Category Archives: 1 Star Movies

Love Story Review

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It’s time for another romance film. This one’s an interesting case as the negatives are different, but just as strong. For starters, the romance angle is just as bad here if not worse as the two characters are just so mean at first. I suppose they’re going for the whole “They’re brutally honest” approach but it certainly doesn’t work well. At least Jenny works towards being a better person as the film goes on, but Oliver is content to stay spiteful at basically everyone for the whole film. Makes that sequel look even more iffy, but lets stick to the original at the moment.

So the film starts off with Oliver hanging around at a cafe (I believe it was a cafe) and then meeting a girl named Jenny. She immediately starts hurling insults at him about how he’s not very smart and only got this far thanks to being rich. He tries to respond with witty banter of his own, but she continues to defeat him at every turn. It’s not like he has much of a chance since he actually does like her even if he finds it hard to admit. Anyway, they get together really quickly despite their first interactions being complete insults all the time. They don’t stop insulting each other for quite a while. They decide to get married, but will Oliver’s Dad approve and how will they get by without money?

A good warning bell from the start is the film’s tagline. Clearly it’s trying to be clever but it’s just so far out to left field. Saying sorry is always important and especially if you’re in a close relationship. Feeling like you don’t need too if your bond is strong enough is just incorrect. You’ve always got to own up to your mistakes and considering how mean both characters are, I think the film is just trying to justify itself which isn’t going to fly either.

The main characters are important here so lets start with Oliver. At first you figure that the parents are going to be antagonistic and that’s why he is constantly avoiding them. The twist is that Oliver is the mean one who constantly pushes them away and is very disagreeable about everything. Sure, it’s a pretty original twist, but it does make him look quite terrible if we’re being honest. He doesn’t attend his father’s birthday celebration and even refuses to talk to him in general. All of the things Oliver says about his father to convince Jenny that he’s a bad person turn out to be untrue. Oliver’s just projecting his own insecurities and then still has the nerve to ask his father for 5000 dollars. Yes, he’s asking to help keep Jenny alive a little longer, but he refuses to tell his father any of this. If anything this just shows what a nice guy the Dad is since he gives Oliver the money despite Oliver just being really mean the entire time.

Oliver gets to the point where he even puts his anger at his father over Jenny. Jenny never asks him for anything, but even when she asked him to get on the phone for a minute he refused and even yanked the phone from her hand. This is not a guy that you can sympathize with or like at all throughout the movie. A movie can only be so good when the lead is terrible like this so that was already putting it at a disadvantage. I am glad that the parents weren’t just randomly mean for no reason but having them be nice and the main character mean is pretty mean spirited in itself.

As for Jenny, as I mentioned it’s hard to see how the romance starts. She does admit during one round of insults that she just likes him for his looks so I guess we can take that at face value. It’s still not a romance that I can get behind though and as I mentioned she is the only reasonable person in this relationship. Even once she is diagnosed with a fatal disease and doesn’t have long to live Oliver decides not to tell her this. He doesn’t even give her a chance to get treatment right away by stalling so Jenny had to find out by herself the hard way. Oliver’s certainly not winning any awards for husband of the year. He’d probably win the Razzi since apparently he does get over her. I feel bad for Jenny since she could have done so much better.

Even the whole Wedding ceremony felt like it was trying to make you dislike the characters even more. Jenny’s family was looking forward to a traditional Catholic wedding for their daughter, but then Oliver walks in and that is gone. Jenny says that it was a mutual decision, but I don’t really believe that for a second. Not only is it not a marriage in a Church, but it’s one that is barely official. They are just holding the wedding on their own in a random room. Do you even get a proper certificate from that? They even made up their own vows which didn’t work well. It was a bit of a painful scene and while I do agree that most weddings are too expensive and I’d want a cheap one personally, I’d still want an actual wedding as opposed to a self made thing that just seems fake.

This film definitely goes heavy into the drama territory for the second half as you’d imagine with the whole dying bit. It’s not a film that would have any real replay value as a result since the film just isn’t very fun. The second half is hard to get into because it’s just everyone being sad the whole time and the first half is dragged down by Oliver. Well, he drags down the second half too, but you know what I mean. I’m not really into tragedy films that doesn’t really help this one’s case. They should at least try to have some fun before she dies as opposed to spending the last weeks in a hospital. I know this will differ for many people, but if I only have a little while left to live and it’s confirmed..then what’s the point of staying in the hospital? So they can extend my life for a few days? I’d rather spend a week at home over 2 weeks in the hospital.

Overall, This film felt really mean spirited. By the end none of the characters have had a particularly good time. Oliver is going to be depressed since Jenny is gone. Jenny is gone so she didn’t have a happy ending. The Father’s not going to have a good time since his son is constantly pushing him away. There are just no happy endings here so it’s just a tragic film with sad ending. That isn’t a winning combo and if anything it’s a confirmed losing combo. It’s a little hard to be a good film throughout all of this. Not to mention that even without the sad aspects the romance does not work at all. They go from being enemies to taking the step past the friend zone in a few nights. The romance never feels realistic at all. You’re better off checking out a different film and skipping this one altogether. There’s just no point to this one whatsoever. While the sequel doesn’t actually affect this one’s score since they’re separate, it’s existence makes this one feel even worse.

Overall 1/10

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave Review

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It’s time for another Dracula film. This series has never been particularly good and this one is no exception. Dracula’s a joke and everyone knows it. Even the poster knows this. Look at his facial expression above and tell me that this is a serious villain. He died from falling in a pool of water in the last film! This guy is played for laughs at times and if he is meant to be completely serious then that’s almost sad. Anyway, this film does nothing unique and instead just goes through the motions without doing anything cool or interesting. It’s definitely a very forgettable film and one that will soon blend in with the rest. There’s just nothing to really like here but it is always surreal to see some of the choices that the main characters make. Needless to say they were not prepared for a fight like this.

The film starts off with Dracula murdering someone and we then cut to the present where Ernest walks into that town. Everyone is still afraid of Dracula because while he may be dead at the moment, his aura is still enough to corrupt everything that it reaches. It apparently even gets into the Church so everyone just hangs around the bar now. Ernest laughs at them and runs over to Dracula’s castle which he seals with the Cross. Unfortunately, the drunk pastor who had been following him trips and breaks Dracula out of his tomb of ice. Dracula then decides to team up with this guy so they can get revenge on Ernest by getting his nephew, Maria. Will their nefarious plan succeed?

Dracula has just never been a good concept for a film. I still stand by that today. The writing is often terrible for these films and they just heavily rely on shock value the entire time. The heroes also never manage to stop him before he bites the main heroine so they’re simply too late. The fact that his victims all crumble into quivering children when faced with his power is also annoying. They’ll just start fainting and running away while in his presence which is not really the kind of thing you want to see from characters who are supposed to have strong wills. The pastor guy was drunk and apparently spineless from the start though so I suppose I shouldn’t use him as a base to judge anything.

Still, the characters are really annoying. First off we’ve got our lead Paul. He wants to leave a good impression with Maria’s folks since he is supposedly serious about her, but that doesn’t stop him from passing through the bar and deciding to drink a little. Naturally this doesn’t end well and he messes up the Uncle’s big return by ruining the mood. He decides to sulk by getting even more drunk and allowing himself to be ensnared by the waitress named Zena. He hardly resists her actions and just shrugs it off. Then when Maria actually needs his help he gets one shotted by Dracula several times. He missed with the fire shovel and then runs right into Dracula’s arms. Paul’s a terrible main character and I certainly couldn’t support him during the movie. He makes all of the wrong decisions and doesn’t come off as genuine. How do you lose so many battles in one film?

Unfortunately, Maria is just as bad. She gets mind controlled by Dracula and gets thrown into a dungeon by the waitress. The heroes get to her in time before anything drastic occurs and ask her what happened. Her response is to faint multiple times and to explain in the most cryptic and misleading ways possible. She doesn’t mention any of the people who were there, which puts the heroes at a disadvantage. Thanks to her weak mind, Dracula can also enter the house as she opens the windows for him. While not everyone can agree with me that mind control only works on the weak that quickly, we can all agree that she should have at least told everyone what happened the first time.

Meanwhile, we’ve got Ernest. He’s probably the only quality character in the film and even then he makes some of the same mistakes as the others. He is betrayed and knocked out to the point of death by the drunk. Later, we see the drunk arrive at his house with Paul (Paul invited him because he’s helpful like that) and instead of warning everyone that the guy is evil, Ernest faints from fright. It’s almost amusing since you Never see the old, experienced tough guy faint in a film like this one. It’s unheard of and also incredibly hard to wrap your head around this. It doesn’t make any sense and it feels like a lazy way for the writers to get Maria kidnapped. Otherwise there’s no way Dracula could have broken in.

Zena is the waitress and she’s certainly not a good character. She only exists to flirt with everyone and to get Paul on the wrong path. You know that she is doomed immediately since that always happens to these characters in horror films. Staying in the friend zone is typically the only way you’re safe. Zena didn’t and ultimately ended up paying the price. As for Dracula himself, he’s not really a cool villain at all. He blames all of his failings on Zena and doesn’t even look very good in combat. He shrinks away in fear whenever someone holds some fire or the cross. He trips over his own feet in the climax as he lands in his doom. He even sleeps in a coffin that’s in the basement of a busy bread shop so it’s easy for someone to murder him during the day. It’s almost hard to see why everyone fears him so much when the guy just isn’t very smart.

This film is also pretty violent as you would expect from a Hammer production. It really does its best to show blood whenever possible and lots of it. Everyone gushes blood as if we’re back in Bleach whenever they’re stabbed and you can tell that they’re just doing it because they can. The Vampire bites are still as iffy as ever and since the characters take so long so stop Dracula it can barely be counted as a win. The actual body count actually isn’t all that big in this film but the movie makes sure that each one gets enough screen time for two.

Overall, Dracula Returns is a pretty terrible film. The writing is lousy and the cast of characters are completely uninspired. There is nobody to root for and that is always a problem if you ask me. You won’t be able to stay invested in the film and the best way to get through it is to take a shot of water every time a character makes the worst move possible. Anything stronger than water and you’ll likely faint so try and stay safe. Still, I’d recommend watching many other films before I’d ever even consider this one. If you have to pick a Dracula film, at least pick the modern one from the new cinematic universe that Universal has been putting together. At least that one tries to stay classy.

Overall 1/10

Tales of Terror Review

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It’s time for a horror anthology. If there are any two words that should strike fear into your heart, it’s those last two words. Horror films don’t have a good track record and the same can and will be said for anthologies. Merging the two results in a lot of opportunities for the film to get ruined. Unfortunately this one is no exception and you’ll find yourself wondering what the point of this film was. The first of the shorts is easily the best one, but that’s not saying a whole lot.

The first segment sees Lenora get home. She has visited her father to guilt trip him one last time before she moves away. He doesn’t want to see her because he blames her for the death of his wife. They argue quite a bit with Lenora constantly explaining how she never should have come here and her father insulting her. Eventually the ghost of her mother wakes up to murder Lenora and then take down the father. They all die together in the mansion. It’s a pretty somber ending to what was overall a somber special. The whole time you just have to wonder why Lenora would possibly want to come over. It’s well known from the start that her father had never even talked to her because he was so upset at what happened in the past so it all came off as rather strange. I couldn’t understand Lenora’s motivation here.

Even worse is the fact that she made sure to come after the last bus had left so she would be stuck there for the night. It’s almost as if she came over purely to start complaining and egging the father on into doing something he might regret. I thought the film was going to have him murder her which would have been super dark so I’m glad they didn’t go that route. It was the best special of the 3, but that’s really not saying much at all.

The 2nd segment is about a drunk guy named Montresor. He is always mean to his wife and cat (Points deducted instantly!) and keeps on stealing money from them. He doesn’t care if they starve as long as he gets his beer. He breaks into a wine testing convention and manages to snag 2nd place. Fortunato doesn’t like being humiliated so he quickly gets together with Montresor’s wife in secret. Montresor finds out and murders them, but luckily the cops come and put him away.

Another rather grim story and one that is completely unenjoyable from start to finish. I don’t want to see the cat getting threatened with murder and being thrown around the whole time. Those scenes are just terrible and the cast puts up with Montresor the whole time. Why isn’t the guy in jail yet? It’s all rather hard to watch as you are tempted to go and rent something a little classier at the special is playing. Sure, they caught Montresor but only after he murdered the two of them. Justice was a little late to say the least. The sad thing is that this wasn’t necessarily the weakest story as the third one also gets a little dicey.

The third story probably has the least intelligent characters of the bunch. An old guy is on his death bed and agreed to let a scientist hypnotize him at the very end. The experiment is to see if the hypnosis can prevent his death for a little while. The scientist quickly launches into his experiment and sure enough, the old man won’t die. Finally the living corpse begs for death, but the scientist merely laughs. Months pass and he is still forcing the corpse to live. So in this time…everyone just allowed that to happen? Geez, some friends.

The main heroine then decides to confront the scientist on her own even though she knows that he is dangerous and criminally insane. Her friend even comes along with his gun to protect her but she tells him to leave and then locks the door. In the most predictable move ever, the scientist then decides that he’ll take her by force and she’s only saved when the corpse wakes up and murders him. That still has to take the cake as one of the worst decisions out there. Why would you knowingly put yourself in such a terrible position. Going 1 on 1 with someone far stronger and confirmed to be dangerous? Clearly this heroine wasn’t very smart and the low quality attempt at creating tension in the film was just pitiful.

Overall, This film was pretty bad. I’m pretty confident now that Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are not nearly as good as you’d suspect from his reputation. I’ve now seen two anthologies based on his stories and they were both pretty dreadful. They’re just not good and while making good horror stories is difficult, it can be done. You just have to construct quality stories with no short cuts or characters making terrible decisions. It shouldn’t be a story about everyone dying just for kicks or to see the spirit slaughter them all. A good story should give the heroes a chance. Sad endings definitely can work as well so long as they have a purpose. This film just didn’t have one and comes across as incredibly mean spirited the whole time. So, like pretty much every other Roger Corman film, you’ll want to skip this one.

Overall 1/10

Blade Runner Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. A review of the unedited version would be even more negative. All thoughts below should be addressed as such

It’s time for a sci-fi film that had potential but chose to go for oscar bait moments instead of quality. What should have been an action thriller with lots of epic fight scenes turns into a very melodramatic film with the pacing of a snail. Good luck trying to keep up with the film as you’ll just start to lose interest once the main character doesn’t appear for about 30 minutes. Even when he does appear it’s not as if he’s a good character anyway so then you just want him to go away.

The film starts with Rick humble bragging as he tries to eat some ramen. The cops catch him though and bring him back to the Blade Runner program. He is ordered to murder 3 remnants (androids) who have managed to make it to Earth. He tries to talk a good game about not doing it, but they threaten him so he quickly folds. He retired from this business because it was starting to be too much for him, but he doesn’t have a choice now. He finds one of the remnants pretty easily through his lie detector test and gradually goes looking for the others. The problem is that these remnants have plans of their own and they’re all a lot stronger than Rick. Can he handle them?

Honestly, the long paragraphs of plot details in the intro sounded like they would have made for a better film. I’d love to have actually seen an army of androids revolt and attack the humans. Many good films have been made about that kind of plot. Why do we need to see the aftermath where humans seem to have already won the war. Furthermore, why is our tech so bad when this is the future? It feels like we should be able to damage the androids a lot easier by this point to be honest. Part of the fault lies with Rick though since he has no reaction times and walks into every trap imaginable. If not for the villains taking pity on him or other characters saving him, he’d be dead by now.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest problems with the film is how slowly the film moves. We get extremely long sequences with the villains where they just threaten people and you wonder what the main character is doing. Instead he has a very sketchy romance with Rachael that was pretty disgraceful. It definitely wouldn’t fly nowadays and it was definitely not going to make him a likable character. His only good trait is the internal monologue he is always having. That part was enjoyable at least since most films don’t do that anymore.

The writing is also pretty bad to be honest. The characters talk about random things that have no point. Rick uses very odd questions for the lie detector test which probably serve some kind of point in his mind, but the film should have made the questions better. Even the opening scene just makes you wonder how the humans have lived for so long as a remnant is interrogated in a small room where they let him keep his gun and the interrogator has no weapon. I mean, I could have told those guys that was probably a bad idea. They may not have known for sure that the guy was a remnant yet, but since the point of the interview is that they suspect him, they should have had some defenses ready.

The effects don’t look so good since the film is trying to look bad on purpose. It’s a film set in the future that wants to look like it’s in the past which is a pretty bad mix. Ghost in the Shell did a much better job with the overall design of the city while Terminator did a better job with the actual android designs. As a result, there’s nothing really going well for this film. Even the soundtrack is basically nonexistent.

Watch out as this film can be rather violent as well. It wasn’t too crazy although I did see the edited version, but enough to be worth noting. If you’re not a main character you better watch out as well since the villains effectively have free reign on the whole city. Rick isn’t protecting anything aside from himself so everyone else is on their own. It can be a little frustrating, but since I didn’t like any of the characters it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It would be worse if his lack of skills caused good characters to die.

Roy is the main villain but his name is the only cool thing about him. He’s just another random villain who tries to have some justifications and moral dilemmas to show that he’s not all bad, but he’s just another villain at the end of the day. He can’t even fully commit to this as he saved Rick towards the end which didn’t make much sense if you ask me. He has his reasons, but it was only a good way for destroying whatever hype Rick might have had left. It was virtually at 0 already though. There’s not much to say about Rachael except that she has no will power and just lets everyone walk over her. So much for a tough personality.

Overall, The biggest problem this film has is that it feels pointless. The plot takes forever to progress. You could watch the opening 20 minutes as they explain Rick’s mission and then skip to the end. You’d basically have a coherent plot, minus one Remnant who was taken down near the middle. The bulk of the film has nothing to do with his mission as the film just lost sight of what was happening. It’s hardly the only problem of course as Rick was definitely terrible and the Rachael was bad as well for letting him have his way. I feel like the sequel should definitely be better, but I can’t say that I have a lot of hope in its chances. This is probably just one series that is beyond saving without some kind of remake.

Overall 1/10

Phoenix Forgotten Review

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Uh oh, it’s time for a found footage film. Honestly this is one of the worst genres out there. I already don’t like horror films, but found footage films tend to be even lower on the totem pole. The two genres do like to blend together as well although I think this would be considered more of a thriller than a horror. The film moves incredibly slow and by the end all you’ll be thinking is…”If I’m buying 4 slices and a drink from Little Caesars for 5, maybe I’m better off going to Little Italy and getting 2 slices but the infinite refills with it”

The story follows a reporter who is going around trying to find intel on 3 teenagers who went missing. Their names as Josh, Mark, and Ashley. The reporter has an interest in the case since Josh was her big brother. The problem is that the government keeps stiffing her and since this disappearance happened years ago, all of the trails have gone cold. Fortunately, Sophie is told that the school found a camcorder at a secluded facility in the middle of nowhere that actually still works. Sophie pops it in and finally learns the truth behind the mystery. She is stunned at the results!

So, that’s effectively the subplot as it takes place in the present, but most of the film is in the past. Since Sophie is making a documentary, naturally all of her scenes are filmed as if they’re found footage as well. We jump to the past where Josh decides that he wants to find some aliens. After all, he saw some strange lights a while back that seemed like UFOs. Mark and Ashley join him and the three decide to run through a bunch of mountains. They do this for a while and then get lost once it’s late. They do what any other mainstream teenager would do, they break open the beers and start panicking. Before long the aliens show up and take them down.

There are so many problems with this film that it’s quite tragic. For starters, we have the token animal violence. Why is there animal violence in this film? Well, apparently the aliens are still working on their tractor beams as they tend to burn the targets up instead of sending them into space. It’s also awfully fast since they burn parts of the animals but then leave them on the ground. The scenes are utterly pointless much like the film itself and you’ll wonder just how low this film will stoop before it finally ends.

The writing is terrible as you’d expect. All of the characters are really annoying and since the camera work is terrible on purpose, you’ll find yourself cringing the whole time. I don’t use the word lightly, but this is another reason why I don’t like the found footage genre. The zoom ins on all of the characters are much too close and the ametuer style in which they’re filmed is just not entertaining to look at. Honestly, I’m not even a big fan of the old family videos everyone made back when it was trendy but at least I was starring in those so it made them a little more fun. I don’t want to watch a video of strangers just hanging out and drinking beer. It’s just not cool.

The aliens don’t actually do anything for the first 60 minutes so that time is just the heroes chatting about nothing really and trying to be as unlikable as possible. The film never even tried to make them good characters if you ask me, but there were none in the whole film. Even the government turned out to be evil and corrupt as always. It’s sad that the government is almost always either incompetent or evil. It’s rare to find movies where they are portrayed as capable heroes but I’m always glad when I see that happen.

The film’s plot is also just barely held together. See, the writers needed the whole story to be filmed on camera, but this wasn’t even possible without plot holes. Towards the end of the film we see Josh taken up by the aliens as he drops his camera and it gets thrown around in the twister. Then….Josh somehow fights his way through the alien ship in a matter of seconds, escapes through the hatch, makes his way back and grabs the camera, runs to a bathroom…and is then kidnapped again. Then the camera is sucked up again, survives a vicious crash, and then someone mails it to the school. The whole thing was super convenient and also unbelievable. I don’t see how Josh could have gotten out of the tractor beam when nobody else could have. I don’t see how nobody would notice the aliens this time when they’re so bright and loud. People would definitely notice that kind of thing. I just couldn’t get past this ending.

The aliens also don’t really show up. We see a claw or a foot for a split second and that’s it. Clearly this film didn’t have much of a special effects budget so this turned into an alien film without the aliens. That’s just peachy. Back to the humans not being likable, the film maybe tries to hint that the aliens mess with your mind. I’m not too sure about that and prefer to just think that the humans are terrible. Mark constantly panics and drinks. He refuses to talk with the others even though it would make the whole process quicker and is the main reason everyone was talking in circles for a while. They could have stayed in the car where it was semi safe, but he wanted to run the 15 miles to the nearest gas station. Even then he got distracted within seconds. Ashley also panics at everything and keeps forcing the group to stop so she can tie her shoes or panic about her hair falling out. The only guy I almost felt sorry for was Josh because he would have escaped the aliens if he didn’t have to stop for the other two every 5 seconds. Clearly he should have gone on by himself. He wasn’t a cool character either though so I was cool with the aliens claiming the win here. They just need to take on the rest of the town n ext.

The film is super dramatic and tries to be emotional constantly. We have a divorce subplot and they really try to forcefeed you the “You have to be sad now” memo as we see the parents cry about the teens being gone and everyone assuming the worst. The home cam videos are supposed to really reinforce this. All it does is stretch the film out even more and completely destroy whatever pacing the film could have had. This film could have been shortened to 30 minutes and you wouldn’t have missed a thing.

Also, why was Sophie’s camera man never really shown until the end? I thought the film was gearing up for some kind of big twist like he was Josh or something and that’s why everyone kept looking at Sophie like she was crazy. The twist would have been terrible but at least it would have been something. Otherwise, the camera man is just another empty character whose existence is only to hold the camera so Sophie can get a good shot.

Overall, As you can guess I really didn’t like the film. It’s basically just 90 minutes of nothing happening. The alien “jump scare” scenes are pitifully bad and wouldn’t scare a kid. The repetition is annoying and since the aliens keep taunting the main characters instead of doing something to them, I have to assume that they’re just petty. They don’t seem to have any actual goals so I’ll assume that they are mindless as well. There’s really only negative things to say about the film so as you can tell I really didn’t like it. I’d say that Cloverfield was a better found footage film and even Paranormal Activity which by all accounts should be worse as it’s a full horror plus this genre, but was actually far superior. Next time you secretly want to make a film about teens just running around and just acting like terrible people with no extra plot…don’t. Instead of this film I recommend watching something a little more intense like the first Jumanji.

Overall 1/10

Curse of the Undead Review

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If the last film was YES! tier then this one is I want my Money Back tier. This film is just so bad and since it is a vampire film I expected a bad result from the start. It was still a little worse than I had anticipated. The Wild West angle is actually far more interesting than the Vampire one and you know how I’m not really a fan of the former either. It’s all pretty tragic to be honest, but at least the ending will go down as a classic.

There is a town where a mean man named Buffer is messing with everyone. All he wants is to be able to have a nice beer every day and bully an old man. That’s his only wish and so the town allows him to do whatever he wants. Things take a turn for the worse when the old man is murdered and then Buffer is forced to murder his son in self defense. Dolores decides to place a wanted ad to avenge them and a wandering gun for hire named Drago shows up. Dan advises Dolores against this since hiring someone to destroy someone else is pretty similar to doing the job yourself. You will have effectively committed murder. Dolores doesn’t care and even claims she’ll pray to the Devil if necessary. Dan realizes this is a lost cause and goes to the Sheriff to try and work something out. Little does he know that Drago is a vampire!

I think the main reason why I didn’t mind the Wild West setting this time was because it didn’t feel like one. You don’t see a lot of sand or anything since they stay in town the whole time. It was a nice fusion of genres and the film handled it well. The locale is one of the only positive things I can say about the film. Beyond that, I also liked the Sheriff. He still deserves some blame for not actually trying to stop Buffer sooner. He took quite a while to get involved and it was too late by then. At least he was very tough though. He didn’t back up for anyone and stood his ground at gun point. The way he handled the band of bandits was pretty admirable so it’s a shame that he went out on such a sour note. He was just a really good character.

Prepare for the onslaught of negatives now though as they are quite extensive. First off, Dolores is a very annoying main heroine. She faints quite a few times and always makes the wrong choices. I’m not against her hiring someone to take Buffer down since the authorities weren’t doing anything about it, but letting him into her house was mistake number 1. The next one was going right to sleep and not noticing him messing with her. She also didn’t notice that she had bite marks on her neck even though I feel it would be pretty obvious. I’m confident I’d notice something like that on my neck and clearly it means she hasn’t washed it in a while. She then proceeds to faint several more times so Drago has his fun and she even sides with him instead of Dan. She made no good choices and was just a struggle to watch.

Drago is even worse as he’s a vampire who doesn’t know what he is doing. I don’t even think he had a master plan so much as he just wanted to suck everyone’s blood while also having fun doing it. He acted as if he was on her side to gain her trust but why? He would leave her alive so he could keep using her I guess, but it was a pretty random move. Furthermore, if he can hypnotize people, he should do it to everyone so he’ll have a life long supply or blood for all of his needs. He came off as rather distasteful and there was no way to like him. It’s a shame since he could have been a decent character in theory. The idea of a lone gunman coming into a town and liberating it is nothing new. Of course, when the two sides are the bully and an evil vampire, you know that the battle is lost before it even begins.

Dan is an okay character I guess, but he seems content to stay as an observer until something happens that he doesn’t like. He didn’t really help to solve the Buffer problem until the gunner showed up and then he made his move. By then, it was a little late for words. He did a good job in the final battle though so I have to give him credit there. He’s certainly better than pretty much all of the other characters by default. The Sheriff was really good as well as he didn’t let any of the others mess with him. Buffer wasn’t a likable character of course. You couldn’t feel sympathetic to him either since he was a villain the whole time. Perhaps he wasn’t as bad as the vampire, but that’s a pretty low bar to set.

The dialogue and writing for the film wasn’t bad, but it never became an engaging watch. We also got an incredibly random, but dark origin story for Drago during the film. Apparently he murdered his brother and then murdered himself so his punishment was to obtain super strength, high speed regeneration, and immortality so he can murder other people. Pretty interesting punishment. Another thing that hurt the film was just the amount of times Drago had his way with the heroine when she asleep. Those scenes are very dubious and hard to watch. Add in the fact that he’s brainwashing her and it sinks the film to new lows. At this point she basically doesn’t have a choice in the matter. The film was already past saving, but these scenes really ended up hurting the score more than the rest put together.

Overall, This was a pretty bad vampire film. I expected nothing less though. It has some pretty decent scenes and as I mentioned the human moments weren’t bad. The posturing at the saloon wasn’t bad and the various bar moments, but the vampire just brought the whole thing down. The film also just liked being dark like when the kid died or the origin story. It was pretty unnecessary the whole time. If you want a good vampire film…I recommend just looking for something else. The odds of finding a good one are extremely low. It’s almost a contradiction.

Overall 1/10

Return of the Fly Review

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It’s time for the sequel to the original Fly movie. For the most part it’s not bad as the film goes on. The pacing is decent and the plot is fairly good, but the film ends up falling into a massive pot hole with an animal violence scene. Beyond that, it can also be annoying to see the heroes lose so badly to one opponent the whole time. It’s certainly a rather unique film and while you feel bad for the main character, you also can’t help but wish Francois could have said “I told you so” at one point.

Phillipe is in shambles over what happened to his father. After all, how can anyone take the fact that their father turned into an insect and died? Francois warns him not to go down the same path, but Phillipe laughs him off and decides to rebuild the experiments room and do the exact same things his father did. He wants to prove that the concept is sound and his father grew careless. He hires Alan as an assistant and they decide to live in the house of his child hood friend’s house and they’ll work in her basement. She doesn’t seem to mind and even though a romance may be lightly hinted, the film never takes that anywhere. I was pretty impressed although, that’s probably because the main heroine and her mother barely appear at all. They’re in the film, but their role is quite small. You wouldn’t be wrong to say that they were filler characters.

So, lets get the elephant out of the room first since it is of massive importance. What destroys the film is a scene with the rat as he grows human hands and feet. Alan ends up crushing him in a very long, drawn out death scene that is shown to be exceptionally painful to the rat. Animal violence is one thing and animal death is another, but a scene this intense and long is something else altogether. The film was in the grave from this point on in the film and it’s not as if anything could possibly save it. Even if the film was decent otherwise, it was doomed at this point.

Still, lets look at the rest of the film. The Alan subplot felt wildly out of place to be honest. He’s actually an international fugitive who earns money by ripping off inventions and giving them to local crooks. The cops have been after him for years, but the guy is too slippery. Fortunately he got a steady job over here just in time to rip Phillipe off. One of the cops did a good job of finding him, but ended up choking his accomplishment away by getting shot so easily. That was definitely not a great moment for him. It’s too bad since the cops never seem to win in these things. Ah well, at least he tried. Things don’t end well for Alan in this film but he still looked a little too good during the middle. He took down the cop, Francois, and Phillipe back to back to back. It was a little too much hype for one guy, but I can see why he evaded capture for so long.

Phillipe isn’t a very likable main character since he intentionally decides to bring the experiments back. He knows that they were the end of his father so why go through it again? It seems to be more about pride than anything else so it’s hard to say that his soul was really in it from the start. As such, it’s a little hard to sympathize with him at times. I suppose he gets his revenge and a pretty happy ending though so he probably won’t regret it much. On that note, the ending was surprisingly happy. I certainly wasn’t expecting that, but it’s a good thing I’d say.

The film didn’t really have a role for the two heroines or Francois. Francois offered words of advice, but Phillipe ignored them all and then Francois spent the rest of the film getting wrecked and blackmailed. It wasn’t a very flattering appearance for him. The design for the fly monster and the mini fly wasn’t bad. It’s certainly interesting even if it doesn’t make for a downright epic design. I suppose we’ll take it since it’s fairly unique although almost the same as the first film.

Return of the Fly’s main issue aside from the animal violence is pretty much that nothing happens for large chunks of the film. It’s very dialogue based which isn’t a bad thing, but it comes across as more uneventful than deep. We didn’t need more action, but more likable characters. All of the dialogue just doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere and since none of the characters are developed, we don’t need to hear about their childhoods. I also don’t get why Phillipe is so scared of flies when he didn’t actually live through the events of the first film. It would have made more sense if Francois was the one who was scared of them.

Overall, Return of the Fly suffered from one major scene. It’s a bit of a shame for it since it probably could have scored a 5 or a 6 otherwise. It can be a little dull, but the writing was still fine and it didn’t make a bunch of mistakes. It could just be a little annoying to watch Alan trick everyone, but seeing Phillipe connect the dots was fun. That would certainly have helped to an extent. Still, the rat scene was in very bad taste and one of the worst animal death moments I’ve seen in a very long time. That sunk the film all the way to the bottom. One scene can absolutely change a film and this one is living proof of it. I highly advise staying away from this film and never looking back!

Overall 1/10

Lucy Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would likely be a lot more negative.

It’s time for one of those films that you know is going to be bad from the get go. That being said, you always end up being curious on just how bad it could be. Lucy lives up to the expectations and then some as it gets real gritty right from the get go. It also gets pretty abstract and meta by the end as well so you can make your own theories at the end. It’s essentially a poor man’s Salt, but with added sci-fi powers.

The film starts off with Lucy being tricked by her beer buddy. He handcuffs her to a suspicious package that he was carrying since he knows that he’ll be murdered if he actually makes it to the destination. He figures that maybe they’ll go easy on Lucy and in a sense he’s right. The Yakuza syndicate decides to spare Lucy as they surgically implant her with drugs to take across the country. The beer buddy is shot to death anyway so he couldn’t find a way out in the end. Along the way, the drugs end up breaking out of their bag so Lucy gains super human abilities. She can now manipulate time, has super strength, telepathy, telekinesis, and a bunch of other stuff. She is effectively all powerful now and decides that she will use these abilities to beat people up and find the truth to the universe. Can she do all of this without instantly abusing her powers? Afraid not

The film can’t seem to decide if Lucy is downright evil at times or if she is only evil because she believes that she is above everyone. Regardless, you see her mowing everyone down in some moments and then in others she’ll suddenly become more of a pacifist. She shoots one guy who was having an operation since she claimed that he was going to die someday anyway…but she still murdered that innocent civilian. Then…she decides to spare the main villain. She just stabs him a few times before leaving and this allows him to make a comeback and murder a bunch of cops and hospital workers before the heroes bring him down. Of all the people to let live…she chose the main villain. It does make you wonder.

Also, the problem with the film is that Lucy is too powerful. She can do anything, but still makes the humans run to the front lines. When the mobsters are after her, she sends a few agents to stop them. A lot of these men die in the line of duty while she is busy talking to scientists and making her own computer. She could have just taken them all down with a wave of her hand and then gone back to the computer. Apparently it just wasn’t worth the effort since she is so far above being human now. In case you couldn’t tell, I didn’t like the character. Lucy’s not even sure what her personality is so it switches constantly during the movie. She also lost most of her personality anyway by the end of the film since apparently having all of the powers in the universe gives you a jaded view of the rest of the world. I suppose that’s fair, but it’d be nice if she wasn’t so boring about it.

Aside from that, lets talk about why the film isn’t good. It really all boils down to the fact that the film is super violent. It goes to extreme lengths the whole time which is why the film was quite far away from getting the PG-13 rating. You’ve got a lot of people shot pointblank in the film, surgeries being performed, and naturally some pretty shifty villains who only have pleasure on their minds. It makes for a pretty hard to watch combo as the film never really lets up on this. There are no happy scenes in the entire film. Sure, Hollywood crams in one of the most sudden and irrelevant kisses in all of cinema just so the film could have that element in there, but it’s just a dreary film the whole time. Lucy treats all of the characters like her pawns and she spends most of her screen time dancing around the real questions or waiting to be asked a decent one. The “experts” are pretty annoying since they don’t ask anything meaningful either. It felt like they were extremely slow on the uptake considering that they’re supposed to be the brightest bulbs out there.

The only good scene in the film was probably the montage where we got to see the cops catch all of the kidnapped people at the airport. One of them wisely tried to evade the police, but it was all for naught. That being said, the film didn’t want us to think that it lost its edge so immediately afterwards, the cops decided to leave these people by themselves. Effectively they did that anyway as they left one or two cops, but they were easily taken down by the Yakuza. I don’t know what the plan was there, but it was pretty bad and naturally they were murdered once again in a gruesome fashion.

Lucy’s climax decides to get even more messed up as we find out that she sacrificed all of those lives for a flash drive. I’m not sure if that’s a good deal and I was half expecting the scientists to chuck it in the trash. They’d have some kind of excuse like “Humanity’s not ready for it yet” and then the film would end with the revelation that nothing was accomplished in the film’s duration. Kind of a sobering thought isn’t it? The visuals were pretty nice as Lucy gained dark matter abilities and started to run wild, but it still didn’t really amount to much in the end. It’s a problem that a lot of horror films have as well. If the villain is all powerful and the humans are ordinary mortals…then it’s not going to be very interesting. The sides are so unbalanced that there can be no fights, only massacres. You always want to have a well matched battle or at least one where the opposing side can realistically fight back.

Lucy is all style and no substance. You’ll be hard pressed to find a film more devoid of entertainment than this one. Just keep in mind the fact that there are no happy scenes in the entire film. The whole thing…it’s all extremely serious business as everyone speaks in an emotionless, monotone voice. The cast is super small as well which is probably for the best since more characters wouldn’t necessarily help matters at all. The film would just need a complete re-write to be even semi decent. I’d also say to switch out the main actress since she always seems to play the exact same character and that’s not what Lucy needs. Lucy should have focused on the fact that she got cool powers and came to terms with them to fight an alien invasion. Not getting all powerful in an instant and then getting bored with it all. It’s too much in too short of a time span. The final twist of Lucy actually being an ape was also just a face palm moment.

Overall, Lucy’s not a good film. You’ll know this within the first 10 minutes of the film and it never goes up from there. The visuals can be fun when they aren’t being used for gratuitous violence but that’s hardly enough to keep your interest. Lucy uses her powers in the most inefficient ways possible and she has no empathy for anyone. She may know a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean the data is worth everyone dying for. I’d recommend watching something that has cool action scenes while not getting too dark. Check out Man of Steel. It’s also pretty serious with almost no comedy moments, but it still keeps the atmosphere light enough for you to have some fun with it. It also benefits from having a better cast. After all, Lucy is basically the only real character here. The cop and the scientist do much aside from being around for the facial expressions and “epic” camera zoom-ins.

Overall 1/10

Fright Night Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would likely be more negative.
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Oh no, it’s my worst fears realized. Lets look at the checklist. Gratuitous violence? ✔ Horrendous writing ✔ Lots of fanservice? ✔ Animal Violence X Vampires ✔ Terrible characters ✔ Well, it may not have been a perfect score on how bad a film could be, but it’s quite bad. It’s been a while since I saw a film quite like this one, but I can assure you that this holds its own against most of the other big horror films. I still think it’s really difficult to make a vampire film good and this helps my argument. There’s just not much in the way of positives here at all.

The film starts off with good ole Charley being one of the “cool” kids. He used to be a guy who was really into fantasy, play fighting, and other things that were deemed “uncool.” As a result, Charley dumped his best friend and started hanging out with the bullies so he could look cool for a girl. It worked quite easily and now they’re together. Charley is so cool that he doesn’t care about anyone else anymore. The bullies pick on his ex-friend, but that’s not Charley’s concern. Students start going missing and it seems as if a mass murderer is on the loose, but again…that’s not Charley’s problem. It gets to be an issue for him though once his ex friend is murdered and he finds out that the perpetrator lives next door. Okay…now it’s time to care. Can Charley take this guy down to save himself and his family or is it already too late?

It’s like the old saying, “First they came for the Johns, but I stayed quiet. Then they came for the Smiths, but I stayed quiet. Finally, they came for me and there was nobody left to help” It’s like that as Charley really couldn’t care less about the rest of the neighborhood until it was just him. He’s the main character and it’s a mainstream film so it’s not as if he has much to worry about, but it didn’t make him a likable character in the slightest. The film actually goes out of its way to make him a terrible character as he refuses to explain anything. Even once he learns that the guy next door is a vampire, he refuses to tell his Mom or Amy about it because he doesn’t want to look bad. This doesn’t work so well as it comes close to wrecking all of his relationships. Luckily, they’re better characters who don’t panic at everything and actually try to talk things out. Charley just gives them a hard time about absolutely everything. He never develops into a good character as you can’t forget that he is essentially a poser who betrays his ideals just to look cool.

Jerry makes for an imposing villain I suppose, but certainly not a good one. He spends a lot of time trying to make conversation with Charley. I guess he wants to get in the main character’s head to psych him out, but he drags on and on. He was so obvious as the villain that I was expecting a misdirect from the film, but it never happened. He certainly didn’t improve my view on vampires. Edward is supposed to be the sympathetic friend that you can root for. He was ditched by Charley and as a result his social life has completely fallen to pieces. Now there is no one to help him when he gets bullied and he also has to pass by the bully’s home every single night. It’s not very fun for him and then Charley refuses to acknowledge him and this finally leads to Edward being taken out by Jerry. So, he should have been sympathetic, but what doesn’t help his case is that he resorts to blackmail. Yes, he decides to blackmail Charley with old videos of them fighting together and the old hobbies that Charley had. It may have worked, but it’s certainly not a nice move. He also started unloading some pretty personal insults at Amy which just made him even more unlikable. I forgot another part of Edward that doesn’t help his case…he’s on drugs. He casually admits this to Charley during another one of those really terrible written conversations. Even the way he lets Charley know about the vampire next door is handled pretty unrealistically.

Amy was all right as I mentioned earlier. She helped out a little during the skirmish with the vampires and at least she didn’t get paralyzed with fear the way that many characters do. Amy played her part well. Peter is the professional vampire slayer who turns out to be a fraud at first, but then we learn that he has actually encountered Jerry in the past. He’s pretty unlikable and is supposed to be that way. He helps out quite a bit in the end, but mostly he is reluctant. By the time he jumps into action, it’s a little too late to care.

So, there are a lot of negatives here as mentioned in the intro. The writing is horrendous. Luckily, the edited version cut out all of the language with the nice air filters, but with how often they occurred you can see how bad the script was. Every character was constantly yelling strings of words that make you shake your head. Even when we get past the language, the rest of the writing isn’t much better. The boring conversations with Jerry come to mind and the forced tension between Charley and all of the other characters. His excuse in the computer room for why he ditched class is another awful moment as it shows he will go to great lengths to avoid telling people about vampires even if it hurts his reputation even more.

Next, there’s the gratuitous violence. This one’s pretty obvious. The vampires bite people just about all the way through the neck and it’s pretty violent. Every character has a habit of blowing up some blood even after they’re already dead or in vampire form. The blood sucking is as irritating as usual and I don’t think I’ll ever care for that aspect. I’m still pretty surprised that there was no animal violence so that’s a good thing. The “romance” here is of the usual Hollywood variety. It’s basically just the characters deciding to skip the formalities and just jump into the making love part. It’s mostly all they talk about at the beginning and the end of the film. At least they got over all of the gruesome murders really quickly eh? The film goes for a lot of excuses to have characters in pretty risque outfits as the heroes head to a night club (Where naturally nobody notices someone getting murdered right in front of them) and Peter has a secretary with benefits rooming with him. It’s definitely not a film that tries to take the high road.

I can’t really think of any plot holes surprisingly, but if there is any then it may be with Jerry being weak against sunlight. I could have sworn that when he was planting the garden the first time he showed up that it was still daylight out. Maybe it was dark enough where the sun wasn’t potent or something. Just something that I noticed, but at least it can be explained away so that helps it a lot.

If there is one good thing about the film, it’s that the soundtrack is actually pretty decent at times. The rock music that played when Charley went to get his gear was pretty good. His montage may not have been as epic as the music would have you believe, but it was a slight silver lining at the very least. The special effects weren’t half bad either. The classic Vampire blowing up to sunlight and weapons was handled decently well. The super agility was handled pretty badly though as the Vampires moved in impossible angles with very obvious Photoshop kind of effects. It definitely didn’t seem like something you’d expect from 2011, but maybe I was holding it to too high of a standard.

Overall, Fright Night is your average horror film. It’s not very fun to watch and the characters are all poorly written. Everyone is so bad that you have to wonder at some points whether horror writers can read their scripts with a straight face. Lets put this into perspective. The kid who got bullied and ostracized by the school along with being betrayed by his friend was murdered by the main character. The bully who went around objectifying people and making the friend miserable got to live in the end. That’s just the kind of film that this is and I’d recommend sticking away from it. It’s a pretty mean spirited film and Jerry ends up being a pretty bad villain by the end. He’s even willing to use fake romance to get a reaction out of Charley, but that’s not very effective since Charley was more interested in finally getting to use his hastily prepared plan at that point. I should mention that the plan should never have worked and involved quite a lot of plot hax. Lets just say that Jerry conveniently decided to stand still and have absolutely no reaction times in order for it to work. The film stacked the deck against itself too well (As expected) by giving Jerry a great amount of regenerative abilities and speed. The writers couldn’t think their way out of that one. If you want a good horror film, check out Poltergeist 3. It’s actually a lot better than you would expect.

Overall 1/10

Hannah and Her Sisters Review

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It’s time for a film about betrayal and deception along with some drugs to add to the intensity. Hannah and her Sisters is one of those films that is held back quite a bit by the unlikable cast and it seems like everyone loses out in the end. All of the characters are just a little too warped to find interesting and the ending is certainly not satisfying in the slightest.

There are three main plots here. First, there is Hannah and Elliot. Hannah always tries to be a very reliable person who has a plan for everything. She never does drugs, lies, or cheats on her husband. This makes Elliot upset since she is seemingly so perfect and decides to cheat on her with her sister. You can probably imagine what a terrible plot this is and lets jump right to the ending here. One of the main reasons why it is so bad is that Hannah never actually finds out. Elliot is forced to give up his other affair because he was dumped and then heads back to Hannah. She’ll never know that she was just the rebound character or that her husband is actually not a loyal person.

The second plot involves Lee and Frederick. Essentially, Lee starts to regret living with a super old guy who has disillusioned himself with reality. That’s why she decides that cheating is her best way out and from there she finds a third guy and the situation continues to get more and more messed up. It’s another pretty terrible plot that will make you shake your head or even face palm if you have the energy for it.

Finally, we have the plot with the ex drug addict Holly and Mickey. Holly has finally gotten off the drugs, but now she can’t decide on what she wants to do next and switches her career choice every other day. She likes to blame everything on Hannah as well just for kicks. She meets up with Mickey who has just quit his job and plans to live his life just running around as he searches for answers. These two hit it off immediately and this plot is also rather annoying, but I will say that it is better than the first two plots.

You can already tell that this film is just pretty bad though. The characters are all given so many flaws that you can’t even tell what they’re supposed to be good at anymore. Hannah is the only character who is even reasonably good. It’s pretty obvious why Lee is no good and likewise with Elliot. That whole plot was in pretty bad taste. Holly wasn’t likable since she was always blaming Hannah for everything and never even apologized for it. I don’t see her novel idea working since the only persoin to really like it is a guy who’s slowly turning crazy and then she’ll have another confidence breakdown. Frederick’s no good either as he turns away all potential buyers even though he’s low on money. The man has way too much pride.

Mickey may add the most levity to the film, but he still gets to be too much at times. For starters, quitting his job after finally being given a clean bill of health was onie of the worst moves you can make. He also moves on very quickly as he gets dumped by someone and rebounds to the sister. That seems to be a trend in this film and it’s certainly not a good one. With how desperately the sisters are looking for a guy in this film, you can’t help but feel that all of the romance is fake. If you’ll settle for anyone that’ll have you, then something is absolutely wrong in that scenario and it’s time to reflect a little.

It’s not as if I typically enjoy romance films anyway so the deck is stacked against the movie at the start. To battle against this, a romance film needs good writing, solid characters, and a good overall plot. This film had none of that and managed to sink even lower into the genre. As a whole, it certainly doesn’t help to improve my view of it. Moreover, I’ll take a rom-comedy over a rom-drama any day even though some drama is always added in by the end anyway. At least the former doesn’t take itself so seriously and typically won’t have all of these really tragic circumstances.

Elliot really should have gotten some kind of consequences though along with Lee. Both of them had very happy endings at the end despite being the worst characters in the film. It didn’t really feel fair to the others. If everyone has the same ending despite some characters being good and others being bad, then it’s pretty iffy.

Overall, Hannah and Her Sisters is a film that I’d recommend avoiding. Between the drugs character, the cheater, the liar, the crazy guy, the old man, and everyone else, you have a lot of reasons to stay away from this film. Even Hannah’s parents are messed up as the Mom flirts with everyone despite being over 60 so the parents end up fighting a lot. Mickey’s plot may add some levity to the film and it started out pretty decent, but gradually got watered down and extreme. I think his plot shouldn’t have merged with the others and it would have been much better. Regardless, if you’re looking for a good romance film, I’d advise you to keep on looking. This is definitely not the movie that will fit the bill for you. You’re better off watching re runs of Blues Clues as that show at least offered a compelling mystery during each episode.

Overall 1/10