Movie Review: Infini - or "What Solaris would have been like, with more machine guns and screaming"

This movie would never have been on my radar if Hastings hadn't folded last year. While grabbing random movies for 70-90% off I happened to land a copy of Infini. I'd seen this movie before, but buying it for anything less than a pittance seemed like a bad idea. It had the stink of a SyFy special all over it just from looking at the box cover.

Well, I was half right. It might not be a SyFy special, but it does have the stinky resonance of a direct-to-cable production, with the caveat that clearly the people behind the film really wanted to capture the essence of the "Dead Space" genre of film and games, but without stepping too deeply into the obvious tropes. The end result reminds me of one of the countless science fiction tales you find in the middle of any number of random novel collections: a weird work, which feels like an idea half-formed, or maybe fully-realized but without enough character or depth to cover much more distance than a short work of fiction could handle.

It also kind of reminds me of the nearly infinite spew of self-published novels on Amazon's Kindle; you know the ones, with great cover blurbs mentioning all the bells and whistles ("space marine," "alien virus," "haunted space station," "everyone's gone mad in a totally-not-like-the-reavers kind of way," etc.) and the first volume is free.

But this is a film.....and it does exist. So is it worth it? In a nutshell: if you saw it on Netflix and you were really bored, I wouldn't say you had to skip it.

Generic space marine Whit Carmicahel (Daniel MacPherson) is on his first day on the job working for a special forces group that uses advanced teleportation to travel across the galaxy protecting corporate interests in the 23rd century. Apparently this is a high risk technology and you can suffer a mental breakdown when you teleport, but despite the lead text warning us about stuff like this the real problem has nothing to do with teleporting and everything to do with a distant mining facility (Infini station) at the edge of the galaxy, where things have gone to hell in a handbasket.

The exact timing on all of this isn't that important: when the spec ops guys get teleported, when the mining base went rogue, when it really had problems, when the second spec ops team goes, all of this is sort of "there" as fill to the story of a bunch of spec ops space marines trapped on a haunted space station where a virus turns you in to reavers.

Of course it's an alien virus, and actually it's an alien organism which covers the planet. Because it is briefly mentioned as "flammable" it was suggested it was a great fuel source, but that doesn't seem to come in to play in the story later on (thankfully) other than as a one-off to explain why it was being mined, almost like the writers suddenly realized that the idea was kind of stupid, so someone thought two stupids made a smart or something.

I digress though. Okay so Whit (W.C.) is about to get sent to this place when something bad happens....other spec ops teams return and they appear to be quite mad. Right before the entire facility goes on lockdown and gasses everyone his commander gets him teleported. Cut to a week later, and another facility is dressing down a crew of seven spec ops dudes who are all going to investigate the haunted space station, which is apparently something that happened a while ago but it's never entirely clear to me as to the immediate urgency at that moment that they send live humans to the station.

The second crew is informed they need to recover W.C. for reasons that are flimsier than my D&D group explaining why they met the new guy to conveniently replace the old guy who got eaten in the middle of the dungeon. They are also supposed to lock down the station and confirm payload or something along those lines but it sort of becomes more or less irrelevant very quickly. They arrive at the station, we have a few minutes of smart protocol in which they keep their helmets on, don't touch things they shouldn't (or get stopped by someone) and then they meet W.C. who's been hiding in a locked down corner of the facility for a week due to "time dilation" and how it relates to whatever their teleportation is.

Just when it looks like everything's on track for a smart mission complete and extraction, they take off their helmets, let down their guard and help W.C. get things up and running, all while averting a possible overload or something. Then  a couple maddened miners attack from out of nowhere, and in the ensuing carnage everyone becomes infected with a reaver virus due to exposure to blood.

Most of the rest of the movie proceeds to play out like a mix of Bioshock Splicers preying on one another while W.C. tries to figure out what's happening, something he apparently didn't bother to do for the week he was here previously, but now is worried about since he's also apparently infected with the virus (just very, very slowly). He quickly pieces together that the stuff they mine on the planet is a mimic organism which can replicated human tissue...possibly even whole bodies....precisely. This is underplayed (no one starts assuming others are "replicated" because they are all going crazy right now anyway) but becomes relevant later.

The second half of the movie is mostly actors who didn't get a lot of establishment on camera to make you care about them descend into violent madness. It's not bad.....you at least know who they are (nutjob spec ops people who take their helmets off for any old reason) but their mutual efforts at destruction seem awfully played out for very little payoff.

In the end....um, spoiler alert.....W.C. is left all alone, plagued by the virus, but with enough wits to record a speech to the organism that comprises the entire crust of the planet and explains to it that in messing with people it went for the worst elements of them, and it should feel bad. The organism then creeps out, heals and revives everyone (including at least one guy I thought was completely eviscerated) and the crew for a few moments act like they are either: A. pod people feigning memory loss, or B. the actual crewmen suffering actual memory loss of their deaths. They then beam back to base and everything ends on a shockingly upbeat note.

Indeed, the "shockingly upbeat note" might be the most surprising thing about this movie which otherwise felt like it was pulled from a mosh pit in which Dead Space, Solaris and Event Horizon were all duking it out while The Thing dipped its toes in for a second or two.

It wasn't horrible. It just was very, very basic and it really needed a rewrite on the screenplay. Badly. To the credit of the many actors who I barely recognized or didn't know at all, they were all pretty good at evoking the basic elements of their characters. I don't remember anyone's names, but they each nailed their "TV plot archetype" assignment fairly well.

I give it a solid C average.

"Well it's been 8 minutes and no one's violated quarantine protocol, time to shed these helmets."

Five fun bits about Infini:

1. Even when they are showing good protocol, not touching things or taking off their helmets, the spec ops space marines still take their helmets off.

2. It is important to ask why any live humans get sent with this teleporter tech if they could just send drones. (Answer: not in the budget, and for my case I refer to that scene where the one guy holds a drone in his hand that looks like the ones from Prometheus but it does nothing but flash).

3. If the sentient world goo could understand W.C.'s final rantings and ravings then the question arises: why couldn't it understand anyone else, at any point? How did it take his little speech to convey this message to the alien goo? And Why did it care?

4. I was really bothered by the fact that none of the guns appeared to have scopes or even iron sights. What the hell??? How do you aim with those things?

5. The space goo, in the moments when we did see it, was actually a pretty cool effect.

Film Review: Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Men Tell No Tales

I missed a Pirates movie somewhere along the line (I guess #4 came out when I was hard pressed to find time to go to the theater) but it appears to have had no impact on my experience watching "Dead Men Tell No Tales." Now sure, you can (at least in the past) watch some film franchises (James Bond, for ex) and enjoy them without worrying about continuity. But Dead Men Tell No Tales had a plot and characters predicated on the prior four films and I still found it worked as a more or less stand alone film. (Note: I like the Spanish title above: La Venganza De Salazar)

Now, don't think I liked this movie too much. I can't say it wasn't fun....it was.....but the movie was more fun for my son, who at five and a half knows more about pirates thanks to Disney and his dad than most kids his age probably do. And for a general audience this film was probably a great Summer flick, no doubt about that.....heck, barring a couple English officers being skewered here and there, a pretty big chunk of this movie is pure family fun.

But! And there is always a but when you're on film five of a franchise like this.....it's still not a great movie. At best it demonstrates that you can milk a lot out of the premise of a Disney ride if you do it right, and keep on doing it, to the point where it becomes almost an unwitting parody of itself.

At one point, I felt like I needed a score card to keep track of just how many ghostly, magical ships were floating about....there seemed to be more of them than there were regular, normal pirate ships in this movie. And when a normal ship did appear, it was almost certain to meet doom at the hands of some ghostly ship thirty seconds later.

The film is visually spectacular, though.....just don't assume anything about the plot (that there is much of one, for example) and roll with it and you'll find it a pleasant enough experience. But wait a bit and when you're at the fridge one evening a bunch of odd questions will come to mind about this movie (assuming you think much more of it at all)....such as (spoilers ahead):

1. What was the purposes of the witch held captive by the English? Was she really just a foil for Barbossa to learn what he needed, and later there to tell the English soldiers where to go? Why were they so intent on hanging the main female protagonist as a witch, when they had an actual, real witch in their custody anyway? Was this something from movie #4 that would have made more sense to me, but for missing context?

2. Was Depp ever sober in this movie? Is Jack Sparrow nothing more than a timeless maguffin designed to make things happen on screen through his unwitting, drunken antics? Do I really need to ask these questions? When the main character revelation/story moment goes to a secondary character like Barbossa, it suggests worlds about the purpose/relationship of the principle protagonist of the prior films.....Sparrow is just here to "induce" action, or maybe "motion" is a better word. He serves no other purpose anymore.

3. When the shining moment of the film is an end cameo by the good actors from prior films, and you realize in that moment you just watched a passable film with no discernable characters of any screen presence to root for...well.....it kinda feels like you've been had, doesn't it?

4. Was it just me, or did the whole "Salazar and his crew are ashen ghost pirate-hunters because their ship sailed in to the Devil's Triangle that looks a whole lot like some big cove, but hey we need some excuse for more ghosts to run around this time so roll with it" sequence seem a bit.....blah? Some sequences in this film felt strongly like they had concocted a scene to film first and worked out the plot bits later. Like, I am willing to bet somewhere they started with "We need ghosts in this movie. Hey, what if they looked like they were partially made of ash smoke for a cool effect? Someone work out a story bit to explain it later, for now FX get to work on this look."

Yes, it felt like how many video games are made: a dozen or so locations and a ton of assets are produced, and somewhere along the way the studio hires a script writer to try and makes sense of it all.

5. That whole wedding sequence with Sparrow and his "bride" felt like someone realized that they hadn't had a decent laugh recently so hastily found a way to shoehorn one in.

6. How many more piratical or nautical phrases remain for them to exploit as movie titles before they run out?

....Okay look, this was a passable, almost essentially okay movie for what it is: a fifth film to a Disney franchise based on a ride. Plus my kid loved it....but I know I'm not totally off base; my wife liked Salazar as the villain but even she felt it was a bit "meh" and she's incredibly forgiving of these movies normally.

Still, that they have gotten this far and the movie is at least watchable is kind of amazing. I'll call it a solid C and move on.

C

Film Review: Ava's Possessions

I can honestly say I didn't expect to see a film which took inspiration from Twin Peaks, The Exorcist and Go, creating an entirely new and unique experience. Such it is with Ava's Possessions....a movie which dabbles in a mixture of occult, mystery, humor, and the weird with utter aplomb. It's currently on Netflix, and you need to catch this one if the concept of a film with such weird DNA appeals to you, too.

Ava (Louisa Krause) wakes up from a prolonged 28 day possession, held by a demon which has used her in those four weeks to do unspeakable things. A battered family wrestles with the reality of her exorcism, conducted by a rather matter-of-fact priest in a world adjacent to our own, where possessions are literal events and the law even accounts for them. You can, it turns out, commit crimes while possessed and in these circumstances the law allows for you to go to a form of "spirit rehab." Since Ava, now decoupled from her demon, needs to deal with the reality of what happened she chooses the spirit rehab classes over a mental institution or jail.

As Ava works with rebuilding her life she finds clues about what her demon was up to...and they don't all add up. Her family wants her to forget, but her therapy needs her to remember and make amends. As she delves more deeply into the mystery I found myself impressed with the film's ability to walk the fine line in tone and feel between a Lynchian Twin Peaks and a fast-paced Gen X Go, even as the menace of a possible Exorcist event looms over it all (not such a difficult thing to imagine in Twin Peaks, of course!)

The film is darkly humorous, though not camp or otherwise outrageous. It does expect you to roll with the logic of a universe where possession is just something the courts occasionally both deal with and recognize as a valid defense. If you've played games like Bloodshadows or Unknown Armies this won't seem so odd...hell, if you've ever read a Dresden Files novel it will seem positively germane!

Fun fact: Carol Kane makes an appearance in the film, running an apothecary shop for Black Magic.

Ava's Possessions managed to surprise me in a way I really like: a genuine new take (or twist) on other more heavily trod fictional grounds that suddenly managed to make the genre mashup feel completely new and fresh again. I clicked on this one at random but boy did I get lucky with the pick this time. Check it out, you may be very pleasantly surprised too.

A+++

Movie Review: Life

Turns out we are getting two new Alien films this year! Who knew!

If you are like me, an irredeemable fan of the Alien franchise, then watching Life is a great way to hold you over until Alien: Covenant finally arrives in late May. Life is in fact an "astronauts vs. aliens" film in all its finest form, but strives to defy its conventions in three interesting ways:

This is a fairly "hard SF" film as Hollywood scifi goes. It's near future, involves the International Space Station of the not too distant future, with a multinational crew of actual astronauts in a zero-gee setting. The plot starts with their interception of an automated probe returning from Mars with soil samples. Naturally, one of those soil samples includes evidence of unique cellular life.

"Calvin" as the life form is named, is a voracious little predator once it grows large enough, but it's still portrayed as just a survivor organism. Shades of the original Alien are inevitable, but unlike the original Alien, Life tries to provide interesting discussion on what exactly is happening with Calvin....what makes it both unique and a threat. Calvin's growth rate is entirely realistic as well (well, relatively speaking) compared to the xenomorph of Alien.

Most important of all, and also a throwback to the original Alien, is that Life succeeds because it has genuinely good actors, including even Ryan Reynolds in a role which both plays on his quirky strength as an actor while managing to not feel out of place in a crew of intellectual scientists and engineers. Seriously....with a cast including Reynolds, Ariyon Bakare, Jake Gylenhall and others, Life really does succeed on this combination of taking its setting, subject, and acting seriously.

Literally the only moment where Life felt like it was honoring its genre traditions came toward the end, when (indirect spoiler alert) you have a sequence that was ripped right out of the finest "gotcha moments" of classic horror and SF fiction....but I will say no more, you'll know it when you see it. This final moment was actually rather entertaining because the film, played so straight up to this moment, managed to leave the audience with a fine conclusion (or cliffhanger) of what is either the end of the film in a decidedly non-franchise intended way, or a clear set up for an ongoing series with all of its associated pitfalls. Time will tell!

Anyway, Solid A here. If you are event remotely into this kind of horror/SF film or if you have been wondering if it's even possible for Hollywood to produce a new film that can stand adjacent to Alien, Predator and The Thing....look no further. Life is worth checking out.

Solid A

Movie Review: Logan

Logan is definitely a good movie and also a fine example of how enough time spent franchise building can eventually pay off in unique films that might otherwise have been impossible sells just a decade or two ago. Logan is a film for Wolverine fans, X-Men fans, and pretty much anyone who has seen at least two or three X-Men movies and figured out enough to get the basic layout of how 20th C. Fox's take on the franchise functions (which is to say: dysfunctionally).

But yeah, good movie, and worth seeing. And...spoilers ahead.

The film is tangentially related to the graphic novel "Old Man Logan" and also the many Logan spin-offs in the current messed up Marvel universe in the sense that it has an old dude named Logan, who may or may not be the actual guy from somewhere around seven prior movies. You get enough hints in the movie that, for example, the events of the first X-Men movie trilogy happened in the past, and maybe even "Days of Future Past" which must have ended up being a really bad idea if that was the case because at least the mutants were still cool and competent X-Men fighting the existential threat of the sentinels in the DoFP timeline; in Logan it appears that the timeline reboot ended with a much grizzlier, more disturbing future that is not entirely defined here, but does hint at what must have been a really grotesque end to virtually all mutants in the world. We get hints of a mad doctor behind it all, but also the suggestion that an ailing, elderly Professor Xavier might also have played a not insignificant part. In the graphic novel "Old Man Logan" the culprit is Logan himself, driven to hallucinate by Mysterio into killing all of the X-Men. In the movie, Logan is more of Professor X's keeper, and keeps him drugged up to avoid another hinted-at incident like the one which must surely have ended the X-Men and maybe much more.

As interesting as the plot and theme of the movie was, with its meticulous deconstruction of Logan's entire hero story (and the rest of the X-Men) it was just as fascinating for being a futuristic sci-fi, almost cyberpunk tale of a near-future setting in 2029 in which driverless trucks are the norm, corporatization is everywhere in subtle but believable ways, augmentation through prosthetics is standard, and genetic engineering is now where the remaining DNA Of many, many dead mutants lie. In comes X-23, Lara, to serve as the lynch-pin which sets in motion Logan's (and Xavier's) final act of heroism.

The movie captures some other important elements of the graphic novel it is loosely inspired by: we have a buddy road trip (but in the grimmest manner possible with dark humor the best levity you can hope for), a father/daughter relationship, vicious rednecks of different types and breeds (no Hulk clan in site but that's okay), a tour of an America (and Mexico) which is quietly ruled by corporate influences, and a moment of carnage against good people which leads to utter tragedy and unhinges Logan.

There are surprise turns in this movie, too. Twists of small but well-played nature that lead you invariably down a path toward what increasingly becomes a clearly doomed ending for virtually all of the protagonists (and antagonists) on the screen. It culminates in a bloody conflict that might almost have been worthy of Tarantino.

When critics and others say Logan is a good movie, they really aren't kidding. I don't know if I'll ever watch it more than once...it's a great movie weighed down by its own fatalistic path to doom, full of genuinely sad moments for a character who honestly has never been treated with such a sense of the "real" before. Enough so that when it is over, it is both fitting but sad, to know that we finally got a genuinely good Wolverine movie, only to see it close out this way.

I have no idea what the X-Men franchise is trying to do with its timeline, by the way. It seems like it is almost a tradition now that each film in the X-Men and Wolverine fanchises are determined to deconstruct, rewrite or de-canonize what has come before. Logan does a spectaular job of casting all of the prior films in to doubt on one level or another, even as it provides what amounts to the most nihilistic, downtempo end one could imagine for the entire franchise. Sure, there will be more X-Men movies....probably even more Wolverine movies, I bet; but Logan itself will, until it too is deconstructed and expunged from the timeline, be the last X-Men film, the one which ended what Professor X started in First Class, in the most nihilistic, fatalistic manner possible.

Oh, and don't take your kids to see this one. It's too violent for little kids, and the moral crisis of the film is not the sort that kids are likely to be able to tangle with until they are at least 11 or 12. My wife and I saw it while kiddo was sitting with his Nanna, and boy are we glad we did. Thanks to my wife for sneakily arranging this (I missed game night, but this was probably our only chance to see it).

About the only thing I can wonder is: can someone who has never seen an X-Men film really get as much out of this movie? I have no idea. But then the second question I have is....are there any viewers who would see a movie like this in the first place that don't know "just enough" about Wolverine and the X-Men not to "get it?" There are probably a few....and some might like Logan enough to dig into the prior films (but they will be disappointed, a little bit; Logan smokes them all).

So...yeah, A +

Movie Review- Kong: Skull Island

On occasion I will see a movie that I am pretty sure I am going to enjoy, even though I am certain I will be critical of it. Kong: Skull Island is exactly that sort of movie; fun in a precise, measured way which hearkens back to a very old tradition of fun B movies.

Spoilers ahead? I guess? If you've never watched B movies before?

The plot, if you haven't guessed it from the trailer, is pretty obvious: Several adventurous types played by prominent actors (including John Goodman and Samuel Jackson, who both have shades of Moby Dick and Heart of Darkness running through their characters) head off to a mysterious island in the Pacific Ocean which is surrounded by a perpetual, normally impenetrable storm. Of course the island is the eponymous Skull Island, where King Kong rules, and fights the timeless menace of ancient lizard-monsters from the Hollow Earth (yes, you heard that right). Antics ensue.

I don't have a lot negative to say about this movie, other than it has a good grasp on how to revive the classic B-Movie giant monster horror films of yore with the appropriate sense of adventure, fun, awe and (thanks to modern CGI) over-the-top crazy that does the kaiju genre so well. The movie itself managed to be more entertaining than it's direct predecessor Godzilla (which it turns out is retroactively the first film in a new cinematic giant monster universe franchise), and by the end (with an end-credits bonus scene) hints at pretty much all our old favorites returning, eventually.

The movie does a fine job of making a pulp adventure tale by the numbers, which the appropriate cast of characters: the complex protagonist (Hiddleston), the equally competent and uncompromising female lead (Larson), the menagerie of secondary characters that are ultimately either monster fodder or survivors depending on how sympathetic and/or fatalistic they are played, and one crazy survivor who brings the real and the levity all at once (played to the hilt by Reilly; without him this movie might have been a C average). Add in a period setting (1970's end-of-Vietnam) to help avoid messy questions involving why they aren't using modern equipment that would negate much of the questionable mystery of the island, an unfortunate initial encounter that strands everyone in hostile territory, mix with some appropriately Asiatic islanders (of the equally enigmatic...dare I say, exotic sort?) and you've got a classic mix which manages to surprise no one who has watched this sort of movie before, even as it impresses with some by now typically good CGI.

The movie has some fridge logic moments (well, maybe worse since I noticed them while watching the movie), such as questionable moments where they seem to somehow bypass a prior dangerous area on a return trip where it had previously been established there was no other way around, and While I didn't count total crashed helicopters (how many was that boat holding, anyway?) I kept feeling like there were more 'copters in this film than there really should have been. There's also a regular issue with water displacement and giant monsters; more correctly, they don't displace water, which is kind of weird, because honestly? When Kong jumps in the drink if the water level soared ten feet it would be kind of a neat moment.....but the CGI artists probably were just hoping we didn't notice.

Maybe the water pours in or is absorbed depending on the mass; a weird property of Skull Island. Like whatever explanation you can imagine for how a two hundred+ foot tall gorilla could exist without being crushed by his own weight.

See? I've already overthought this movie. Must-stop-overthinking.....

It's weird to say this, but the movie was so utterly up to formula that it was simultaneously a load of fun and utterly predictable in a fashion which left me feeling like the best grade I could give this film was a solid B....as in B for "good B movie which understands its own tired and well-trod genre well enough to take the same formula and make it fun again for a bit." Nothing I saw in this movie was new, even for a second. But it was still fun, and kind of like I was once again in the seventies, watching a late night horror movie in black and white (but this time without a running commentary from robots!)

Now, that said: if you were looking for a collection of films to watch for inspiration with your next Savage Worlds game, especially if it's aimed squarely at the pulp genre, then this is an absolute must-see. It's not the greatest movie, but it absolutely is fun, and it really does capture the essence of pulpy giant monster flicks to a tee.

Plus, my kid LOVED this movie. Except for a few swear words and a couple minor "in the distance" dismemberment moments, this movie struck me as perfectly family friendly. It honestly was slightly less graphic than Jurassic World, to use another recent example.

I do look forward to seeing Ghidra, mothra, Rodan and Godzilla duke it out on some future "Monster Island" movie, though! Be sure to stick around for the after-credits scene for a bonus on where the giant monster film universe plans to go.

Solid B

Review: Assassin's Creed (film)

I waited a long time for this one to show up in the dollar theater. The general consensus online seemed to be that it was another "video game to film failure," and that it was otherwise a terrible movie.....barring those who said it was good for what it was, or said it seemed to be fun if you were already invested in the Assassin's Creed games. Being one of the latter I knew I needed to see this, but I didn't want to risk spending full price on a ticket. Plus...this was not the kind of film my wife wanted to see, and too violent (in a muddy gray ethical zone) for my son to watch with me, so that meant I needed to find some time on my own to view the movie.

Now having seen it I have to say I really enjoyed the movie, but completely agree it was a flawed and perhaps poorly conceived effort for various reasons. The movie does delve in to the lore of the Assassin's Creed games, but it does so in an interesting way, where the narrative of the games themselves feed the film without directly relating to it. You have a tale of two ancient orders --the assassins and templars-- feuding over lost treasure of a civilization that predates known history, for example. You have the development of the Animus, which can read DNA that contains actual memories of past lives, allowing a current subject to experience directly the ancestors of his past. This, in turn, puts the crux of the story on the modern individual subjected to the Animus by the templar-controlled Abstergo Corporation, which is using said assassin descendant Cal Lynch (Fassbender) to explore memories of a time when an ancient artifact, a so-called piece of Eden, had been found.

From there it's a movie steeped in "grimcool" which is the only term I can use to describe movies like this right now.....and interestingly it seems to me that most movies of the last few years that are excessively "grimcool" seem to be doomed to box office failure. Too much effort at making everything in this fashion appears to be an audience turn-off.

The movie also seems to sacrifice the core conceits of the film, at least stylistically, for the sake of doing something more visually enticing. The Animus machine, as an example, is basically a "plug in and tune out" experience in the game, where you lie down and the machine constructs something akin to either a virtual hallucination or a lucid dream experience. In the film it's a giant arm that grabs Cal  uncomfortably around the waste and then moves him around in conjnuction with his memory experiences, which makes for a cool cinematic effect but...well....the problems with this approach are made obvious as the film progresses, and it is clear that Abstergo's mad scientists are playing with fire and are frequently burnt.

I could go on for a long time about little technical issues like this, but the film has more pressing concerns. Here's what they are (spoilers ahead):

1. The movie suffers from being so deeply immersed in the moral grey zone that the only ethical dilemna we are allowed is whether to side with the murderers because then at least we retain free will, or side with the spooky suit and hood wearing templars, because at least they intend to stop the murderers, even if it means stripping humanity of free will in some somewhat undefined fashion using the piece of Eden.

Or put another way: there were literally no good guys in this movie. Even the video games generally allow for you to feel justified in taking sides, and paint the templars as (usually) unremittingly evil, and the assassins as driven but flawed antiheroes.

2. The movie spends a lot more time in the present than the past. We get a glimpse of a fascinating Spain in 1492, but we are not given nearly as much of it was we will realize we wanted.

3. When things finally come to pieces and the assassins break out of their controlled prison, they do it really easily. How did Abstergo think that leaving so many antique assassin weapons on display was a good idea? How did they not have better measures in place for this? If we assume that this movie is in the same continuity as the games, then hey have ample reason to believe that this sort of shit can and will happen.

4. A person watching this movie who is not a fan of the series will leave wondering why everyone was so worked up over a round ball-like thing that glows a bit. We never got to see the Apple of  Eden do its thing, as the games are prone to demonstrating. The movie also made precious little attempt to clarify exactly what the Apple of Eden was for the layman, which is a shame, since I suspect we won't see more AC movies.

5. We saw leaps of faith start, but not end. Were they just being coy about the reality of the physics of landing in piles of hay, or was there some other reason not to show this? The rest of the movie did a surprisingly good job of making the assassins look like their parkour hurt and took a lot out of them.....a welcome change from other recent movies I've watched. So why balk at showing the leap of faith landing?

6. This movie really should have started with a retelling of the original Assassin's Creed (imo) but clearly it felt like a decision was made to both progress the story where it currently is in relation to the games and also stay the hell away from Middle Eastern assassins as main protagonists. A shame. I can't fault them, but it shouldn't have to be this way.

7. If you saw this movie, can you explain to me WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED AT THE END???? So Cal just wanders in to the highly secure Templar symposium, ganks the CEO, takes the Apple of Eden, and walks away while the crowd files out as if they expected this to happen all along, without even some shot showing him being chased by pissed off Abstergo guards? WTF???? I really didn't follow the logic of this sequence.

8. Oddly, I really expected to see a five minute monologue between the assassin and his victim after each successful murder. Yes it would have been narrative madness, but too many years of AC games have taught me to expect this, I guess.

9. I wish the Spain of 1492 in this film had been presented in a game. I want to explore that madhouse that the film lets us barely glimpse.

Okay. So I did enjoy this movie but was disappointed to see the choices made in producing the first AC film (and probably only AC film) to appear on the big screen. I'd give it a solid B for being a decent effort, but I also am disappointed because I think with a better script and some reconsideration of the core particulars of what makes this franchise most interesting, it could have been an A.

B

xXx-The Return of Xander Cage (a review; also known as "why did I see this, exactly???")

Oh yeah: Vin Diesel.

So Vin Diesel, along with Jason Statham, continues to appeal to me because he is continuing to demonstrate that bald, middle-aged men are still viable action stars. Or at least we like to think we are....!

I grabbed a 3D IMAX showing of this movie on a spare moment while on a work trip. I can't say I was "disappointed," exactly....I mean, I think I knew what I was getting when I went to see this movie. I saw the original xXx when it came out (skipped #2 though....no Vin Diesel, after all) so in one sense this was not unreasonable of me to want to see the sequel with the franchise's original character's return. Right? But on the other hand....I saw that trailer. Oh man, that trailer. The one with the jungle mountain skiing in Cuba:



Yeah, that one.

So instead of trying to comprehensively explain what this movie is, I thought I'd just point out the many, many odd issues I had with the movie. I'll preface with the caveat I did have fun with the movie......but it was kind of the same sort of fun I might have with watching a car derby, or playing a video game like Saint's Row III. You know....the "check your brain at the gates" kinda fun.

Anyway, my gripe list (kinda sorta spoilers ahead):

1. How is it that even as we watch Gibbons explode on screen I am thinking (correctly) "I bet he's not dead and he shows up at the end." This is an awful moment one minute in that I realize the entire plot I am about to see has become so formulaic that I already know the punches before they are thrown. It's a Save The Cat Script.

2. When Marke shows up (Toni Collette) I am also thinking, "I bet she's really behind this." Technically they "almost" foil this expectation by only making her turn on everyone in the end, but we kinda expected it the instant she showed up so....yeah.

3. Why doesn't Xander break his legs after jumping from the tower? Skiis don't make our ankle bones invulnerable to immense falls, and jungle foliage does not work as a perfect or even nominally ideal substitute for snow.

4. Even though it's not really referring to the actual Defcon status, how is it that superspy dude Xander Cage doesn't understand that Defcon 1 is not the one to worry about, Defcon 5 is???

5. Xander's girlfriend is young enough to be his daughter.....granddaughter, even by New Mexico (and probably Cuban) standards. Yaaaay middle-aged man action fantasies. I bet there's more of this as the movie progresses (sure enough, yes).

6. Xander has to sleep with a lot of women to get data that somehow the NSA couldn't just so he could say a funny punchline. Oiiiiiiii

7. It's nice seeing Donnie Yen in this movie. He has some serious martial arts skills, not so evident from his recent Rogue One outing.

8. I'm watching this movie in Austin, Texas, and thinking that it's demographically one of those "movies full of not-white people unless they are the villains" kind of modern trendy films (see: Rogue One) and wondering how it's selling around here. There's like 5 people in the theater on a Sunday. Look, I'm not trying to say Austin is extremely homogenous....but I come from New Mexico, and apparently I've been in NM so long now that being around this many white people in one town is making me kinda nervous. It's like Children of the Corn here. I'm back to being treated as exotic because of my Swedish name.

9.  Queue obligatory lesbian (Ruby Red). Also, obligatory nerdy tech chick (Nina Dobrev). also, since when did being able to conduct a rave turn into a superspy power? And what did the paranoid Torch bring to the table, exactly? I never did figure out what his useful talent was.

10. Hey....they never did explain how Xiang (Donnie Yen) jumped seventy feet down from across a building through three inch thick plate-glass, land, and take out a room full of spies. They even lampshaded this when Xander points exactly the figures I provided above. I was expecting some sort of tech explanation but maybe the "he's XXX" is enough reason for this film's universe?

11. Russians show up then get blown up then never return. So the Russians were savvy enough to identify the hideout of the rogue agents (something NSA could not do and Xander did by sleeping with many women) but not savvy enough to pursue them later on?

12. I don't think freefall in a plane quite works like this movie thinks it does.

13. I don't think crashing satellites will be as destructive as this movie thinks they are. Certainly not the vast majority of them.

14. I don't think computers or the internet or satellites or jamming systems work quite the way this movie thinks they do.

15. So who was on the other end of the phone instructing Marke to turn on Xander and kill him? How was Marke so incompetent as to forget the body armor that they had supplied him? Or...you know,,,,just finish the job by shooting him in the head? Head canon theory: she didn't want to turn on Xander like her boss (Mr. President?) ordered her to, so deliberately didn't shoot him in the head, instead grouping the shot on his armored tank top thingy.

16. When they catch up to the rogue director why doesn't he have a conversation with Xiang, or imply some relationship? It was strongly implied at some point they had worked together....specifically, when the rogue agents attack, it's called out that Torch doesn't react to Xiang's intrusion like he anticipated it. So either Xiang was being played unwittingly (why?) or the director was aware of his plans....and that makes sense I guess since the Pandora's Box Xiang stole was a one-use thing. But....ugh.....so little explained here beyond "director wants to cause havoc, maybe even because he is anarchically determined to destroy civilization in disgust" and "Xiang wants the box to use it, at least until the end when he has a change of heart." Oh god my brain is hurting trying to figure out everyone's actual motives here. Literally the only one who's motives "seem" pure is Serena Unger's (Deepika Padukone) who is at least consistent.

17. Say that gets me back to the early part of the film....who was the dude on the motorcycle? He seemed competent until he was kicked off of it.

18. Come to think of it, can one really fault Marke and her boss for deciding to clean up all the "xXx" agents? These guys basically appear less reliable than using actual enemy spies for your information. They gang up and kill the entire room of directors early on (and miss the one corrupt director), fake their own deaths and hide in Cuba, come back and then change sides or motives on a fickle whim, eventually ganging up en masse to take out the rest of the NSA. Now that I think about it, the only thing that was even less surprising here was that they didn't just quietly drop a satellite on the whole gang without warning. If they'd just let Xander go, instead of trying to shoot him, they could have readily taken the whole crew out.

19. In fact on that last point: if your evil plan is to blow them up with a satellite drop, then why did they send in an angry mob of mercenaries in the first place? To blow up the mercs too?

20. Good thing Xander can pilot a cargo carrier plane that looks a lot like a SHIELD plane (from season one, as far as I've gotten) so efficiently that he can intercept a satellite dropping into orbit. And then outrun it. And also survive that fall on the cargo with the 'chute that deploys like 200 feet before impact.

Oh god my brain is hurting.  I have to stop now.

Okay: without Vin Diesel this was a solid D. With Vin Diesel I make it a C-. I call this movie "watchable fun but you'll like it more if you're drunk." 

Aftermath: I had a chance to rewatch xXx the original on Google Play. Having a chance now to review the original, I have to comment that yes, the sequel is just generally goofier and makes less sense (relatively speaking) than the original. The original xXx came at a time when it was in fact defying conventions in spy genre films, a genre which had been defined by the likes of James Bond, by casting the unusual role of Xander Cage as a sports Xtreme dude turned super-spy. But compared to the latest movie, the original was kind of....tame, really. Only one distinct ankle-breaking moment that I noticed, and even then it was more "believable" than the scenes in the latest film.

Still, the new movie captures the general spirit of it all, even if it's not half as original or inspired. If you liked the original xXx, I think you'll enjoy this one, too. I mean...worst case....watch it for inspiration in your next Tropicana Savage Worlds game!

Fantastic Four Movie Review: better than a SyFy special?

Fantastic Four was a perfectly watchable, ordinary film of no specific or great intention. It was better than prior FF films (imo), and certainly better than a SyFy movie special, but when you hold it up to Ant-Man or Age of Ultron it was lacking. The film's new take on its iconic characters was great...for 1998. If this film had been released 16 years ago I suspect it would have done well, but in today's landscape of superhero movies you really can't bring your B-game to the table.

Spoilers ahead!

The film focuses on a new re-imagining of the Fantastic Four origin story, this time involving dimensional travel. It makes the cardinal error of tying everything too tightly together, so now Victor Von Doom is part of the research team of young geniuses that includes the rest of the FF team prior to their transformation. In some ways the character of Doom is actually more interesting, but fails to live up to the icon we all have known from the comics. His ultimate role is to make his transformation into super-villain and give the FF team a reason to come together and save the world.

The FF themselves aren't a bad bunch for the actors chosen. The new black Human Torch is handled very well and in fact I rather like the way they did it, introducing the elder Franklin Richards (notice name drop nod to Franklin, Reed and Sue's son in the comics) as Johnny's natural father with Sue Storm as the adopted daughter. Reg Cathey's role as Franklin is pivotal to this film; he has a decent weight to his role and his acting elevates those around him. Elsewhere, Ben Grimm is Reed Richard's childhood backup and henchman, supporting him in his mad scientist schemes. Doom, meanwhile, is the fifth wheel rogue, who is surprisingly non-villainous in his pre-transformation stage of life. They all come together as part of the Baxter Institute's young genius team, put on a project to create a teleportation device that shifts between dimensions.

Ultimately the experiment to make a working teleporter succeeds and in a moment of drunken glory the crew use the device so they can be the first men to set foot in another dimension. This, as one would expect, leads to a transformation and disaster, as the results of the experiment change all of them into the superheroes they are destined to be and leaves Doom stranded and presumably dead in an alien dimension.

Queue a not-Shield group identified (I think) as Mitra in the film, which sweeps the transformed teens off to Area 57, Area 51's east-coast cousin. After a very toothless "evil government is evil" phase the team is moved forward a year, trained and working as government agents....all save for Reed Richards, who made good his escape. He's eventually brought back in to the fold, though; the research must continue and the Baxter Institute, now an exclusive government contractor, is building a new teleporter.

Ultimately Reed Richards complies, the teleporter is fixed, and a team of crack agents travel back to the other dimension, where they do not suffer the same fate that affected the FF. They do find Doom, however, somehow still alive thanks to whatever vaguely-hinted-at alien super-mind seems to be in the other dimension. Doom arrives back on earth and proceeds to start killing everyone with his crazy telekinetics that he's never had in the comics. His goal? Short out the device, creating a black hole that sort of seems to suck the matter from Earth back to the Planet Zero he now considers home.

The finale is what gives the FF their chance to shine as they work to stop Doom's mad scheme, escape Planet Zero, and ultimately gain some ground as a real super-group, now provided all the funding and resources they need to continue working for the government, but on their own terms.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this movie in and of itself. Really, there isn't. If you aren't deeply invested in the canonical comic version of the FF and you have never seen a Marvel or X-Men film then this movie will come off as pretty decent, I suspect.

BUT!

We do live in a world where the Marvel Cineverse and X-Men films exist, along with other stellar superhero films like Batman and Man of Steel (yes I loved that one). In this universe, the new FF film can't hold a candle. It's limited character arcs, loose interpretation of the comic canon, over-reliance on tying everything in the plot together into one related arc and general lack of a sense of greater purpose make it a substandard film by comparison. Put another way: the bar has been set too high for FF to succeed.

Four cool things in the Fantastic Four:

1. Every one of the FF is presented as a genius with a scientific mindset. Even Johnny Storm is a smart dude (unlike in the comics), as is Sue Storm and Ben Grimm. It's probably off-putting to the average moviegoer, but this really is a film about nerds.

2. The Johnny Storm-is-black conversion was handled very well and actually feels more interesting than the classic Johnny Storm take. The introduction of his dad, Franklin Storm, presents a character I wish existed in the comics at some point.

3. Miles Teller portraying Reed Richards did a surprisingly good job of making a leading character who was somehow a geeky science nerd, and who wasn't really a "popular male actor" trussed up to look like one.

4. The FX were great for all of the characters involved.

Five Terrible things in the Fantastic Four:

1. Victor Von Doom is once again given short shrift as a character taken out of context from the comics. What is it about removing him from Latveria, and why do the screenwriters think that they have to tie him in so closely to the FF origin?

2. The film ties everything too closely together. The entire story-arc is an origin story, and we've seen handily how Marvel can wrap an origin story into a more complex tale (Ant-Man) or dispense with it in thirty seconds (Hulk). Doom didn't need to be part of the team. Sue and Franklin didn't need to be at the science fair discovering Reed Richards. Richards didn't need to be singularly obsessed with making a teleporter....he could have had a range. The movie is almost Oroborous-like in devouring itself, right up until the final act.

3. The whole black hole dimensional portal thing was a manufactured threat and while Doom, when he surfaces as a full super-villain was impressively ominous, his real function was only to provide an excuse for the film to wrap up. The threat itself, while full of cool FX, was still a head-sctratcher as to what the ultimate goal was. Yes, the goal is stated as "we must destroy your world to protect ours" but elaborations such as: Why must you do this? What's the "green substance" on Planet Zero and is it alive?  How did Doom survive and what happened to him in that year? --and many other questions are all left unanswered. A Marvel film would have shown us why there was a threat, not told us, and also given us much better lead-up to understand the villain's motivations.

4. Doom does not have telekinetics. He has a metal suit with power blasts. He is scarred, but he MADE HIS SUIT. He is an evil genius. Is this so hard to do on film?

5. Sue Storm with her black eyeliner looks like a younger version of the washed-out methodone-addicted character that ends up as Tobias Fumke's girlfriend in Arrested Development Season 4. Go watch that on Netflix, you'll see what I mean. Once seen it cannot be unseen!

Overall I give it a C+ for being watchable but way behind the curve on the current state of superhero films and the minimum standards for the genre in film. There's a really good analysis of where this movie goes wrong right here, which is very insightful and I heartily agree with as well. 

Movie Review: Robocop

"Better than the internet might have you think"

I went in to Robocop tonight with the expectation of disappointment and heartbreak. I was a huge fan of the original two movies (#3 and #4 not so much) and in fact can safely say that I survived my second year in college thanks to the movies Robocop 2 and Predator 2, both of which I watched at least a dozen times in the theater when they came out. Robocop is a classic.... and it is also an interesting relic of its time, a time capsule of the future as only 1987 to 1990 could envision it.

Robocop for 2014 is also a time capsule, but this time it's the future as we might imagine it now, with a veneer of the heroic and a dash of cool thrown in. I was.... shocked, actually..... to find that not only did I like this movie, I loved it. A lot.

The thing is, as much as I liked the original films, they were so much a product of their time that neither Robocop 1 or 2 have aged well. They are still fun to watch, but so much of the message is specific to the way the late eighties envisioned our future dystopia, where we were going, that it doesn't really translate into a future that looks quite like the one we're in the middle of right now.

Nonetheless Robocop did well to at least envision some concepts that are now part and parcel of our society, in a certain way.... drone technology being key. The new Robocop takes the key elements of the original and extends them from our now into a curiously, almost disturbingly logical future, all while updating the protagonist, it's future tech, and villains to comport to today's expectations. Our future in Robocop has Steve Jobsian villains, technology that has perfected the art of cybernetic limb attachments, criminals who realize they need encrypted phones just to stay off the grid lest they be found, cameras everywhere, and an Alex Murphy, whose brain and computer wiring blend so effectively that free will as an illusion isn't just a concept in this movie, it's implicit.

The movie does make some changes. People have made some deal out of how Murphy's former lady partner of the original films doesn't exist in this one in any meaningful way (the new Robocop's partner is a decent guy but there's no way in hell he can keep up with this lighting quick, considerably more effective Robocop).  The new corporate villain does indeed feel like Steve Jobs with a very slight Bond villain makeover. The relationship between Murphy and his wife and kid is at the forefront in this movie and an integral part of the way that Murphy is humanized, and it works well here because the new Robocop actor is great, and his style and approach to the character works very, very well. Having his wife and child in the film to help play off on the problem of surviving one's humanity when you've been turned into a computer is a big part of the new movie, and I think they pulled it off. This Murphy is not the older Peter Weller Murphy, but the shift is subtle and seamless, and --prepare for a moment of heresy-- better.

All I can say is: I went to see it tonight because my gaming night for 13th Age fell through, and I had nothing else to do. I did not plan to see this movie, having bought in to the hype that it was just "okay" and didn't live up to the glory of the original. Someone remind me to NEVER, EVER trust the internet on stuff like this. This movie was the best Robocop yet, and possibly the best remake I've seen since.... hmmm.... Okay yeah it's the best remake I've seen. Period.

A+++

Supernova (2000) - Better With Age

Supervnova (2000)

This movie, starring James Spader and Angela Bassett in a sci fi horror adventure first came out in 2000, and I recall watching in in the theaters and generally experiencing a sense of overall disappointment. Interestingly, now many years later I recently stumbled across a copy of the film in DVD for cheap and realized that I couldn't remember a damned thing about the film. Never one to take that as a bad sign, I decided to watch it again and see if it was really as unmemorable as it seemed to be, or if I was simply experiencing the "attitude of the moment" when I watched it before. Plus, being on a Prometheus kick lately, I decided to try it again along with Pandorum, The Thing (original and remake), Event Horizon, and a few others yet to come.

[Tangent: If you've ever tried enjoying a film while stressed, over-worked, poorly rested, off your bipolar meds, or "insert unusual physical or mental state here," then you know what I'm talking about....sometimes, something may come off as crap through no fault of its own, and maybe its the viewer that needs an adjustment. For my purposes, lets just say that I distinctly remember having a number of issues involving poor sleep from a work schedule that had me awake from midnight to noon every day, followed by an afternoon job that left me with enough time to either sleep for two or three hours or catch movies (and I caught a lot of movies). Somewhere in there I occasionally got some sleep, too. All while becoming diabetic without even knowing it (news flash! Poor sleep contributes to diabetes).]

So anyway: Supernova is a film about a crew onboard a rescue vessel called Nightingale 229, in a relatively undefined future universe that has the following post-Alien required features: sleeper pods, a means of FTL travel that is weird, a small crew of highly aggressive or distinct (and sometimes unstable) personalities, and a quirky robot that unfortunately comes off as a painful addition included by someone on the production who absolutely thought it was going to be cute or endearing or something.

Spader plays Vanzant, a recovering addict and all around troubled badass with a past who immediately starts acting suspiciously like a man looking to start trouble, though he eventually comes around and by the end of the film is revealed to be a fairly reliable hero. He is contrasted with a motley crew of cohorts, though the only other key character here is Bassett's Dr. Evers. The film is worth watching just for her performance; she pulls off the by now stereotypical tough, competent female spacer role quite well, and manages to generate some decent chemistry with the somewhat less reputable Vanzant. Though less prominent, the other actors in the cast (including Lou Diamond Phillips) are all pretty decent; no one particularly feels "out of place" as long as you subscribe to the "poor psych profile screening" theory of starship crew management in the sci fi film future.

So the rescue vessel's troubles start with a deep space distress call from a remote mining station on a planetoid (described at IMDB as a comet but for the life of me I thought it was a moon while watching). The planetoid is part of a solar system with a sun which is about to imminently go supernova. This must mean that they have FTL communication in the future of Supernova, because timing is everything to this plot.

So the ship captain orders an FTL "jump" in which faster than light travel happens through some sort of near instantaneous time-space warping wormhole effect. It turns out the stasis pods are actually designed to keep people "intact" throughout the jump, so they don't show up on the other end all scrambled. It's not entirely clear why people would get scrambled but the machinery and hull of the ship wouldn't....but, well, it makes for a nice Cthulhuesque touch to the process. Of course the captain realizes he has a malfunctioning stasis pod on board but rather than abort the jump he takes the pod for himself and pays for it in suitably grizzly fashion. This is "what the hell???" moment #1 in the film for me; it is not properly established as to why they couldn't just take a bit of extra time to figure out what was wrong with the pod. Also, for a rescue ship, you would think they'd have a few extra stasis pods for --you know-- people they rescue!

Only a few minutes of screen time was enough to develop a deep hatred for that robot...

So with the captain a puddle of fused flesh, Vanzant takes over. They arrive (barely) at the mining colony and quickly discover a shuttle en route. On board is a single man named Larson, a seemingly young fellow who claims to be the son of a man Dr. Evers once had a very sour relationship with. Larson, naturally, is not all he seems to be...

So the movie moves onward with a premise that leaves you wondering just how this rescue vessel can really be all that useful when they seem to have so many problems on their own. Meanwhile the plot moves forward, leaving one with the suspicion that an alien of some sort ought to show up soon (or pop out of Larson), but it takes a decidedly different twist as things progress, with Larson getting creepier by the minute. When Vanzant finds a mysterious alien artifact that seems to warp time and space, it begins to have an effect on all the crew (at this point "what the hell" moment #2 crops up, as its not clear to me that the crewmen were compelled to check out the artifact....instead, they were just being stupidly nosy). Meanwhile, the imminent supernova serves as a persistent countdown to doom.

Supernova proved more enjoyable to me twelve years later than it did initially. The suitably weird, Mythosesque elements make for an entertaining variant on the "haunted ship in space" theme that has resonated for decades in film, and while it's certainly not in the same league as Alien it is also a cut above the average sci fi horror flick. Well...it's slightly better than garbage like The Core or 2012, anyway; and it smokes most SyFy fare.

Supernova's key strengths: good lead characters, odd choice of villain but it works, interesting weird mythos subtext, great FX (excluding some zero gee pod sex scenes), and a nice twist by not including an actual (knockoff) alien. I have no friggin' idea how I forgot about Angela Bassett as Dr. Evers in this one.

Supernova's failures: Some bad fridge logic moments (especially the stasis pod bit), the usual problem with a space submarine full of borderline personality disorders, and a robot that, while not as painful to watch as some other icons of hideousness in cinema is nonetheless entirely superfluous to the plot until literally almost the very end.

The Dead (2010) - A Slow Zombie Flick

The Dead (2010) - A Slow Zombie Flick

I stumbled across this one a while back at the local Hastings and the other day I spotted a used copy for $7.50 which was hard to resist (especially when paired with the "buy two get a third for $1" deal Hastings had going). Anyway, it was a pretty decent zombie flick, and I thought I'd provide a short capsule review for those interested in seeing an otherwise little-known zombie film that manages to be a bit better than the norm.

The Dead's plot focuses around the usual "day after the outbreak" sort of environment, with Air Force engineer Lt. Brian Murphy surviving a plane crash on the last evacuating flight out of an unnamed African country. The movie focuses on his survival in a harsh, arid African environment filled with shuffling zombies. He eventually meets an awol African soldier named Sgt. Daniel Dembele, and the two pair up to survive. The film's plot revolves around their efforts to keep alive, find a way out, and locate Dembele's son whom he learned survived and was taken to a refuge camp in the north. Like all good zombie flicks, the tale is all about survival.

The Dead has the distinction of returning to the world of Romero Zombies...and in fact these zombies appear to be even slower than normal (although it could just be that I haven't watched a good slow-shuffling zombie flick in a while). Much of the film's tension comes less from avoiding the zombies and more for dealing with problems that force the protagonists to slow down and focus on a time-consuming localized task. Fixing the truck, searching for supplies, finding water, trying to sleep....all stuff which becomes hazardous when you have roving gangs of shuffling zombies slowly yet inexhorably closing in on you.

About the only time the film really forced my suspension of disbelief was during one portion that ushers in the end sequence. Without giving away too much (spoiler alert from here on out) I have to say that the slow and methodical zombies of this film don't strike me as particularly threatening to a strong and disciplined military base; when the cut scenes during the radio conversation happen, it induced a sort of "fridge logic" moment for me later when I realized that while very little about what was transpiring elsewhere in the world was revealed, they probably could have included a few exra scenes that helped to establish better just how bad things were, if only because these zombies are so unbelievably slow that the notion they might pose a threat to a well-armed military base seems bit far fetched on the surface. Then again, I'm sure there was a limited budget for the film, so that might have been beyond its scope; plus, the idea that no amount of bullets can prepare you for a situation in which 95% of the world population has been zombified is a sort of primary conceit of these films, so overall this is a very minor nitpick.

The film hints at a few things without ever divulging any information. There's an appearance by a tribal shaman, with the subtle implication that perhaps the zombie plague was brought forth supernaturally, to force the warring factions in the unnamed African country to unite together against the threat of the undead. The suggestion of bigger and badder things happening worldwide goes unanswered until the end of the film, at which time one would not be remiss in assuming that on some level this film is taking place in the "Romeroverse" shared by Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead and Land of the Dead. There's nothing in The Dead that doesn't fit perfectly within that realm, and if one studies the technology in the film it's hard not to notice that the film makers seem (as best I can tell) to have excluded modern technology entirely. Admittedly, this is a remote African country where everyone lives in squalor, but I don't even recall seeing any recent tech on the airplane at the start of the film, let alone later on in odd spots like the house of the missionary family, the airfield or even the damaged radio equipment toward the end. I could be wrong, but it was an interesting notion. Either way, its nice to get through one contemporary film without seeing a cell phone.

The Dead is worth watching if you are willing to put the time in for a slow-paced zombie survival flick that takes its time establishing a methodical pacing and sense of measured, perpetual menace where you never quite feel a sense of immediate worry for the abnormally competent protagonists; it's not until they start to wear down, run low on supplies, and desperation starts to kick in that the overarching threat of the environment and its flesh eaters really becomes apparent. For some viewers this film will feel too slow and focused; for others, it will be a welcome relief from the sprinting zombies and frenetic plots of other recent films.

Saturday: Chernobyl Diaries and More

I figured it out: Dungeons & Dragons Next is making me want to play more Castles & Crusades. DDN, as I read it, is feeling to me to be on about the same level and focus as C&C, which is good....but unlike the DDN playtest doc I've got a complete rules set for C&C. Plus, I'm actually running it (started a new Saturday campaign as of last week, yay, hope my players show up again....)

Why does it say June 22nd? Hmmmm.

So I saw Chernobyl Diaries. In many ways I enjoyed it more than The Cabin in the Woods, if only because Chernobyl Diaries was an earnest effort at using horror scenery porn and mood to build slowly but effectively to a somewhat overdone but still entertaining finale...it was survival horror done right, but very simple in its execution and approach, no overarching plot, just some unfortunate people stupid enough to follow Yuri the tourist guide to visit the abandoned city of Pripyat on The Wrong Day.

Plus, if you watch this movie AFTER Cabin in the Woods, its fairly obvious that (spoiler alert!) Russia, at least, contained their Old One for one more season, heh....!

So anyway, Ten Cool Things about Chernobyl Diaries:

1. Awesome scenery porn. Bonus points if you really dig the whole "collapsed civilization/fallout/Chernobyl rotting away" look and want to see a movie set in such a place.

2. Excellent blend of a real world location with an already weird and distrurbing history with the terrifying horror-nightmare reimagining of the same.

3. Good old fashioned survival horror of the doom-iest kind.

4. Learn what would happen if a pack of feral ghouls were loose in Pripyat.

5. Russians are so fatalistic and pragmatic all at once.

6. Yuri the tour guide from your nightmares!

7. Although one would not want to march into Chernobyl's reactor #4 unprotected, this movie dials up the residual radioactivity to some new highs.

8. I love the slow, methodical build through the first two thirds of the movie. It saves the more conventional over-the-top horror elements for last, but really, the whole movie manages to make a threat out of normal physics, normal people and minimal CGI.

9. Excellent, absolutely marvelously terrifying use of real darkness and night to convey mood. No fake exterior lighting here (I'm looking at you, Cabin in the Woods).

10. This film manages to skirt the lines of supernatural, sci fi, hillbilly horror, chainsaw massacre and Nature Hates Us horror without actually being any of those. It also manages to keep from displaying full-frontal monstrosity; you'll never really get a good look at the antagonists.

I don't remember this shot from the movie. Hmmmm.

I only really had one gripe about this movie. I appreciate that it is common now in most genre films to have a bunch of young, handsome college-age twenty-somethings out for a bit of fun which goes disastrously wrong, and I appreciated that Cabin made fun of this trope, but really, seriously....I haven't seen a decent horror film in some time now that didn't start off this way. What the hell!

I see Feral Ghouls everywhere...

But Yuri, for as long as he made it, was a real hoot, lemme tell ya.

Now, excuse me, as I need to go load up S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl, I have an intense urge to playuthat game...