all around the world. Sinkin’ boats, eatin’ dudes, breakin’ stuff..these guys are srsly up to no good. Now I’m not saying they’re bad dudes or anything, I personally think they’re just a little misunderstood, but they are a bit of a pain in the world’s hind quarters. Luckily though, Debbie Gibson is a really smart scientist or something and is on the case and together with some other scientists and the US Navy & the quick-witted and quippy Lorenzo Lamas.
I don’t want to give away too much, but suffice to say that this movie has it all..action, comedy, terror, TERRRRORRRR, love, drama, asians, and really really REALLY kickass CGI and special effects work. Gibson shines as Emma MacNeil, a role that she obviously out a lot of work into preparing for. A more believable movie scientist I’ve never seen! Who knew she had such killer acting chops in addition to those golden pipes we all know her so well for !!?!? Oh man and Lorenzo as Allan Baxter, the ass-kicking government official who, in true Renegade fashion, wants to nuke these beasts, collateral damage be damned? Dude KILLED it. He’s a strong willed badass with a flair for comedic brilliance in this film and really, it’s tough for him not to steal the show. He has so much experience rounding up baddies (I mean, he was a cop and good at his job until some shady shit went down and he became an outlaw hunting outlaws, a bounty hunter, a renegade) that he was a natural casting choice. There were a few really tense moments where I half expected Bobby Sixkiller to drive his hummer into the submarine and help TCOB, but it was cool, Reno had it under control.
Bottom line, yes, this movie is as terrible as you might expect it to be. It makes Snakes On A Plane look like finely crafted cinematic gold and is naturally overrun with a horrible plot, bad acting, a retarded script, and some of the lamest effects you’ll ever see this side of a Sci-Fi (SyFy?) Channel original movie. BUUUT, that’s why it works and that’s why it’s cool and that’s why you should totally want to watch it.
Oh and guys..there’s a sequel coming…BEWARE!
Oh the things I do for my website. It was a rainy morning here in Georgia where BEPHQ is located and as my joblessness continues, I figured why not take some time and watch a brand new feature film streaming on the internet and review it here. So it was written, so it was done, and yada yada yada I just finished viewing of this Nic Cage project. First off, let me say that I don’t think I’ve watched a such a shitty bootlegged copy of a movie before, but it was the best version I could find, so that set things off kinda crappily. I will say though that I have actually wanted to see this film. On paper, I shouldn’t, because Nic Cage is one of the lamest actors in the world, but the subject matter of the movie is kinda fascinating to me, and I tend to make a point to watch stuff like this. So while I didn’t necessarily go in expecting much, but I did go in with some level of desire to watch this. ANYWAY. Onto the film itself. If you’ve seen the trailers, you know the basic premise of things. There’s a time capsule buried at a school and Cage’s little kid gets a piece of paper from it that has a ton of numbers and Cage stays up all night and figures out that GASP these numbers are all a CODE OMG THAT TELL THE DATES AND LOCATION OF ALL MAJOR DISASTERS ON EARTH AND HOW MANY PPL DIE WEE! So naturally, there are events that haven’t happened yet and Cage naturally takes it upon himself to try and figure stuff out and save lives and ultimately the world.
I want nothing more than to spoil this movie for you, and I will. If you choose to read on, there will be more after the jump…or after a few hits of the enter button, depending on where you’re clicking the link from…
SPOILERS SPOLIERS SPOLERS
don’t say you weren’t warned.
ok I’ll spare you the worthless details and first hour and a half+ of the film and cut right to the chase. This movie, the numbers, the disasters, this all lead up to ….benevolent aliens who want to save our species. yes, aliens. from outer space. Turns out, Cage’s kid and the daughter of this other woman with whom Cage interacts with for a while during the film have been picked to come to the alien planet and start a new race of humans because of the impending solar flare earth destruction. great. Unfortuantely for the Ghost Rider himself, he didn’t get picked to come along, so he gets to stay on Earth and die in the sun fires (but at the flares wait until he sleeps through the night, drives through the city, goes to his parent’s house despite his long standing feud with his preacher father, and have one big group hug). This all plays out in such a stupid way, and it’s never good when the ending of one of these kinds of movies leaves you laughing at it.
The brightest point of this whooole movie was when the aliens wouldn’t let Nic come with his kid onto their spaceship. If I were an alien I wouldn’t either, fuck that mess. The last thing I want if I’m trying to start a new human civilization is Nicolas Cage there Nicolas Cagein’ it up. No good could come of that. Sooo at least this film really puts to bed the argument about intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy, as any being smart enough to leave his overacting ass here on earth to die is intelligent in my book.
Maybe this was Hollywood’s way of telling him something without actually telling him. Maybe getting him to play this character was their way of saying..’umm yeah Mr. Cage..we’d like to continue making our films..but umm..we’d like to do so…uhh..without…ummmm..you’. Hopefully he takes the hint.
So all in all, it wasn’t terrible, and even flirting with being interesting for a brief little while annnd it had a scene with lots of people on fire running around, but the last few minutes just really ruined everything. So lame.
Sometimes when you see a preview for a movie, the preview actually does it’s job aaaand makes you want to see it. I’m not action movie guy all that often, especially not when it comes to newer stuff, but for some reason, this movie has looked appealing to me for a few weeks and today I decided to take a little break from job hunting and try ‘Taken’ on for size. Soo let’s see, this flick is basically about retired spy or whatever Liam Neeson heading over to France to track down his daughter whooo gets kidnapped whilst on the phone with him. The movie sorta follows the same formula as stuff like the Bourne movies, maybe some Bond, tv’s 24, etcetcetc. A dude faces seemingly impossible odds to try to save someone, in this case, his daughter, and uses his mad skillz to get the job done. Overall, and in complete seriousness, it was a pretty decent and sometimes edge of my desk chair type movie ‘FORWHATITWAS’ and Neeson is as solid as he can be in this role.. there’s a bunch of guns and punching and kicks and fairly incompetant baddies and ‘how is he managing to do all this’ kinda questions along the way, but that’s standard for this type of film I suppose so it’s acceptable. I mean sure, this movie will scare parents into letting their kids leave the house, much less allow them to go to that dastardly country of France lest they be kidnapped and sold as sex slaves by evil Albanians to Arab folks, but really, what’s another worry on the plates of parents around the country? Some reviewers out there, with their anti-action agendas might argue that the story was rather empty and the character development left a smiiiidddgggee to be desired, but what the eff do they know? If you’re one of those red-blooded Americans who like baseball, apple pie, and wave the flag on July 4 and like your cinematic angst/don’tfuckwithmyfamily-driven redemption served smokin’ hot (or at least comfortably lukewarm), then Taken just might be your favorite film of like..ALL TIME. If not, then go see Paul Blart Mall Cop, pussy.
Ahh finally! After months of waiting, I finally got the chance to see this film last night. I’m a huge fan of Darren Aronofsky (f the haters, The Fountain is his best film) and a lifetime fan of wrestling, so this seemed like a perfect storm of awesome from the outset. As a wrestling fan, I’ve seen a handful of documentaries about the sport and it’s performers and the life they lead both during their time ‘on top’ as well as the hard fall that always seems to come afterwards. Thusly, I was kinda curious to see how it would be handled in a film on this scale. Here’s my take.
One of the things I’ve heard a lot throughout my life as a wrestling fan is ‘you know this is all fake right? how can you watch this?’ Yea, I’m well aware that it’s scripted. I’m well aware they’re not always punching and kicking each other. I understand that it’s all a show. But maaaaan there’s so much more to it. Wrestling is a story, it’s about good guys vs bad guys, it’s about these people giving everything that they have to energize and excite a crowd..and a really good wrestling match can be a pretty intense thing believe it or not. These guys are passionate about what they do, and a lot of the time, wrestling is all they know. They eat it, drink it, breathe it, bleed it. Many of them will do whatever it takes to get to the pinnacle – they’ll sacrifice their bodies, their families, their lives or anything else that may stand in the way of their ultimate dream. Sure, it pays off for some. Some guys make it to the WWE or whatever their idea of the pinnacle is. Some guys really make a good living doing what they do. But those folks are in the severe minority, and this is a movie that sorta shows people what the underbelly of the sport really is. The Wrestler is a film about Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, a professional wrestler who spent many years on the top of the proverbial mountain who has been forced to adjust to a life and a career on the decline and the harsh realities that come with that adjustment. Wrestling small indie shows on the weekends while working in a grocery store during the week, not being able to afford anything more than a mobile home and having to take so many pain pills and steroids just to keep doing what he loves to do each week are just some of those realities..and honestly, it’s not pretty. Aronofsky paints a heartbreaking picture of the life of this guy and it’s just..well, kinda sad.
You’ve probably read it in other places as well, but Mickey Rourke was made for this role. He does such a wonderful job with the character and seems to really understand who The Ram is. His best actor Golden Globe was totally deserved and hopefully it’s a precurser to an Oscar. If I didn’t know better, I would honestly think I was watching a true-life style documentary..that’s how well it works with him in this role. Now, his little stripper friend Marisa Tomei I’m kinda ehh about. Granted, in a way, her life is somewhat of a parallel of his so I understand the character, but I just don’t know how much I like her. Lots of boobs in the movie though, sooo high five for that right dudes?
Anyway, I’m rambling - as I tend to do – but my ultimate opinion is this..
The movie is really well done and Rourke is amazing. Is it as awesome a film as I hoped it would be? Will it unseat The Fountain or Requiem as Aronofsky’s best work? Nah probably not. BUT! It’s still really, really good and I’d recommend it to everyone out there in Bearland.
oh and as for Clint Mansell’s score..it was almost non-existant. most of the film’s soundtrack was provided by 80’s hair metal bands..so that was a bit of a bummer.
Alright so I haven’t done one of these in a long time because I haven’t seen a new movie in a long time – The Strangers was probably the last movie I saw in the theater..or was it the Happening? I dunno. Doesn’t matter much either way I reckon. So the latest movie to get the Bears review treatment is the Keanu Reeves ‘blockbuster’ remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still that I just finished viewing via the modern marvel that is the interweb. No, that doesn’t make me a movie pirate, as I didn’t dl it myself nor would I support anyone who did. Hey, I’ve seen those little warnings they put on movies aaand I’ve seen the little commericals they play before movies in the theater about stealing and putting millionaire actors and people like Barbara Kelly, the Unit Production Manager of this movie, out of work so piracy is something that we here at BEP stand firmly against. Anyway. So I watched this movie tonight, not really out of desire to see it as much as it was out of the novelty of watching a freshly released in theaters movie from the discomfort of my computer chair. Let’s get right to it then, shall we?
BE FOREWARNED..SPOILERZ & FILM REINACTMENT DEAD AHEAD!
I’ve never seen the original version of this movie, I’m sure it was exciting and epic for it’s time and the movie posters that I found for it while searching for the one I used above looked amusing as most old movie posters involving aliens do. It’s got the RoboCop meets Iron Man alien armor whatever thing holding a defenseless maiden in a pretty little dress with ::gasp:: one strap falling off her shoulder, obviously hinting at exposed boobies that may or may not ever show up. It’s the stuff dreams are made of really. So in the new poster, as you can see above, there is no floozy losing her dress, only a menacing alien moonsphere floating over NYC..and really, where else would it be? Would it really hurt these aliens to show up in like Minneapolis or something for once? They have populated areas there too, dammit. Heck, come to Atlanta. Just leave NYC alone for a minute.
So the movie starts and we meet Jennifer Connelly and her stepwhatever son and shes a fancy scientist blah blah theres a big national emergency yada yada yada yada all these scientists gather and the big alien disco ball comes down in central park and everyone is dumbfounded and out pops an alien and we shoot it and then decide we need to heal it. Theennn it’s off to the hospital where it turns out the alien is nothing more than Keanu Reeves wearing a placenta suit. Whoa. As the film goes on, Neo broadens the character into a stoic, stone-faced, monotone, suit wearing alienguy who, essentially, is Agent Smith from the Matrix. Missster Annnderson. I find it impressive that he basically plays the same character in every single movie he’s in. Sure, the character’s mood and demeanor change from film to film, but it’s basically the SAME EXACT person. Dude has it down to a science, and that’s to be commended. Maybe he doesn’t even realize he’s filming these movies, maybe cameras just follow him around for a set amount of time and then ever few months they green screen a movie around every he’s done and said. Think about it. It’s not so far-fetched.
I digress.
The basic premise of the movie is that aliens have come to save the earth from the humans because weee are destroying it (I guess the trees didn’t get the job done or the point across in M Night’s movie) . Keanu is here as the rep for the aliens and to set the ball a-rollin’..but an unexpected twist occurs for him when he kinda becomes BFFs with Connelly. Uh oh Keanu, you should know better than to let women get in your way and distract you. You’re a superior alien being, use your brain man.
So K is all ‘I AM HERE TO SAVE THE EARTH AND RID IT OF HUMANITY’ and she’s like ‘HUMANS CAN CHANGE BOO HOO BLAHBLAH’ so she tries to convince him people can evolve and at the same time he’s got all these spheremoons around the planet picking up two of every species so once they destroy earth they can repopulate it with errthing but ppl cause as I already noted, we’re just effing everything up. Hooray for religion AND scientific overtones. THE RIGHT MEETS THE LEFT. Propaganda! Come to think of it, the aliens are trying to bring lots of..change. HMM.
Anyway so eventually the big destructive payoff we’ve been waiting for starts in the form of a huge cloud of microscopic spacebugs that start swarming and eating/destroying everything manmade and people and whatever, but it really only fucks up Pittsburgh or Philly or someplace in Penn..and is that such a big loss? Kiddding. This whole time Keanu acts like he can’t stop this drama, that once the chain of events starts, he can’t stop it - but then he sees this kid crying at his dead dad’s grave and JenCon huggin him and all of a sudden has this change of heart, naturally prompting him to decide to end the attack. Much like the grinch, Keanu’s heart grew three sizes that day. So they go to the city to start the saving, then UHOH! the kid inhales destroyer bugs and dies 
. But wait, KeanuChrist brings him back to life! yay! 
Then he goes and touches the moonsphere and bada bing, bada boom, he and everything else alien goes away. But then all the power goes out and our cars stop working. The world…..wait for it….stood still.
Overall, it wasnt AS BAD as I thought it may be, but it still sucked. Don’t let the previews fool you, this isn’t really much of a destruction movie. That shit lasts like 45 seconds. Yawn. At least in War Of The Worlds there was some massive destruction and human harvesting goin on before they gayed it up and Tom Cruise and everyone in his family wound up safe in Boston. So color me unimpressed. Seriously, would it really have killed anyone (pun intended) to blow some more shit up? Ohhh big deal the bugs ate a semi-truck and a football stadium. Ugh. I’m so sick of things that come to destroy the earth and then don’t. If you’re gonna do it, do it. Don’t pussyfoot around it, don’t let an intimate moment of human emotions change your mind about dooming us as a race of people. You came here to cleanse, effin cleanse. I don’t need my aliens with heart, I don’t need my disaster movies with a moral.
My final take? Don’t waste your time. Maybe rent it from the RedBox thing in 4 months if you’re really into the idea of watching it..or hell, whatever, if you love going to see shitty big budget movies in the theater for the ‘experience’, have at it. This is the movie for you. Keanu is alright, the story is dull, everything else is dull too. The world prevails, big whoop.
Make today The Day You Don’t Waste 11 Dollars.
As a self-professed decent sized fan of M Night Shyamalan’s work (yeah I even liked Lady in the Water…shut up, asshole) I always get pretty stoked when it comes time for him to drop another movie upon the masses. This year’s installment comes in the form of ‘The Happening’, a movie that had a pretty intriguing trailer with people jumping off buildings and dropping dead all over the place..what OOOH WHATTT I wonder is causing them to do this??!?!? If you haven’t seen it or read any reviews or spoilers for this flick yet, that might be a question you’re asking yourself. But FOR THE LOVE OF GOD let that be where this question dies for you. I can pretty much guarantee you that whatever scenario and whatever twist you’ve come up with in your mind is cooler than what Shammy gives you here. This film is absolute garbage, even by his standards. Heck, it doesn’t even FEEL like one of his movies..there really isn’t any intrigue building after about halfway though, there’s no greater mystery to figure out. He throws it out there, and you keep waiting and waiting and waiting for him to say oooh haha guys just kidding, it’s really about…(insert zany OMG moment here)!! The story/outlandish premise is one thing, whatever. But wtf is going on with everything else? Marky Mark and wide-eyed Zooey Deschannenenellll have the on screen chemistry of a hermit crab and a tennis ball, the dialog is campy and cheesy at best, and while I’d like to give UBERWRITERPRODUCERDIRECTOR Shams the benefit of the doubt as far as his actual intentions for the dialog, I thiiiink most of it is intended to be somewhat serious..annnd that’s not good. There’s one scene, and you’ll know it when you see it, that’s meant to be shocking and dramatic but it looks like something a bunch of kids filmed in their backyard and edited together on their parent’s PC. Just..ugh. I’m sure it’s a cliche you’ll hear a zillion times, but the title is ridiculously appropriate because I can almost guarantee that you’ll be like me and mumble to yourself ‘oh cmon, seriously? this is really happening right now? i’m ACTUALLY watching this occur on the movie screen??’ a solid 5-10 times during this movie. Sigh. But hey, on the bright side, if there is one, this is movie comes close to reaching the soo bad it’s humorously good level which might make your movie watching experience a little enjoyable. It’s one of those movies you wish you had an empty theater with just you and your friends to watch it in so you could MST3K that shit.
In conclusion..please, I implore you, spend your 10 bucks on something with a little more substance..like a cheap, one-legged hooker..or 2 $5 footlongs from Subway. Anything really.
M Night – STOP WRITING YOUR OWN MOVIES.
Wow, that’s a pretty cool poster..alhtough I woulda put burlap sack mask guy up front. But that’s just me. Props to the cineconchile site I found it on.
You guys have all seen the preview for this movie, they’ve saturated the airwaves for the past couple weeks. This film was one of those cases where the trailer REALLY made me wanna see the thing. It made the film out to be a really dark, quiet, creepy, thriller and the masks the killer people have on seemed so simple but so effective. The impressiveness of the trailer, while making me want to see it, also lead me to believe that I was going to be severely disappointed. Buuuut I went and saw it last night anyway, and let me tell you….that shit was awesome. I could not have been more pleased with how it turned out, it really lived up to and exceeded all my expectations. It really is a creepy ass movie. Ya know how you felt the first time you saw Halloween or The Blair Witch Project? The whole uneasiness feeling that those movies created so well and the suspense they built is almost matched by The Strangers. It almost seems like director Bryan Bertino graduated from the John Carpenter school of horror film direction and portrayal of the ‘bad guy’. This movie just does so many things well. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not really all that creative a story and it doesn’t do anything terribly new and innovative at all, but it doesn’t need to. A seemingly motiveless crime makes up basically the entire plot of the film, the characters aren’t all that developed, the dialog is limited, and it’s basically shot all in one place..which SHOULD make it boring, contrived, and laughable..but for some reason, I didn’t find The Strangers to be any of those things. I’m a horror movie junkie, and yeah I’ve read LOTS of bad reviews about this film but I think people just have too hard a time enjoying a movie for what it is. What The Strangers is is a dark, creepy, mind-fuck of a ‘this could happen to you’ thriller kinda movie that provides a slew of classic horror jump moment and proves that less really can be more.
