Lucy's Scary Movie Round-Up, Episode II

As some of you may know, Lucy is my little horror buddy, and she's recently turned nine! Here's her take on some films we've recently watched together. You can take her word as gospel.

EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS

"It is hilarious!" (This is one of her favorites, and except for maybe Jurassic Park, probably the horror movie she's seen the most times).

GRIZZLY
"It was too easy to make fun of. The bear didn't look 18 feet like the box said." (Dad is sad...he has fond childhood memories of this one).

THE HAPPENING
"Actually, my thumb is kinda sideways. It's suspenseful but not scary." (Dad concurs...plants are really only scary when his wife drags him into the yard to pull weeds)

1408
"It was so scary and freaky and sad." (Dad agrees)

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION
"Awesome!" (Ya gotta love those one word reviews!)

CONTAGION
"Awkward." (Dad's not sure what Lucy meant by that, and she took off to watch Jurassic Park again before he had a chance to ask).

22 Reasons Why THE THING is the Greatest Horror Movie of the 1980s

Starring Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David. Directed by John Carpenter. (1982, 109 min).

 
1. This is one of the few remakes that is a lot better than the original.

2. While The Thing isn't always scary, the idea of an alien consisting of individual, free-acting cells with their own "built-in instinct to survive" is a terrifying concept to wrap your brain around.

3. Like Psycho, Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist, The Thing showed us horrors we'd never seen onscreen before.

4. From beginning to end, this is arguably the most unpredictable horror film ever made.

5. Snake Plissken notwithstanding, character development was never one of Carpenter's strengths. But that actually works in The Thing's favor. Because everyone is so generic & bland, we never know who's still human and who's the thing.

6. We finally got to see what John Carpenter could do with a large budget. This was also his last truly great film.

7. In 1982, mostly thanks to Steven Spielberg, it had been a long time since visiting aliens were not-so-friendly.

8. It had the balls to end ambiguously. The Thing has the greatest open-ended finale of any horror movie in history. And Hollywood has so-far been smart enough to know not to fuck it up with a direct sequel.

9. Screenwriter Bill Lancaster (Burt's son) only wrote three screenplays during his short life. His first was The Bad News Bears, and that expletive-loaded screenplay was one of the biggest reasons the film was a hit. Today, if there is any part of The Thing which is still woefully under-appreciated, it's Lancaster's script, which manages to effectively establish these characters’ individual personalities with a minimum of casual dialogue.

10. This was easily the most graphically violent movie ever released by a major studio at the time.

11. For a horror movie, it has aged remarkably well. Whether or not they were around back then, people tend to look back many movies from the 80s with their tongues in their cheeks and an attitude of "look how silly we were." But The Thing belies the decade from which it sprang. For those of you still doubting, try watching it today with someone who doesn't know how old it is.

12. Thirty years later, the title creature is still one of the ugliest, slimiest and nastiest movie monsters of all time.

13. The "blood test" scene is a high-tension masterpiece. And despite all the slimy, goopy horrors we'd witnessed up to this point, it's the most cringe-worthy and disturbing scene in the whole film.

14. Kurt Russell's best performance. In fact, the entire cast is the best John Carpenter ever worked with.

15. Ol' Wilford Brimley kicks-ass & kills people.

16. Keith David is the original black, bald, bad-ass. In a perfect world, he would be an action movie superstar right now.

17. Antarctica is the ultimate setting for a bleak & brutal horror film.

18. Within just a few minutes, we already get the feeling everyone is doomed.

19. The Thing is a smart movie that doesn't depend on characters behaving stupidly to advance the plot (not a single horny teenager to be found). Everyone makes logical survival decisions & develops reasonable ideas on how to combat the thing. The fact that none of it works adds to the hopelessness of their struggle.

No! Not the dog!

20. When Russell shoots a hapless pooch just to put it out of its misery, we know we were in for a dark, nihilistic ride that isn't gonna pull any punches.

21. Like The Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club and Blade Runner, The Thing initially tanked in theaters, but is now considered an all-time classic.

22. It is so iconic that when Hollywood finally got around to 'rebooting' it, they wisely chose to do a prequel with the exact same title. While 2011's The Thing isn't nearly as good, it is a well-intentioned, big-budget love letter made by people who not only hold the original in the highest regard, but respect the fans who made it a classic. Not only that, it ingeniously connects the two films at the end, including the use of Ennio Morricone's (underrated) music score.

New Disc Review: PAWN (Blu-Ray/DVD)

Starring Michael Chiklis, Common, Marton Csonkas, Sean Faris, Stephen Lang, Ray Liotta, Nikki Reed, Forest Whitaker. Directed by David A. Armstrong. (2013, 88 min).

Anchor Bay Entertainment


This movie begins with the attempted robbery of a small diner in the middle of the night, but turns into a hostage situation as police surround the place. The violent gang of thugs inside, led by Michael Chiklis, threaten to execute everyone unless their demands are met.

But this is no ordinary diner...it happens to be owned by a powerful mafia boss. And these are no ordinary thugs looking for a quick score...they actually have a mission. And these aren't ordinary cops...many of them have big reasons why this confrontation should end violently. In fact, almost none of the characters in Pawn are what they seem.

A would-be cross between Rashomon and Dog Day Afternoon, Pawn unveils its complicated (or convoluted?) story in non-linear fashion, frequently shifting points-of-view in order to reveal the true intentions of its characters. It's a movie loaded with crooked cops, crooked agents and double-crossing criminals. It's revealed early on that this is no simple robbery. There are plenty of plot twists throughout the movie, which actually starts to work against it after a while. With every new revelation, it becomes increasingly obvious almost everyone who appears onscreen is part of this robbery, except the hapless, recently-paroled rube they plan to pin it on. Plot twists are only fun when you don't know they are coming (like the climax of The Usual Suspects), but Pawn tosses so many of them at us that we eventually cease being surprised.

"I said NO MAYO!"

Still, for a relatively minor-league, low budget movie, it sports a pretty impressive cast, even if most of the better-known ones aren't required to stretch themselves much. Michael Chiklis (inexplicably adopting a Cockney accent) engages in some enjoyable scenery-chewing, though his character has to be one of the dumbest criminals I've seen in a long time. Ray Liotta (whose scenes look like they were all done in a day) is a cold-blooded crooked cop (other than a psycho, who else can you play with a face like that?). Forest Whitaker is a fine actor, but to me, he always looks like it hurts to live. As for rapper-turned actor Common as a hostage negotiator...he doesn't suck, but he's no Ice Cube.

Pawn isn't a bad movie. It's slickly-made on a limited budget and is definitely worth seeing at least once. But it is also unnecessarily complicated for its own good (too many revelations that aren't that revelatory) and never reaches the heights of the classics which obviously inspired it.

SPECIAL FEATURES: Pawn: Behind the Scenes

FKMG RATING:

 

 (out of 5)

ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT and a Preoccupation With Death

Starring the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Chris Wedge, Peter Dinklage, Queen Latifah, Jennifer Lopez, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Wanda Sykes. Directed by Steve Martino & Mike Thurmeier. (2012, 88 min).

A few years ago I became deathly ill. It started off with what I thought was the flu, but without getting into unpleasant specifics, I ended up with life-threatening heart & lung issues which required a few surgeries. I was twice-put into an induced coma and spent almost three months in the hospital, during which time the odds of my survival sometimes dropped dangerously low.

Lengthy hospital stays really suck, and not just because you are sick. When you spend weeks with absolutely nothing to do but lay in bed, it fucks up your sleep patterns. I often found myself awake at 4:00 AM flipping from one infomercial to another, discovering just how bad some cable services are compared to my Direct TV subscription. During one particularly depressing night, when the prospects of my survival were still iffy, the best thing on TV was a show featuring dumbasses injuring themselves on camera, accompanied by "humorous" commentary by celebrities whose 15 minutes of fame ended during the Clinton Administration. That's when something horrible first occurred to me...what if this stupid fucking show is the last thing I ever watch?

My family came to the rescue. My oldest daughter, Natalie, offered me her laptop so I could watch movies (a huge sacrifice, considering her laptop is her world), and Francie (my wife) brought discs from home in order to pass the time. Because the prospect of death was foremost on my mind, I requested stuff that I always loved, just in case my heart did suddenly crap-out on me; I didn't want my last image to be of a guy crushing his own balls while attempting to skateboard off a roof.

So I watched a lot of old favorites...Jaws, The Great Escape, Pulp Fiction, The Towering Inferno, The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, Star Wars, etc. One exception was Alien. When you've got thirty staples in your chest, the last thing you wanna see is an Alien movie.

I've since physically recovered for the most part. Psychologically, not so much. I can't speak for everyone who has endured the same physical ordeal, but I now find myself thinking a lot more about my own mortality than I used to. Not that I'm obsessed, but I no longer look at death as some intangible thing to deal with when I'm good & ready. Every time I feel a slight painful sting in my chest, I briefly wonder if this is the beginning of the end, and if what I'm doing right that second is the last thing I'll ever do.

Chances are my death won't come at the perfect moment - right after a case of Moosehead and three helpings of my mom's lasagna, followed by sex with my wife while riding the Tower of Terror at Disneyland. No, I'll probably be at work and unceremoniously drop like a sack of meat in the middle of my classroom; some of my students will gasp, some might cry, some will whip out their phones to get pictures, and I can think of a few who'd probably poke me with rulers just to see if I'd twitch.

I think about that a lot...the last thing I'll ever do. My newfound preoccupation with mortality often has me wondering what'll be the last song I'll ever hear, the last car I'll ever drive, the last thing I'll ever write (I sure as hell hope it ain't this), the last sex I'll ever have (alas, probably not on the Tower of Terror) or the last movie I'll ever watch...

Okay...maybe I'm just a tad obsessed.

Recently, my family and I headed to my mother-in-law's for the weekend, but since it was a three hour drive and I was having one of my achy-chest days, Francie graciously offered to drive. So while she and Natalie sat up front, I climbed into the backseat with Lucy, which wasn't so bad because our SUV is roughly the size of the space shuttle, so there's lots of room. There's also a DVD player in back to pass the time, and Lucy wanted to watch the disc she just got for Christmas, Ice Age: Continental Drift. That was okay with me. We took Natalie to see the original Ice Age, which was better than I thought it would be. Even Ice Age 2 was a pretty decent sequel. As for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs...well, sometimes parents are required to make sacrifices for the sake of the children.

I'm glad we were able to avoid taking Lucy to see Continental Drift in theaters. The trailers made this fourth film look like a cynical cash-grab, concerned with appealing to undemanding kids with 3-D and a growing cast of celebrity voices. But as me and Lucy slapped on our headphones and hit the play button, I figured it would at-least be an entertaining enough way to kill time in the back seat of our shuttle.

A metaphor for marriage.

I figured wrong, because Ice Age: Continental Drift is a godawful shitfest created to vacuum the wallets of parents who can't say no to their kids. The animation is as good as usual (a notch or two below Pixar standards), but the story is clumsily cobbled together and many of the characters who were once endearing have worn out their welcome (like Sid, voiced by John Leguizamo, who was borderline-obnoxious in the first film...now I wish Diego had eaten him a long time ago). The new characters introduced in this one are even worse. Even Scrat, the hapless acorn-obsessed squirrel who was the best part of the previous films, has become boring...just the same recycled gags over and over. Staring out the window at passing trees would have been preferable.

About a half-hour into it, my chest started hurting quite a bit. It happens on occasion, but I don't usually share this with my family, mainly because I don't want to worry them, so I suffer in silence. It eventually subsided (just gas), but got my morbid brain working again as the movie played on. I forced myself to keep watching for Lucy's sake, but all the while, a horrid thought kept running through my mind: What if Ice Age: Continental Drift ends up being the last movie I ever see? What if the last voice I hear before traveling to the hereafter is a spittle-dripping sloth? That would be an awful way for a lifelong movie lover to leave this world.

Sitting in that back seat, powerless to do anything about it (Lucy was enjoying the movie immensely), I silently begged my heart to keep plugging away long enough get back home and catch The Godfather one last time. I've never demanded a lot out of life, so I didn't think it was asking much that my last movie experience on Earth be something besides Ice Age: Continental Drift.

After the movie, Lucy removed her headphones and declared, "That was awesome!" All I managed to say was, "I'm glad you liked it, honey."

On the plus side, I got to hang out in the back seat with my kid (I so-enjoy watching & hearing her laugh), and the money we spent on the DVD was a hell of a lot cheaper than wasting fifty bucks to see it in a theater (a sad state of the movie-going experience, which I'll get into another time). So after the trip was over and my chest pains had subsided, I decided that if I was to die of a heart attack in the back seat of our shuttle, at least I was with one of my kids, not in the middle of my classroom.

Having survived the Continental Drift ordeal, I'm now thinking maybe I should be less concerned about what will be the last movie I ever see, but who I'm seeing it with.

10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Cary Grant

Special Thanks to ThinkJam for these wonderful trivia facts!

You might certainly know his face, his name, and charm but one can never exhaust themselves of random facts to know about this timeless Hollywood figure. In celebration of the DVD release of The Cary Grant Film Collection, here are a few facts you may not have known about the legendary Cary Grant.

‘Gap Brand Fan’ - his favorite store was The Gap’ because they carried the only jeans he loved- Levi’s 501’s.

‘Natural Beauty Admirer’ – While makeup may be a necessity on set, off-screen he loved his leading ladies with no make up or sparse use.

‘Brains & Looks’ - trivial pursuit was a favorite board game and one of the last games played shortly before his death.

’Judy, Judy, Judy’- Often attributed to Cary, the famous quote is actually attributed to a professional impersonator that greeted Julie Garland as she walked in during one of the impersonator’s comedy sets.

‘Keep Calm and carry an American Flag’- Cary is English and became a U.S. citizen on June 26, 1942 - chancing his name from Archie Leach to Cary Grant.

‘Mole today, not tomorrow’ - He had a mole on his cheek that was removed between filming of Crisis and People will Talk in 1950 & 1951.

‘Cary as James Bond’ - He was offered the role of James Bond in Dr .No but turned it down because he felt he was too old.

‘Always the Nice Guy’- He starred in 72 films throughout his career and never played the role of the villain.

‘Peer Review’ - Alfred Hitchcock quotes him as ‘the only actor I ever loved in my whole life’.

‘Charitable Patriot’- He donated his entire salary from the film Arsenic and Old Lace to the U.S. war relief fund.

The Cary Grant Film Collection

Over the course of his legendary career, two-time OSCAR® Nominee Cary Grant* has charmed audiences with his debonair style, sophisticated wit and dashing good looks. This 6-disc DVD set includes some of his finest films and most critically acclaimed performances. From screwball comedies to romantic dramas, this must-own collection also features some of Grant's most alluring co-stars, including Deborah Kerr, Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe.

*Actor, None but the Lonely Heart; 1944. Actor, Penny Serenade, 1941

RONIN: A Video Game for Grown-Ups

Starring Robert DeNiro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgard, Sean Bean, Jonathan Pryce. Directed by John Frankenheimer. (1998, 121 min).
 
I'm a responsible, middle-aged married man and loving father of two daughters. I have been a dedicated middle-school English teacher for the past 16 years. I spend a lot of time with my family, drive an SUV, grocery shop with my wife, mow my lawn once a week and, for the most part, I'm a pretty nice guy. With the exception of my tendency to swear like a sailor and my overall physical appearance (I sorta look like 'The Dude' from The Big Lebowski), my life is a lot like Ward Cleaver's. All this considered, I'm almost ashamed to admit I love playing Grand Theft Auto, arguably the most morally disreputable video game of all time.

I've occasionally let that bit of personal info slip out in my classroom, and kids act stunned that one of their teachers would enjoy such a game. It's pretty amusing how many of them (their parents as well) assume all teachers are single-minded puritans who live, eat and breathe education 24 hours a day. Sorry to burst your bubble, kids, but some of us enjoy firing up the X-Box, and not to play Dora the Explorer.

I could provide a feeble argument that I enjoy GTA because the individual missions are challenging, but that would be like trying to convince everyone I read Playboy for the articles. To be completely honest, GTA is fun because I get to be a criminal, blow stuff up, steal shit, pick up hookers and go on a gory killing spree whenever the mood strikes me.

Regarding my frequent killing sprees...I usually let the bullets fly after I have failed a mission and have little left to lose. This is when I simply whip out my biggest weapon and commence blasting pedestrians, police and vehicles at random, and my 'wanted level' skyrockets to the point that there's no way I can escape the hundreds of cops, FBI agents, helicopters and SWAT guys trying to take me out. My goal is simply seeing how long I can stay alive before getting caught or going down in a hail of gunfire. Even though I enjoy the game, I'm not especially good at it (probably because I play only occasionally, usually after a bad day at work). And sometimes, because accomplishing some of the missions in GTA are actually a lot more work than I want to put into them, popping in a movie like Ronin is easier.

This is sort-of the cinematic equivalent of GTA, without the hookers. There are mini-missions you must complete before reaching your ultimate goal, by any means necessary, regardless of the collateral damage. The only way police will come after you is if they just happen to be driving by while you’re engaged in a gunfight or smashing up cars (which is almost never). All you really need to worry about are the folks you’re chasing (or running from). But unlike my frustration with my dubious video-gaming skills, these folks never say "Aw, fuck it" and start wiping-out everybody within eyeshot.

In Ronin, a movie loaded with plot twists, double-crosses, gunplay, and best of all, big-ass car chases, Robert DeNiro plays Sam, a somewhat anal retentive American in France hired along with a bunch of mercenaries to recover a mysterious briefcase from a bunch of thugs who want to sell it to the Russians. What’s in the case? Who knows? And who cares? It's just a MacGuffin. What matters is the chase, which gets increasingly difficult as damn near everyone in the movie screws each other over to get this case.

Road rage...some are simply better at it than others.

There are several gunfights, as well as two extended (very destructive) car chases. It was nice to see director John Frankenheimer, who helmed some of the best racing footage ever in Grand Prix, hadn’t lost his touch over the years. The seven minute chase through the streets of Paris is as good as anything in The French Connection, and it doesn’t look like Frankenheimer relied on special effects to get it done. We don't get too many classic car chases like these anymore. Today, most look like they're created through CGI or hyper-editing, with vehicles as indestructible as the Batmobile.

Another thing which makes Ronin interesting is how Frankenheimer chooses to show us the consequences of the mayhem caused by these characters. A lot of innocent people get shot in the crossfire during gunfights, or barbecued in their vehicles because they chose the wrong road on which to commute that day. However, Frankenheimer is careful not to show the film’s “heroes” directly causing any of these deaths.

It’s clearly apparent that if you want to go on a killing spree, do it in France. Despite all the carnage inflicted in public streets, there’s never a cop to be found, kind-of like Grand Theft Auto when you activate a cheat code which erases your wanted level (which I must admit I use sometimes). Or maybe the French police in Ronin are as corrupt as the cops in Liberty City...if caught, just pay them off and you’re back on the streets, even though you just destroyed half the vehicles in Paris and killed two dozen people.

Ronin's tight pacing, simple story and great acting also helps us overlook lapses in plausibility, such as when two Irish terrorists (Natascha McElhone & Jonathan Pryce) drive their car off a bridge during a chase in Paris. Despite the fact they are pulled from the wreckage barely able to crawl, they appear later on seemingly no worse for wear.

But even though I've never met anyone who didn't like it, Ronin seems to be one of those overlooked and forgotten films. I would think the virtuosity displayed in the chase scenes alone would have people ranking it right up there with Bullitt, The French Connection and Mad Max. The movie definitely has a similar 70's vibe - an era when action didn't always go hand-in-hand with spectacle. If it had been made back then, perhaps people would see it as one of the great action classics.

As for Frankenheimer, who made some unquestionably great films (Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May, Seconds, Grand Prix, Black Sunday) before wallowing in mediocrity for a few decades, Ronin was a return-to-form. In my humble opinion, this ranks right up there with his best.

And for those of you who feel you're above - or can't admit you enjoy - the guilty pleasures of Grand Theft Auto, a movie like Ronin provides many of the same thrills in the guise of a grown-up action movie.

STAR WARS and the Westgate Theater (RIP)

Starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, Anthony Daniels, David Prowse, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, James Earl Jones. Directed by George Lucas. (1977, 125 min).

This isn't actually about the movie itself. Sorry. But maybe you'd like to climb into my time machine for a few minutes...

Besides, Star Wars has been written about, worshipped & analyzed to death over the decades. A gajillion critics, fans, geeks and trolls have combed over every frame of this movie in far greater detail than I would ever care to. What more could I possibly have to add?

But I do have a unique perspective on the phenomenon of the original Star Wars, partially because I was around back then, but mostly because I live in Portland, Oregon. If you actually know the obscure connection between my hometown and Star Wars, you deserve a place in the Geek Hall of Fame.

Today, the biggest movies are released on thousands of screens across the country. In large cities, you have at least a dozen theaters to pick from and most of those are multiplexes showing it on at least two screens. Not only that, you can go just about any time you want since cinema chains open around noon every day of the week. Last summer, The Dark Knight Rises was easily the most anticipated movie of the year, yet the day after its premiere, my daughter and I were able to waltz into the theater ten minutes before it started and had our choice of the best seats.

For me, the last movie I actually had to wait in line for was Independence Day back in 1996. And I don't even remember that last time I went to a theater and the movie sold-out before I could get there. Modern moviegoers have never spent any time in a line "stretching around the block", as the old cliche goes.

"Pull my finger."

Now let's climb into my time machine and transport back to 1977. If you weren't around back then, it might surprise you to learn the biggest movies opened in only one or two theaters in town - 'exclusive engagements' - giving the impression you were privileged they were playing near you at all. Theaters showed matinees only on weekends; Monday through Friday, the box office never opened 'till around 7:00 PM. Not only that, there was no such thing as home video, meaning if you didn't catch a movie on the big screen, it might be years before you saw it on TV. So to see a blockbuster movie usually meant waiting in line.

But Star Wars wasn't simply a blockbuster. It was the mother of all blockbusters, arriving with huge fanfare at only one theater in the Portland area, the Westgate Tri-Cinema, located in the suburb of Beaverton. Since literally everyone wanted to see it (except my dad, who never liked sci-fi in any way, shape or form), this meant there was one 900-seat auditorium to placate over a million people in the metropolitan area.

I can't speak for how other cities' theaters handled the demand for Star Wars in '77, but at the Westgate, even three months after it premiered (mainly because it took that long to talk Dad into going), we were still required to wait in a giant line to buy tickets, then wait in an entirely different line in get into the theater itself, a total of about two hours (during which time Dad was getting increasingly pissed). It was worth the wait, of course, not only because Star Wars more-than lived up to the hype, but because the Westgate itself was a wonderful place with huge auditoriums, gigantic screens and plush, luxurious, rocking seats..

There was something really cool about that era. Movies seemed like a bigger deal than they are today. The biggest ones were events and our attitude was different. We went into the theater with high hopes and wide eyes, and those long-ass lines somehow made everything just a bit more epic.

The old Westgate, in the process of being demolished in 2006. A sad day.

Movies aren't special events anymore and places like the Westgate (which was demolished over a decade ago) are all gone. No one waits in line 90 minutes anymore (or even 10). While that's often a good thing, at the same time, it somehow tends to render all movies a bit smaller than they were back in the day, when we felt privileged to be watching them, not cynically challenging them to entertain us. When we go to a movie today, we mostly hope it's worth the twelve-dollar ticket price.

Regarding the aforementioned connection between Star Wars and my hometown of Portland...as I said before, it premiered as an exclusive engagement at the Westgate, which enjoyed long lines of eager fans. After roughly eight months, it expanded into multiple theaters in town. Then after all the Star Wars hype began to dissipate, the film continued to play at the Westgate over a year-and-a-half after its initial release. In fact, the Westgate was eventually the only theater in all of North America still showing the film. And there were Star Wars zealots flying to Portland from all over the world, just so they could check-out the movie on the big screen one more time.

ROGER EBERT...R.I.P.

Roger Ebert, the Yoda of movie critics, passed away today. I've been a fan of his since the late 70s, when he and colleague/adversary Gene Siskel bickered on Sneak Previews, the very first TV show dedicated to film criticism. It aired in my hometown of Portland on PBS every Saturday night. I never missed it.

In the days before the internet (unless your local paper printed his syndicated reviews), the only way to enjoy his genius as a writer was through his annual movie yearbooks, initially titled Roger Ebert's Movie Home Companion. These hefty volumes were simply awesome, containing every movie he wrote a review for that year. What made these books so great, aside from their obvious value as bathroom reading, was that Ebert was entertaining, whether he liked a film or not. He wasn't just a great critic...he was a great writer, and even his reviews of the films he hated demonstrated the same attention to craft as those he loved. In fact, Ebert was always at his best when writing about something he disliked (his books, I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie and Your Movie Sucks, are entertaining and often hilarious). I didn't always agree with his assessments of particular films, but he always provided solid and legitimate reasons for his opinion. In fact, I think some of my favorite Ebert reviews were the ones I disagreed with entirely.

He never jumped on any bandwagons. He never blindly kissed a filmmaker's ass (even if he was a big fan). He was never afraid to openly praise a movie everyone else hated (such as Speed 2: Cruise Control or Knowing), nor did he automatically heap accolades on something universally-lauded by his peers. Whenever you read an Ebert review, you knew you're reading something honest. I think that's why he was always so highly-regarded. There are countless critics on TV and the internet right now who can only dream of attaining the respect & status of Roger Ebert (including yours truly). He was one-of-a-kind and will truly be missed.

New Disc Review: MAGIC JOURNEY TO AFRICA (Blu-Ray)

Starring Eva Gerretsen, Raymond Mvula, Adria Collado, John Whitely, Veronica Blume. Directed by Jordi Llompart. (2010, 49 min).
Image Entertainment
When you read the box, Magic Journey to Africa sounds like a spectacular IMAX-type of trip into the heart of Africa as seen through the eyes of a young girl who journeys there...you know, one of those HD nature films you buy to show off your system. And I love those things. If you haven't done so already, if you have a big-ass, 60 inch flat screen TV dominating an entire wall, do yourself a favor and pick up a Blu-Ray nature doc. Just not this one.

This is no nature doc. It isn't even a docudrama. Magic Journey to Africa is a disjointed feeble fantasy about a well-to-do girl who, after seeing a little urban street urchin steal a cell phone, becomes inexplicably inspired to find out more about him. We are never shown just how she's able to track him down in a city the size of Barcelona, but she ends up finding him bedridden in a hospital. Later, it is hinted that he dies and, according to a nurse, has gone back to his homeland in Africa.

A winged equestrian contemplates
becoming a carnivore.

Then, through her dreams, the girl rides to Africa on her magic winged horse (in reality, a stuffed animal) to try and find him. She meets a variety of snarky talking animals and befriends another boy who introduces her to the people in his village. At this point, the movie totally jettisons the Barcelona street urchin storyline and becomes a series of fantasy sequences that were probably created because they'd look cool in 3D.

In fact, we don't really get to see much of the real Africa. Most of the critters are CGI characters and, despite a few token panoramic shots, this movie doesn't provide anything the average NatGeo doc hasn't given us before...and better.

Okay, you might be saying, so it ain't the nature doc it promised...is the story any good? It sounds like it might amuse the kids.

The answer to that is no. The so-called story is all over the place, with little transition from one scene to another. How this movie bridges the gap from discovering a young boy's heritage to a fantasy world where children's dreams keep stories alive is as much a mystery to me as trigonometry. In addition, the pace is slow, the acting is terrible and the CGI effects (even in 3D) are no more impressive than those in an expensive Super Bowl ad.

But don’t take my word for it. I watched this with my youngest daughter, who’s nine, more-or-less the age a movie like this might appeal to. As the end-credits rolled, she rolled her eyes and sighed, “Lame.”

On the plus side, Magic Journey to Africa is only 49 minutes long.

SPECIAL FEATURES: 2 making-of documentaries, trailers, 3D version of the film

FKMG RATING:

 (out of 5)

New Disc Review: STATE OF EMERGENCY (DVD)

Starring Jay Hayden, Andy Stahl, Tori White, Scott Lilly. Directed by Turner Clay. (2012, 90 min).

 Image Entertainment

When this disc showed up in the mail, my youngest daughter, Lucy, took one look at the box and pleaded, "A zombie movie! Cool! Can we watch it tonight, Daddy? Can we, can we, can we?" Lucy's my little horror buddy, and zombies are her favorite. We've spend countless Friday nights camped-out on the sofa watching gut-munchers of all sorts. How could I say no?

But being a zombie movie fan takes a lot of patience, since the bad ones far-outweigh the good ones. Because they're relatively inexpensive to make, so damn many are perpetually pumped-out by would-be Romeros that wading through the gore to even find ones that are "simply okay" is a small victory. For every Dawn of the Dead, there's a thousand pieces of celluloid shit some idiot shot in the woods near his house. Being a zombie fan means keeping your expectations really low.

And my expectations for State of Emergency were  low indeed. First, I'd never heard of the thing. Second, according to IMDb, director Turner Clay has almost no track record. Third, the film gets off to a bad start by being a zombie movie without any fucking zombies.

But as all zombie fans know, every now and then, one comes along that, despite its budget or lack of originality, turns out to be a pleasant surprise. State of Emergency is one of those.

Lucy and I sat patiently during the slooooow first act, following its main character (Jim) as he lays his fiancé to rest, wanders around an empty barn and finds a rifle, wanders around some more before - finally! - a zombie shows up to try and take a chunk out of him.

“It’s about time,” Lucy quipped just before Jim takes it out with a head shot.

"Damn...Ann Coulter just won't stay down."

Jim later ends up in an abandoned warehouse with a few other survivors, which is where most of the remaining action takes place. He gets to this new location with relative ease because we don’t actually see too many zombies at any given time. Since the ghouls are so individually spread-out that they almost never appear to be a constant threat, we wonder why our heroes don’t just simply make a run for it. After all, they are never attacked by more than one zombie at a time, and those attacks are few and far-between. Considering the premise involves a chemical weapons leak which renders most of the community into gut-munching ghouls, one would think the area would be crawling with them. I’m pretty sure that the sparse numbers of undead has more to do with the film’s budget than its story.

Still, there’s something about State of Emergency that’s oddly compelling. It ain’t anything original, nor does offer any unique twists to the genre. The performances are okay, but nothing special. The same goes for the make-up effects, which are serviceable, but aside from a few CGI head-shots, this would likely earn a PG-13 rating. Worst of all, there are hardly any zombies!

But while the whole fortress-under-siege thing is as old as Night of the Living Dead, director Turner manages to build quite a bit of tension and suspense. Not only that, his characters are smart, interesting and likeable, which is the movie’s biggest saving grace. We want these people to survive; the best scene by-far is the one when we learn one of them is diabetic, and Jim has to venture outside to find insulin for her.

As for Lucy, the zombie fan whose opinion I value most, she was on the edge of her seat for the entire last half of the movie.

So no, State of Emergency is not gonna make anyone forget Dawn of the Dead (or even Resident Evil), but it’s well-made on a low budget, doesn’t insult the viewer’s intelligence and even provides a good scare or two along the way. For me, this joins Flight of the Living Dead as one of those zombie movies I expected to be grade-Z crap but turned out pretty cool.

FKMG RATING:

 (Out of 5)