The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009)

This is the last of our Stars Play 11, and also the second of our UK Appreciation Week at the DTVC. I picked it to watch before Netflix dumped it in part because I had in mind the idea to do a week like this, and I'd wanted to check this out for sometime. Something of a darling on the indie film circuit, it did have a very limited (10 screens according to imdb) theatrical release here in the States, before going on to do its thing in the video market.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed follows two men (Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston), lovers, who kidnap a rich girl (Gemma Arterton), and hold her for ransom so they can run away together on the cash. But things don't go quite as planned when it's revealed that Martin and Gemma might be more intimate than Eddie realized.



For me, this is the ultimate style over substance movie. Plot-wise, this is pretty trite and well-worn territory, even if it might be packaged in a different box. But it's really well-shot, and the way the tension builds then drops and we're strung along the entire time, is something far above what you'd expect from the plot's pay grade. This is truly inspired stuff in that sense. It also goes a little bit out there, not just in its brutality, but in the way it tries to cover every detail of the kidnapping. Do we need to know how they mitigate the issue of her going to the bathroom? Maybe not, but for those who feel they need that detail, the movie gives it in a way that makes you wish you didn't ask; but also in a way that adds depth to Alice Creed's plight as a kidnap victim. While this might be, as I said above, well-worn territory story-wise, it brings more than enough to the table stylistically that it's worth checking out.

We've done a lot of action films here at the DTVC, and a common plot element in them is the classic damsel in distress. Maybe she's restrained, maybe she isn't, but the idea is she's a helpless female waiting for our hero to save her. That is not anything close to what we have going on here. This is not some perfunctory hands-tied-in-front by the baddie, which allows our plucky heroine to in some way affect her escape, this is tightly tied to the bed with a ball-gag and a hood, nothing fun or romantic about that. It's very brutal in fact. You also may remember a film I did with a similar plot called Trap, and there I talked about the sensuality in bondage that the director, Jason Horton, played upon as the story unfolded. There's no sensuality here either, unless she's a hardcore chick, this is no Valentine's Day role-play. The Disappearance of Alice Creed deconstructs the notion of the damsel in distress in popular culture, and makes it much more brutal and visceral.



That makes me wonder all the more why Gemma Arterton-- or any actor or actress for that matter-- would take a role like this. Not only would it be taxing to shoot these scenes, but, especially for an actress, none of this would look all that glamorous or flattering. She said that's why she picked this film, because it was so outside of her comfort zone, and she wanted something where she didn't have to worry about her hair and make-up. The next line most people would say after that is "you couldn't pay me enough...", except, she wasn't paid much for this either. The thing is though, no matter how good the other two actors were, this film is nothing if Arterton doesn't do what she did. I don't know how you equate it to something like Michael Fassbender starving himself for Hunger, but it's along the same lines and should be recognized as such.

Other than Arterton, Eddie Marson also has a pretty impressive Hollywood blockbuster CV (did you like my use of CV during UK week?). I almost didn't recognize him with the goatee. He's very chilling as the mastermind behind this plan, and works as a great counterbalance to Arterton's distress. Martin Compston is the man in the middle, and I don't want to give too much away by discussing his character. The only thing I'll say is it's with him that I felt like the writing was at its weakest, and as the character transitions, he feels the least organic. But, just the same, it's not the story, but the rest of the style that makes this a solid watch.



This film was shot on the Isle of Man, and, unfortunately, my school trip didn't make it over there. One place we did go was Hull. I know what you're thinking, but it wasn't so much a tour stop, as it was where our hotel was after spending the day in York. It wasn't that bad, really. My buddy and I went out to one of the local bars and didn't have a problem. It was when we got back to the hotel that we found out that some of the kids from the New Jersey class that was traveling with us had excited some locals in a Rav-4. Why anyone would start trouble in a foreign city is beyond me, but Hull? Anyway, after that we were relegated to our hotel, where my buddy and I drank and played pool.

If you're looking for a strong, brutal, taut thriller, this might work for you. It may test your sensibilities, but it's also very well-shot, and the tension is woven masterfully. This isn't for everyone, but if you like what I've said about it, I'd give it a look.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1379177/

Popcorn (1991)

We're starting to get to the end of our Stars Play 11, this being the tenth. I went with this one because, though I'd never seen it before, I remembered seeing it on the video store shelves, and while it did make about $4 mill at the box office, that still puts it safely under my $10 million maximum for qualification. Which will this be, 90s cult horror classic, or total swing and miss?

Popcorn follows the struggling film department at a small university that decides to clean up an old local theater and host a classic horror triple bill in order to make some much needed cash. In their clean up, though, they come across an old film reel, which reveals some creepy footage-- creepiest of all to our heroine Maggie, because the film is exactly like the bad dreams she's been having. Turns out her dad ran a cult, and he made that movie, with the plan that he'd kill her and her mom before the final act. He got her mom, but obviously not her, and when, during the night of the shows, her fellow classmates start dropping, she suspects old dad might be back to finish his final act.



I don't know what this was supposed to be. Camp horror comedy? Maybe, but then why is the baddie out for revenge because he was badly burned at the showing of the creepy film however many years before? That was pretty dark, getting into details about how horrible his childhood was after having his face disfigured. You gotta give us one or the other. It's either camp or dark, and when you get dark like that, you lose all the camp; but when that same dark baddie is killed by an enormous mosquito puppet, you've lost me. A lot of the film was like that too: really dark here, really campy there. A film needs one solid identity, otherwise we as an audience are lost.

The thing is, this didn't even need to be a horror film. This would've been great as a fun feel good movie about a struggling film department and what they went through to put on this show. That was the interesting part. And when the show actually happened, all the cool horror fans that attended made it even more fun. Plus the throwback horror films they made bits and pieces of for the movie were great too. Those were things that this should've leaned on more, and then developed some of the really cool characters in the students and faculty that now can be developed because they don't need to be killed off so quickly. It could've been like Summer School, only for a college film studies program.



Jill Shoelen plays Maggie, the heroine, and I bring her up, because she's in another horror flick that came out in theaters four years earlier, didn't do as well at the gate, but lived onto cult status after while this one dropped off into obscurity. The film I'm talking about is The Stepfather. I think what makes The Stepfather so superior to this, is that one, it has a clear and consistent identity, and 2, it has a real memorable baddie that is well developed throughout. So the question is, $2 million more at the box office, or cult status and a remake over 20 years later?

Other stars in this include Dee Wallace-Stone (now just Wallace) as Maggie's aunt, Tony Roberts as the film department head, and Ray Walston as some kind of Hollywood memorabilia honk who helps renovate the theater, then disappears from the film. All of these have minor parts and are really there to sell the film by having their faces splashed across the cover. Another name I thought I'd mention is Kelly Jo Minter, who plays one of the students. You may remember her from Summer School, Nightmare on Elm Street 5, or The Lost Boys. Personally, I remember her from House Party, where she told Play "I don't even appreciate how you're treating me right now." and Play replied "Ooh, but I do appreciate how you look in that dress."



Finally, I loved seeing that TDK cassette tape there. They were the ones with the ad where the guy gets blown away in his seat, right? The old mix tape, once the hallmark of any a music listening experience, now an extinct dinosaur, only to appear in 80s and 90s films. I had a buddy who as recently as ten years ago still made mix tapes. He used to get these clear dark blue ones that looked like they were made out of Clearly Canadian bottles-- Christ, even Clearly Canadian is dated, isn't it?

Before I start feeling too old, I better wrap this up. Not enough nostalgia, not sure if it wants to be camp or dark, and ultimately a miss for me. I'd get your 80s/90s trip down memory lane fix somewhere else, because this one didn't do it for me. Try the original Stepfather instead.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102690/

All Souls Day: Dia de los Muertos (2005)

This is another of the Stars Play 11, so chosen because it listed Jeffrey Combs and Danny Trejo among its stars. Those two make anything worth checking out. Of course, it's not beyond me that they probably weren't in this much either, but I figured I'd give it the benefit of the doubt.

All Souls Day is about a suspicious town in Mexico, where, on the day of the dead, zombies take it over unless a young woman of Mexican descent is sacrificed. A young couple just happen to be strolling through, a gringo and a Latina, on their way so the gringo can meet his girlfriend's parents. They get into an accident as the sacrificial procession moves through the town square, and then they stop the girl from being sacrificed. Bad move, because the zombies are coming, and unless these kids can figure out why they're coming, or sacrifice another Mexican girl-- say our lovely Latina-- everyone will be dead.



First off, let's get this out of the way: Jeffrey Combs is barely in it at the beginning, as the father of a family from the 50s that tries to stay at the local hotel and is overtaken by the zombies; and Danny Trejo is in it a little more, but is still only ancillary as a kind of de facto baddie. The main characters are Marisa Ramirez and Travis Wester, who play the couple, and Laura Harring as the woman who runs the local hotel. I'm not going to say they're bad, but they aren't Trejo and Combs-- okay, Harring might be, though not in the capacity with which they had her here-- and without Trejo and Combs, we're left with a run of the mill zombie flick with a Latin twist. There were some kills, but not a lot, and some good zombie killing action, but again, not a lot. For me, this is one of those deals where you could do a lot worse at 3AM, but I wouldn't go out of my way to track it down.

Unfortunately the best part is Jeffrey Combs, who, again, has only a very small part in the beginning. He plays this cheapskate father in the 50s who's taking his family (wife, daughter, son) on vacation in Mexico because it's less expensive. They run out of gas because, again, he's trying to save money, and then they end up in the bad town. He was so fantastic as the 50s suburban dad, I could watch a TV show that was just him in that role, say, like a throwback to the golden age of television. With zombies too. Gotta have the zombies.



Danny Trejo was solid as the baddie. His parts take place much further in the past, in the 19th century, after his gang sacrifices the townsfolk by dynamiting them in the town hall. This movie would've been so much better had it been Trejo's character and Combs's character fighting zombies. Alas, it wasn't it, and it suffered for that. What I think we need is a Combs Trejo cop buddy picture, like maybe some DTV Lethal Weapon sequels. Throw in Gary Busey, and you've got yourself pure cinematic gold.

Some other people that you might be familiar with include David Keith-- not to be confused with Keith David-- who plays Combs's son all grown up in the town, and he's who welcomes our young couple when they get there 50 years later. Even he doesn't last though, which is too bad. You gotta imagine David Keith could sort out some zombies. I already mentioned Laura Harring. For the most part her character is a one-note, until she shows some personality near the end. I think she was supposed to be creepy and mysterious, which is fine, but the film was kind of flat and could've used more from her than her character was allowed. Imagine her, David Keith, Combs, and Trejo all fighting zombies? Now that sounds awesome. The other name was Marisa Ramirez, whom I remember from Jordan Knight's video "Give It to You", but she's also done some TV and soap opera work. She wasn't bad, it's just the film would've been better if she and Wester had been supporting characters as opposed to the leads, especially with the great supporting cast we had.



Speaking of Travis Wester from Eurotrip. I absolutely love that movie, so seeing him was a bright spot-- though I would've preferred Michelle Trachtenberg if you know what I mean. I remember right before that came out on DVD, I went to my buddy's place and noticed he had a bunch of Matt Damon movies in his collection, so I was giving him a hard time, calling him a Matt Damon completist. A few days later, I got a phone call on my cell while I was at work, and he was like "dude, you have to watch Eurotrip. You'll know what I'm talking about right near the beginning." And there he was, Matt Damon, singing "Scotty Doesn't Know". Matt Damon.

But enough Eurotrip, let's wrap up All Souls Day. Not enough Trejo, not enough Harring, and definitely not enough Combs. This is your classic 3AM paper procrastination if you find it on cable kind of deal, but I wouldn't spend any money or go out of your way. There's not enough to make it worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428212/

Dracula II: Ascension (2003)

A long time ago I reviewed Dracula III: Legacy, and figured at some point I'd get around to doing this one too, and when it came up as a part of the Stars Play 11, I knew if I was ever going to do it, I needed to get it in now while it was on Watch Instantly. As an aside, Netflix lists this as starring Rutger Hauer, but it doesn't, he's only Dracula in part 3. Too bad, they could've used him.

Dracula II: Ascension takes place right after Dracula 2000. The charred remains of Dracula find their way to a morgue where workers Jason London and Diane Neal of Law and Order: SVU fame think they may have a score on their hands. A rich man says he'll pay top dollar for the body, plus, Neal's boyfriend is suffering from MS, and she thinks some Drac DNA might be what the doctor ordered. At the same time, Jason Scott Lee is a priestly vampire hunter called to duty by Roy Scheider, and he's hot on their trail. Can he stop the big fella before these kids unleash an unfathomable evil upon the world?



I don't know what you do with this one. It has its moments, Jason Scott Lee is good, as is Jason London; on the other hand, we get big spells of nothing happening. "I was riveted to the edge of my seat by the scene where Diane Neal draws Dracula's blood, and Drac makes Wings Hauser faces." "My heart was in my throat as they examined Drac's DNA." We had a few nice Jason Scott Lee vampire killings that broke up the monotony, but otherwise, we were subjected to the intrigues of a bunch of not-so-compelling characters. Definitely no Blade 2, I'll tell you that.

Going back to my review of part 3 back in 2008, one thing that helped that one was the higher Jason Scott Lee quotient. Him kicking ass always works, and when compared to smug hipster med students intriguing against one another for Drac's blood, it's no contest. I noticed too in the part 3 review that I misunderstood the Cliff's Notes version of part 2 that part 3 gave us. Jason London was not Jason Scott Lee's sidekick here, which was another thing about that one that made it better than this one. London and Lee have better chemistry than anyone in this had with anyone else-- plus, they were more fun to watch separately, and it was disappointing that they weren't in the film more. One of those rare situations where mistakes made in one film are rectified in the sequel.



Here's Brande Roderick. We get her in this scene, we get her a little later in black leather pants, then Drac gets her, and she comes back one more time in her underwear as a vampire and Jason Scott Lee finishes her off. Come on movie, help me out a little here. Out of all the people you want to limit the screen time of, Roderick has to be at the bottom of the list. All those scenes of these not-so-compelling med students doing whatever they're doing become so much more compelling and intriguing when they have a Brande Roderick wearing black leather pants in them. It was a bold move on the part of the film makers to think they could forsake Brande Roderick in leather pants and keep us interested on the strength of the film's plot, a bold move that failed.

There was something very Wings Hauser-ish about this Dracula. He had this penchant for staring at people with his mouth open in a way that reminded me of Wings. You know how Wings does that? That quintessentially Wings face with his mouth slightly agape. It kinda makes me wonder, why didn't they just cast Wings? Has Wings ever played a vampire before? Wings as Dracula is the one scenario I see where we could potentially have a vampire movie that tops Blade 2 for my best of all time. I don't know if it's too late, if Wings is too old for it to work, but I'd like to see it attempted.



You probably don't recognize this guy, or, if you do, you have no idea why I'm posting his pic here. If you go way back into the archives, you'll find a movie I did called Werewolf Hunter: The Legend of Romasanta, a Julian Sands werewolf flick about nothing in particular. This guy was in it, totally naked, running next to a Sands in werewolf form, his twig and berries flapping as he went. Now, whenever I see him in something else, he's the Naked Guy from Romasanta. It's a great name to have.

Out of the three films, part 3 is the best, but you may want to watch part 2 to understand part 3 better. I don't know though, I could've lived my life without seeing this one, and I would've been fine. Maybe if you see it on cable or something, you might enjoy it-- or you might just be better skipping it and watching something else.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0336325/

Shark Attack (1999)

This is yet another of the Stars Play 11. As you may or may not know, we did the third film in this series, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, complete with its famous line, and I've always wanted to go back and see where this saga begins. When I was notified that Netflix was dumping it from Watch Instantly in the Stars Play purge, I knew I needed to make it happen, especially for the Casper Van Dien factor.

Shark Attack takes place in South Africa, where a shark scientist colleague of Van Dien's is killed in a freak shark attack, prompting him to rush to the scene and see what he can do. Things go a little deeper than he expects though. The sharks are crazy, they're killing the local fishing trade--which helps local entrepreneur Ernie Hudson, who is buying up all the local businesses--but the shark's behavior is very un-shark-like. Van Dien's old shark studying buddy Bentley Mitchum, who has his own lab in the town, is suspiciously coy about all this, while Van Dien's dead buddy's sister looks like she'll make for a good love interest. Will CVD manage to solve this shark mystery and get the girl before the credits role at the 88 minute mark?

You know it. I liked this movie. I don't know how to describe it, because it isn't exactly a shark attack movie, despite its name. It has sharks, and sometimes they attack, but there's more Scooby Doo style mystery going on, with some B-movie action elements thrown in, and then the occasional foot dangling in the water what's gonna happen to it that we want from a shark flick. I don't know what you make of that, but in a weird way, it worked for me. Also liked Van Dien, Hudson, and Mitchum; plus Jennifer McShane, she who the great line in part 3 is directed at, plays Van Dien's love interest, so that made things even more fun. I guess that's how best to describe this, just a fun flick.

If I were the Made for TV Connoisseur, Casper Van Dien would be an inaugural member of our Hall of Fame. Looking at his IMDb bio, he has tons of TV movie credits--even this one is listed as a TV movie, but I made an exception because I can do that. You gotta like Van Dien in a role like this. He's like a combination of Fred from Scooby Doo, the hunky scientist type from the 50s monster movies, and your more common 90s action star, the third one being what you probably most expect from him after Starship Troopers, but the others working well too. Van Dien's usually pretty solid in whatever he's in, it's more a matter of how good he material is he has to work with, and I think here it was a lot of fun, and he was able to make it more fun.

Ernie Hudson, something of a villain in this. I know, you'd think in a movie called Shark Attack, it'd be the sharks, but no, it's him. He has this South African accent that he affects here and there rather inconsistently, which is good. If you're going to affect an accent, I always say do it halfway. I believe this is the first time we've seen Hudson as a villain here at the DTVC, which was a good change of pace from the supporting role as the hero's buddy that's more common. Also, I didn't know this, but he was born in Benton Harbor, Michigan. All Mitchell MST3K fans will get that reference.

Talk about your awkward situations--or maybe not--Casper Van Dien's ex wife's brother is Bentley Mitchum. According to IMDb, Van Dien and Mitchum's sister filed for divorce in 1997, and this was released in 1999, so you do the math. Were they shooting during the break-up? Was the on-screen tension between their characters the result of some real life tension? It's interesting, because I see these facts in the IMDb listings, and they're so antiseptic and matter-of-fact, that it takes a second to go "hey, in Bentley Mitchum's bio, it said he's the ex-brother in-law of Casper Van Dien. That's kind of pertinent to this review." Or as I said above, maybe it isn't.

Is that CVD hitting the climbing wall? Even though the scene is barely a second long, any climbing I see I have to get on here. I have to confess, I'm still very much a novice, and I don't have very much experience. But the way they were climbing, just going for any foot and hand-holds as opposed to hitting a fixed route and difficulty, that's something I could definitely do. It's always good to see some climbing in a movie, even it's only a small cameo.

If you can get this used on DVD or VHS, or if it airs on TV, I say go for it. It will satisfy your B-movie cravings, definitely a fun watch. Sometimes you see a movie like Shark Attack on the shelves or on your TV guide, and it looks like a good time, but then you watch it and it doesn't deliver. Well, this one delivers.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0161970/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

And Soon the Darkness (2010)

This is yet another of the Stars Play 11. There were a few reasons why I wanted to catch this one before it got the dump: I liked Amber Heard in both The Ward and The Informers, and wanted to see her here; I love Karl Urban, and couldn't let an opportunity to get him on the DTVC go by the boards; and finally, as I'm sure you know, I'm a sucker for mountain scenery, and where better to get it than Argentina? (Also, this will be another one where I discuss the ending, so heavy spoiler alert when I get there in the seventh paragraph.)

And Soon the Darkness is a remake of a film from 1970 of the same name. Here we have two girls, Amber Heard and Odette Yustman, finishing their bicycling trip in a small town in Argentina, and ready to catch a flight home, which they plan on doing the next morning, as long as they can catch the bus out of town. But Yustman's partying the night before causes the girls to oversleep and miss their bus, meaning they're forced to spend one more night. This is too much, and the girls are getting in each other's nerves, so they split up, only to have Heard come back to the rendezvous point and find Odette gone. Now it's a frantic struggle to find out what happened to her, before the darkness sets in and she's gone forever.



For the most part I enjoyed this. It was kind of silly and paint-by-numbers in some of the elements-- like how the girls have complete make-up kits in their tiny traveling backpacks--, but for the most part it did it's job and kept me sufficiently tense and interested. I liked Heard and Urban, Yustman wasn't in it as much, but she worked too. There was also that excellent mountain scenery, plus some excellent scenery in the form of Heard and Yustman-- unfortunately Urban remains well clothed throughout the film, so this isn't an equal opportunity ogler--, and some really nice sets, especially near the end when they were in an abandoned village. What turned me off is what often turns me off in these types of pictures: the ending ends up all over the place. I don't want to give it away too much before I get to the second to last paragraph, but we were kind of reaching a sufficient climax, and I noticed we still had a fair amount of film left, and sure enough, it went off the rails. I don't know if the original did the same thing, and they wanted to be faithful to that, but either way, it was a little much. All in all, not bad, but nothing special.

The eye candy in this was pretty hardcore. That scene where Heard and Yustman are sunning themselves in their bikinis almost hurt they looked so good. (They also made sure there was a close-up from behind of Yustman taking off her shorts over her bikini bottom, just to get in that gratuitous butt shot.) I don't know which I would've preferred, to have them be realistic looking and haggard after a long bike tour, with very little make-up, or to go the traditional Hollywood route like they did, where the girls stuffed professional make-up artists into their small backpacks. I imagine I know which one the girls' agents preferred, and that's why we got the ones we got; but I also think the film makers wanted the image of the girls as these American princesses that are brought into sudden contact with the harsh realities of the developing world, especially because, as they go through their ordeal, they end up looking much more haggard. I think that adds to our fear too as Westerners seeing them in a foreign place.



Love Karl Urban. Excited to finally get a chance to see him on here too. He plays a mysterious Westerner in the same town as the girls. Is he their ally or a co-conspirator? Whatever he is, he's awesome, I just wish there was more of him. You can never have enough Karl Urban. I can't wait until the new Chronicles of Riddick and Star Trek movies come out so we can see him in those again. I was so stoked to see him as Bones, playing one of my favorite Star Trek characters. He would've made DeForest Kelley proud.

One thing they touch on slightly is the brazenness of baddies here to kidnap an American girl. I don't say that to be jingoistic or Toby Keith "we'll put a boot in your ass" patriotic, I say it because the last thing I'd want to do is kidnap an American pretty white girl and deal with that eventual publicity. I don't assume that all Argentinians would be familiar with the American penchant to be captivated by the trials and tribulations of pretty white girls, but any that engage in a kidnapping ring must have some clue who Natalee Holloway is. I can't think of anything that would've bumped Casey Anthony off the frontlines like a story about two girls gone missing in Argentina. Next thing you know, your town is crawling with American press, then American PIs and investigative journalists trying to make a name for themselves-- come to think of it, this might have made a better ending to the movie.

SPOILER ALERT!!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!!

Like the film Trap I reviewed a couple weeks ago, this film killed off the kidnapped girl, in this case right after she was rescued. And they did it classic cop out style too: by her falling on the ground and hitting her head. We go through 45 minutes of tension and wondering if Heard will save her friend, and when she actually does, we're rewarded with that? It just makes me wonder what I'm investing my energy in. It only gets worse from there, as the film proceeds to fall off the rails. The local sheriff is in on it, Karl Urban is killed off, and Heard is captured. We then get a final fifteen minutes of escapes and recaptures and cat and mouse games in multiple settings, none as good as the abandoned village I thought the movie was going to end in. If you want my take, I think the whole having the cop be a baddie was too much. We had enough by getting the girls out of the abandoned broken down hotel and to Urban and the cop, why tack on 15 minutes just to tack it on? If it's a length issue, just add an epilogue and slow down the credits. Sometimes simple is better.

END SPOILER END SPOILED END SPOILER END SPOILER

You could either rent this one on DVD, or keep an eye for it on cable. I'd do the latter if I were you, just because this is good, but not spectacular. I watched it late at night when it was still on Watch Instantly, so a late night cable cure for insomnia might be the way to go. (Also, you noticed I had to include those mountains. I couldn't help myself.)

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1391034/

American Bandits: Frank and Jesse James (2010)

Here we have another member of the Stars Play 11. What made this one a must-see before it was dumped? Fred Olen Ray directed, starring Peter Fonda and Jeffrey Combs. Is that not a must-see for you too? (A little warning: I'm about to kill this movie. My review is in no way intended to be an indictment of the entire Southern United States, merely the misguided notion that the South was wronged in the Civil War and post-War reconstruction, while not once mentioning the evil practice of slavery.) American Bandits: Frank and Jesse James takes place in the South after the Civil War. Upset that the North told them they couldn't own other human beings, and bitter about the fact that all their "honor and glory" in defending such an abhorrent practice couldn't save them when the North came down on their asses with a vengeance (including Mainer Joshua Chamberlain), a few have decided that guerrilla attacks on American governmental convoys is the honorable way to accept the war's outcome. Foremost among them: two real American heroes in Frank and Jesse James (Frank played by Tim Abell and Jesse played by a mix of a Poor Man's Brad Pitt, a Poor Man's Karl Urban, and the mysterious guest star on a CW teen drama-type). The dishonorable Northerner marshal (Peter Fonda) wants these two honorable bandits brought in at any cost, but the man chasing them is a Southerner too, and kind of likes the James brothers. Will they escape alive? Wow, I didn't know people still made movies like this. It's one thing to get something like Gone With the Wind in the 1930s, when people still wore black face-- not that that was okay then, but we like to think we've come a long way since then, that that kind of thing is no longer acceptable; and at least in Gone With the Wind, one could make the argument that it was their inability to cut loose the more abhorrent aspects of their way of life, like slavery, that overshadowed their more admirable traits. We don't get any of that here though, all we get is "the South is great, and they were so wronged in the Civil War". On top of that, we're now rooting for two villains that want to preserve the Southern way of life, including slavery. Why not just go full DW Griffith and have the Klan race in on horseback and save Frank and Jesse as Jeffrey Combs has them at gunpoint. Oh yeah, and it's also a Peter Fonda bait-and-switch. Don't wanna forget that. Jeffrey Combs is only in this at the beginning and the end, and is something of a baddie because he tries to double cross Frank and Jesse-- though they tried to double cross him first by walking off with his portion of the money and making him meet them later on at a ghost town. Did Combs not read the script in advance? Did his agent suggest this one without letting him know what he was in for? Maybe he thought by being a bad guy, the racially insensitive element staining the film wouldn't rub off on him. Well, he's right, because I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here. According to his imdb bio, Fred Olen Ray was born in Wellston, Ohio, which is in the southern part of the state, east of Cincinnati. With that knowledge, it's not inconceivable that he'd have grown up with a "South will rise again" mentality, and people like Frank and Jesse James depicted as heroes. Is this his true belief, that the US would be a much better place if the South had won? Man, I hope not. Besides, if you know anything about American history, you'd know that a depression hit not long after the Civil War, forcing the North to abandon its reconstruction efforts, which allowed the South to go about their business, only replacing slavery with de facto slavery in the form of an apartheid that lasted unchallenged until the 50s and 60s. As a straight male, when I see a beautiful woman, there's very little that she can do that will make her unattractive. Defending a way of life that included the dehumanizing practice of owning other human beings though is a major turn off. In this case, Lauren Eckstrom plays Jesse James's love interest, and she's a very stunning woman; but the moment she starts talking about how much better the South was before the North came down and sorted them out, she might as well be Cpl. Klinger in drag. Racism is never a good look. The imdb page said this movie was filmed in Canyon Country, CA, but that picture looks like the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Either way, that's not the point, the point is, if the South had had their way, the only African Americans visiting the Grand Canyon would be slaves carrying their master's bags in lieu of donkeys. There's your "honor and glory", defended by a horde in white sheets, burning crosses and stringing up human beings off of trees. Every time this movie sanctimoniously brought up the South's "honor and glory" it made me sick to my stomach. It's actually ironic that this film would choose an image of the US National Parks system though, because one of the best representatives of freedom and equality in this country are our parks and monuments, whether it's the Buffalo Soldiers administering Yosemite, or Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That's true honor and glory, something worth defending. I'm still stunned that this movie exists, and that Fred Olen Ray of all people would make something like this. Maybe he just didn't know what he was doing, or what his film was saying. I don't know, I heard a lot of mentions of the South's "honor and glory", and no mention of the dehumanizing practice of slavery that they were so honorable in defending. It's bad enough in 1939, but in 2010, it's unacceptable. I understand that there was a bunker mentality after the war that made the North villains to Southerners, whether they agreed with slavery or not, but none of that nuance was on display here; I also know the North was far from perfect, but this movie isn't about the North, it's about the South and some myth of "honor and glory" that's total BS in this context. Oh yeah, and did I mention it's a Peter Fonda bait-and-switch to boot? For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446675/

Tank Girl (1995)

Way back when I did my look at comic book movies for my Wild Card posts, about two years ago, late in the game a few people came to me and suggested I do Tank Girl. It seemed like a no-brainer, except my line-up was already set. So I set it aside, kind of forgot about it, and then it sprang up as a part of the Stars Play 11, and I knew I couldn't let it disappear from Watch Instantly without seeing it and putting it up for review on here.

Tank Girl stars Lori Petty as our eponymous hero, a girl living in a future where a large comet has smashed into the Earth and for whatever reason affected the climate so much that it hasn't rained in 11 years. As you can imagine, that makes water a very valuable commodity, and Malcolm McDowell's evil corporation wants a monopoly over what's left. That puts Tank Girl in his crosshairs when her commune is discovered to be siphoning water from his plant. So he sends his troops in, they destroy it, capture her, then she escapes with one of their tanks. Now she has them in her cross hairs, and is ready to exact some revenge.

I don't know how I didn't see this movie when it first came out, or how I went this long without seeing it, or that it took Netflix having to dump it for me to finally see it; but I guess it's important that I've seen it now, and it's fantastic. I feel like this is the movie that Sucker Punch was sold to me as, or it's the movie Catwoman wanted to be but wasn't. This isn't an action movie made for guys with women as eye candy in the leads; but it also doesn't lean on the novelty of being an action movie with a legitimate female protagonist. It has a lot of other elements I enjoyed, like this very authentic 90s music aesthetic, from the soundtrack, to the clothes, to the sets and cinematography. The cast was great too, with Petty as the perfect heroine and McDowell as the ultimate baddie, Naomi Watts, Ice-T, and Jeff Kober in supporting parts, and people like Iggy Pop and James Hong in cameos. This immediately jumps into my top five all-time favorite comic book/comic-strip movies.

Gotta start with Lori Petty, who I remember at the time seemed like the only person who could play this part, and as it turns out, that's pretty accurate. What I found different between her character here and the one she played in Point Break, is that in the latter, she's Kathryn Bigelow's metaphor for the woman who tries to play by the man's rules, but still ends up being relegated to damsel in distress status; while here she's not playing by the man's rules, she's tearing them down and recreating her own, and ultimately she prevails. I think both work because Petty makes them work, but here it's more on her to pull it all off, and she doesn't disappoint.

Of all the supporting people in this, I had to make a special mention of DTVC favorite Jeff Kober. I can't believe it's been almost 3 years since his last film on here. When we started the DTVC, I figured Kober would be an integral part of what we had going on. Not a Hall of Famer, but at least a semi-regular. Funny how things work out like that. And when we finally do get back to him after three years, he's covered in kangaroo make-up. Well, at least he got the girl. Here's to you Jeff Kober, you're one of the good ones, and I'm sorry we haven't gotten you on here in so long. Also of note, another DTVC favorite, James Hong, has a small cameo as McDowell's doctor.

Two interesting roles here in Malcolm McDowell as the baddie and Naomi Watts as the sidekick. McDowell was as you'd expect him to be, sufficiently bad, but really having fun with it. I imagine, if this had been bad, he still would've been solid, the way Dennis Hopper was often solid in a lot of these kinds of movies that really were bad. Watts was different, because we're used to her as a sexy leading lady, where here she's more a meek wallflower type who discovers her agency as the film goes on. If you look at her IMDb bio, she doesn't break out in Hollywood for another 6 or 7 years, when she did Mulholland Dr. and The Ring in quick succession.

In addition to having a really sweet soundtrack--including Devo doing a re-recording of their own song "Girl You Want" to make it sound like Soundgarden's cover of it--we had some musicians acting in the film as well. Ice-T had the biggest part, as one of the kangaroo people. We're used to seeing him around here, though at the time he hadn't started his major DTV run of the late 90s/early 2000s that we're more familiar with him for. Then we had two cameos that stood out. Dawn Robinson of En Vogue played the image of a woman at the brothel telling women what to wear. The other was my man Iggy Pop. This is actually the first time we've seen him at the DTVC. Best concert I've ever been to was Iggy Pop at the Avalon in Boston in 2001. It was so good, I forgot the opening act--which sucked--even played, and even though I was dead tired from traveling 5 hours to get there from Bangor that day, I couldn't stop moving, the music was that good.

But this post isn't about how amazing Iggy Pop was in concert, it's about how amazing this movie is. It might not be for everyone, but it was definitely for me. You can get it on DVD or VHS, more likely used than new, but either way it's worth it. You can also rent it off of Netflix even if you can't get it on Watch Instantly.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114614/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Vice (2008)

This is one that's been on my radar for some time, so when I saw that it was one of the many Stars Play flicks that were getting the dump on Watch Instantly, it became an instant priority to watch it (hey-oh!). Perhaps of all the Stars Play 11 then, this is the one I wanted to watch most. Let's see if it lived up to that promise.

Vice has Michael Madsen as a vice cop who, after a drug bust gone bad, accidentally shoots an unarmed hooker, and has fellow vice cop Daryl Hannah plant a gun on her. That coincides with the drug lord that escaped the drug bust, Darius, sending his goons around to kill the members of the vice squad. Why would he be doing this? Was there more to this bust than they know? Is someone dirty?



This was a pretty solid flick on it's own up until the last twenty minutes. It was just a gritty, dirty, foul police drama, with a cast anchored by Michael Madsen, a nice script and story, and some equally nasty sets and cinematography. Then, in that last twenty minutes, it becomes something else. It's as if Michael Madsen is unleashed. Before it was pretty good Michael Madsen, the kind of thing where you go "nice, I love Michael Madsen", but then it's like "oh my God, I frickin' love Michael Madsen! This is amazing!" He has this one scene, where his partner is killed, and he loses it. And it's from that point that this film transforms, becomes almost Bad Lieutenant in intensity, only with Michael Madsen being quintessentially Michael Madsen the way Harvey Keitel was quintessentially Harvey Keitel. For me it made a solid movie a can't miss.

We've been through a fair amount of Michael Madsen here at the DTVC, and they've run the gamut from bait-and-switch or we wish we had more Madsen, to really great Madsen and the kind of thing you came for. This movie was firmly in that latter category, until his buddy dies, and then he surges right off the meter. And what got me, was it wasn't just that scene, it was every scene after. It makes me wonder, when you consider these scenes probably weren't shot in sequence, how he pulled that off. Who cares, it's there, and it's that good. I said earlier in the year that I wanted to get more Madsen up here, and this more than delivered.



I really liked the atmosphere of this film. So often we see modern film makers unable to pull off dark and gritty, usually tacking on a severed finger in an interrogation scene to an otherwise paint-by-numbers actioner. We had no severed fingers here, yet this had all the atmosphere it wanted, and much more organically. It's about more than a severed finger, it's about dialog, sets, performances, costumes-- and it's refreshing to see it done well for once. Also, this had some male full frontal nudity (sorry ladies and some males, it wasn't Madsen), including naked running, which, for a guy, just doesn't seem to work. I have a feeling, if I polled all my readers, they'd prefer the severed finger to the male full frontal nudity running. I don't know though.

Figured we'd look at some of the rest of the cast here. Daryl Hannah played the one woman in the vice squad, trying to earn respect from her fellow officers. It would've been very easily to make her a total dude, or make her a total damsel in distress, and this went in another direction, just making her a woman detective fighting for her spot. It sounds easy, but we seldom see it. Mykelti Williamson plays Madsen's partner. No mention of selling or preparing shrimp though. Kurupt, former member of Tha Dogg Pound, and known as much for the corrupt spelling of his name, has a cameo as one of the dealers in the opening drug bust. One of my favorites was Mark Boone Junior, who played one of the other vice cops. Always like seeing him. Couple other notables were John Cassini as Boone's partner, and Nicholas Lea as a homicide detective. Finally, I wanted to make a special mention for Aaron Pearl, pictured above. I don't know what it is about this guy, but I think he's the bee's knees. Can never get enough Aaron Pearl.



Someone who didn't star in this was the late Chris Penn, but the film was dedicated to him. According to the trivia section of this film's imdb page, Madsen had celebrity attorney Vicki Roberts host a private screening of Vice, which Penn's mom attended. It's weird, because I felt while watching the film that this was something Penn would've been great in, so I think it's really cool that the film was dedicated to his memory. To further the sentiment, I'm going to tag him, even though he wasn't in the movie. Here's to you Chris Penn, you were one of the good ones.

And this is one of the good ones. DVD, probably can rent it anywhere, and I say do it, it's worth it. If you can find it used to buy, I'd do that too. Even without Madsen going off for the last 20 minutes, this is a good watch; but with that, it's something more. This is better than the Michael Madsen you came for, so don't miss it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762145/

Steel Sharks (1997)

He we are with the second of the Stars Play 11, and I believe the only one with a DTVC Hall of Famer in it. Good old Gary Busey, and we know we always need to get some Busey up here anyway, so why not put him in now. This one also has Billy Dee Williams and Tim Abell, so it's got a pretty promising start--on the other hand, it's a movie about subs, which usually doesn't work on the DTV level. Let's see how it went.

Steel Sharks is about a chemical weapons expert who's been kidnapped by the Iranians so they can tap into his know-how and bump up their WMD game. Billy Dee Williams, a high ranking naval officer, sends in his best SEAL team, but they run into problems and are taken captive and held on a submarine in the gulf. Luckily, sub captain Gary Busey is out there too, manning the USS Oakland. Combine that with the SEALs looking to make an escape, and it all spells bad news for the baddies.

I liked this one on a late 90s DTV bad actioner level. It has enough going on to keep me interested, and, while it's not outstanding, it gets me to to the church on time. It's a weird combination of styles, where we have the over-the-top (Stallone style) PM Entertainment-esque shoot out, with massive amounts of ammunition unloaded and explosions aplenty; then it transitions into Die Hard on a sub, as our SEALs look to make their escape. You'd think all of that would spell a low level of Abusiveness, but that's not the case either. He makes tons of great Busey faces, and has tons of great Busey lines, as he leads his sub through the film's conflicts. Even better is watching him play off of character actor and major That Guy Larry Poindexter. Throw in Billy Dee Williams, who's great in anything; and Tim Abell who's solid as a member of the SEAL team, and you've got a good, late 90s bad actioner.

As I said above, this film is fairly Abusive. I was worried, because he's introduced around the 25-minute mark as the SEAL team embarks on its mission from his sub, and then, I figured he'd be pretty much done once they left and went on their way. Not at all. Once they get into the sticky situation, he's right there, and he has tons of funny anecdotes and goofy faces, everything you'd want from a Busey flick.

People often ask me, "who's your favorite Star Wars character?" That's right, Lando Calrissian, played by one Mr. William December Williams. He's going to be 75 this year. 75! To put it in perspective, five days before he turns 75, I'll be 33, which was the same age he was when The Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980. Even in this he was closing in of fifty--and fifty after it was released--and he was still as cool as the other side of the pillow. As a fellow Aries, I should've been making a better attempt to review more of his stuff, especially since my buddies and I have watched so many of them back when I was in high school.

This movie did a great job mitigating the issues inherent in a submarine flick, especially of the DTV variety. Instead of trying to make stock footage of subs cut with actors yelling out random coordinates, other actors yelling back that they can't do it, shots of blips on radars, ending with an explosion superimposed over the stock footage, then some Star Trek-style bridge shaking; this film only went to that well a little bit, and did it with Busey anchoring the on set scenes. For the most part, instead, it was solid action with guys shooting, fighting, and setting each other on fire, which is what we come to an action film to see, not stock footage of subs.

I wanted to take this last paragraph to spotlight Larry Poindexter. He's usually a bit player verging on a character actor, who has around 125 IMDb credits in his CV. The guy is just solid, whether he's a police detective, some teen's off-beat dad, or a junior officer working under Busey like he is here. In a way, his character attempting to make sense of Busey is like us, the viewer, trying to make sense of Busey too--he's a metaphor for our viewing experience. Here's to you Larry Poindexter, you're one of the good ones.

You can get this on DVD relatively cheap, so that's what I'd do. Not something you want to go out of your way for, but if you see it in a bargain bin or used for under $5, don't hesitate to pull the trigger. This is the Busey-helmed bad actioner you came for.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117738/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

The Big Bang (2011)

If you hadn't already heard, Stars Play chose not to renew their agreement with Netflix to stream their films on Watch Instantly, meaning on February 29, 2012, hundreds of movies got the ax. That left me with a mad scramble to watch and capture images for no less than 11 flicks that I didn't want to miss out on so I could review them here at the DTVC. This is the first of those. I'm going to tag them with "Stars Play 11", to give them a unique distinction in the archives. So without further ado, The Big Bang.

The Big Bang stars Antonio Banderas as a PI in Vegas, called in to find a stripper for a former Russian boxer that just got out of jail. As he peels back the layers, though, things aren't what they seem-- when are they ever?--, and he finds he may have bitten off more than he can chew. But for a real hard boiled private dick, there's no case too tough to crack-- and end up with the dame in the process.



This was pretty fun. Don't get me wrong, it had a flashback exposition style that was tedious and intrusive at first, but got better as it went; and it suffered from those moments of self-indulgence that seem to plague so many Film Noir efforts made after the mid-90s. Overall though, the pros outweighed the cons. The cast was pretty good; the story, when it was allowed to be told without breaks, worked; Banderas was perfect as the lead; and it had this unique inclusion of physics references mixed in. I also really liked the use of color, some of the shots were really striking. Definitely worth checking out.

Most of my Antonio Banderas experience comes in his Pedro Almodovar flicks, which are all fantastic, and which he's is great in all of. He was much younger in those of course (except the recent The Skin I Live In), and the roles are much more off-beat than what he did here in the States, where he was much more of a traditional leading man. What I liked about his performance in The Big Bang, was that he was able to marry both aspects, the off-beat with the more conventional, to give us a great hard boiled Noir detective in a film like this that's a little out there. Without his performance, I don't think any of this works.



There are a whole host of other stars in The Big Bang. Snoop Dogg plays a porn director, which, is what it is-- one of those moments of self-indulgence I'd say, I mean, I don't see how him playing a porn director is any different from him performing on a Katy Perry track or appearing in a soft drink commercial. Two of my favorite That Guys, Delroy Lindo and William Fichtner, play police detectives putting the squeeze on Banderas. How do you not love those guys? Our Noir dames are Sienna Guillory and Autumn Reeser, both sufficiently hot and mysterious. Jimmi Simpson plays a young physicist prodigy working for Sam Elliott-- who we'll get into next. Finally, James Van Der Beek plays a crazy actor in a small part at the beginning. Cue the I don't wanna wait...

I don't know about you, but I've had it with this sententious, sanctimonious Sam Elliott voice-over work in bad commercials that we're constantly subjected to. It wasn't so bad with "Beef, it's what's for dinner", but now it's as if the shite he's peddling is somehow superior just because he says it's so; that instead of being a corporate shill, he's waxing poetic about some mythical blue collar way of life that's just dripping hypocrisy considering the big business source. Anyway, it was good that his character in this was totally full of shit. It was as if the character was based on the real him-- here's this pompous ass spouting off this "better than thou" BS, and in the end is revealed for who he is. Whatever happened to the legendary bouncer mentor from Road House? Maybe when "it was tails", it killed more than just his character, it killed his tact too.



I took physics as an undergrad when I started out as an electrical engineering major. The final didn't have partial credit, and as a freshman, I was living off of partial credit, so that sunk me, and I ended up with a D+, my only grade that poor out of my entire college career. It also meant when I switched majors, I was the only anthropology major with Calc-based physics as his science gen-ed. Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is, physics isn't an entirely foreign subject to me, but not one I'm totally comfortable with. I was able to get a lot of the references though, like "Schrodinger's" painted on the side of the movie studio building, or the cafe named "Planck's Constant". As long as you're not making me write out page-long equations to find one value with no partial credit, I'm good.

I imagine this is pretty readily available on DVD, and I think it's worth checking out. Anchored by a fantastic Antonio Banderas performance, with an off-beat story, a nice supporting cast, and some sharp visuals, this is better than your usual DTV Noir. Plus you get the physics without being graded on it, which ain't bad either.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1307873/