Reviews

Boy did that thing need some serious editing. The last half entails a prolonged boat chase, a side chase with goons after Ryan Reynolds for absolutely no reason, then our heroes get to their final destination and we get more explosions and gunfights, a hospital is attacked so the villains can steal a helicopter, Ryan's ex-girlfriend has lame fight with her evil boss in the hallway of the courthouse, and then the bad guy is finally dispatched.

The film's final forty minutes is just so much noise that you are soon begging for it to end. Bloody pointless action as well as a waste of Gary Oldman.

The Long Morrow (1964) This episode of the original Twilight Zone series had to be one of the dumbest that aired and for both story and logical reasons. Commander Douglas Stansfield (Robert Lansing) is to go on a deep space mission that will return him to Earth in 40 years, but he won't age as he'll be in space-hibernation. Now just before he lifts off he meets Sandra Horna (Mariette Hartley) and after one date they are madly in love, but their romance is doomed because when he returns from his mission she'll be an old crone. This is when things get stupid; the ship returns and the New Space Agency finds a note in his file to notify Sandra Horn who the old Space Agency had put into hibernation shortly after Stansfield ship had left. Due to communication problems they were never able to notify him of the fact that his girlfriend is doing the "big sleep" as well. So what did Stansfield do? Six months after launching he took himself out of hibernation so that when he returned to Earth he and his true love would be the same age. So when craggy Stansfield sees still hot Sandra he nobly tells her to go on with her life. What an idiot!

The stupidity factor: * Deep space travel that planned on having it's passenger in hibernation would not have packed 40 years of extra food. * 40 years alone in a tiny space capsule would probably turn your brain into grape jelly. * Stansfield never considered that in the 40 years he was in space that Sandra may have gone on with her life and got married to some one else, or even die.

This episode was written by Rod Serling and is probably the worst of his sci-fi stories and a really lame re-telling of the classic O. Henry story "The Gift of the Magi" lame because Serling forgot the actual point of that story that at the end the couples sacrifices proved how much they truly loved each other. It didn't end with the husband nobly telling his wife to go on with her short haired life without him.

The Resident: ER doctor Juliet Devereau (Hilary Swank) has left her cheating husband and moved into a huge loft apartment, that's surprisingly cheap, and too good to be true. Almost immediately Juliet starts to suspect that she is not alone in her apartment, she's not, and it's no mystery to the viewer that it turns out to be the hunky landlord (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who is actually a crazed stalker who latched onto one day when he saw her working at the hospital. He has spy-holes and secret passages that allow him access to her apartment so that he can use her toothbrush, masturbate in her tub, sneak in at night, drug her, and molest her while she sleeps. Christopher Lee has a useless role as the landlord's grandfather that has nothing really to do with the plot, not that there is much of plot. Juliet of course finds out what's going on and ends up in a running fight with the evil landlord inside the walls of the building.

Questions #1: If you have the hospital run a tox screen on your blood and urine after you've overslept numerous mornings in a row, and also found the lid of needle on the bedroom floor, why wouldn't you immediately notify the police after discovering that the tests came back positive for Demerol and Valium? She of course rushes back to her apartment to have long protracted battle with her assailant.

Question #2: Wouldn't a doctor know that using a nail gun to shoot three nails into the shoulder of your assailant is not a debilitating wound?

Sharktopus "Half-Shark. Half-Octopus. All Killer." The Navy commissions Eric Roberts to create a killing machine that can take on the likes of Somali pirates in areas America isn't allowed access to. So Roberts creates Sharktopus, everything works fine until the control unit back-pack on Sharktopus is damaged by a speed boat, and then Sharktopus goes rogue. Our hero teams up with Eric Robert's daughter, and co-creator of Sharktopus, to capture the beast alive. Many deaths later the hero starts to rethink this plan, mainly because he really sucks at his job. At one point the daughter hands him a dart that can relink her computer with Sharktopus and tells him, "It's the last one, you better not miss." Our hero responds, "I've been missing all day and I'm getting tired of it." This movie is fun for the simple reason that Roger Corman knew exactly what kind of a film a movie about a hybrid shark/octopus should be like. Plenty of kills and carnage and only it being made for the SYFY network precluded him from throwing in tons of nudity. The movie does earn one major demerit by sparing the mime on stilts during one of the rampages of Sharktopus. A must see movie!

Great Moments in Dialogue:

Two men cleaning the hull of the Queen Mary when the Sharktopus attacks: "Oh, no! Not like this!"

Our hero on losing his best friend to Sharktopus: "Nooooooooooo!"

Our hero warning the tourists: "There's a killer shark-octopus hybrid headed this way. So please leave the marina in a timely fashion.

The Asylum brings it's latest creature to the SyFi channel and this could be their best entry yet. The script is moronic, the acting is bad across the board, and the CGI drifts between bad and "What is that suppose to be?" but when you combine all those elements together you get one helluva fun movie.

The United States Ambassador to Venezuela is killed when his boat is attacked by a school of really nasty piranha, at first nobody knows what caused the boats destruction so Secretary of State Bob Grady (Brady Bunch's Barry Williams) calls Special Forces Baddass Jason Fitch (Paul Logan who is basically a poor man's John Cena) to find out what happened. Fitch arrives in Venezuela and is accosted by scientist Sarah Monroe (aging popstar Tiffany) who tells him that it's giant piranha behind the deaths. And why is there giant piranha tooling around the rivers of Venezuela? Well once again scientists are trying to end world hunger by making the food larger (Has this ever turned out to be a good idea?) but what is never explained is why Dr. Monroe was genetically engineering huge and super aggressive piranhas. I guess nobody would go see a movie called "Mega Catfish" Now it's revealed that the Mega Piranha grow exponentially every hour and also have three stomachs, two hearts and can impregnate themselves. Now that's some radical science! Jason Fitch calls Secretory of State Bob Grady, "There was no explosion, there were no terrorists, it was giant piranha!" How can you not love a movie with dialogue like that? So stopping the Mega Piranha before they grow big enough to swallow the world becomes our heroes top priority. Unfortunately there is a side plot with a crazy Venezuela colonel who thinks the whole thing is a plot to take over his country. As silly plots go that would be up there with killing a guy by smuggling snakes on a plane. So crazy colonel tries to kill the piranha by shooting them from helicopter gunships but all he accomplishes is blowing up the natural damn that was keeping the Mega Piranha contained in a small estuary. So now they are free and reaching the size of Winnebagos. Now the Mega Piranha are heading downriver towards the ocean and as that type of fish can't survive in salt water this will form a barrier that will allow the military to kill them before they turn around and head somewhere else...I guess? A United States Destroyer bombards the river with 9mm shells from it's deck guns and kills a bunch of them, but guess what? The Mega Piranha can survive in salt water and they attack and eat the destroyer. Next they have a submarine launch a nuclear torpedo at the Mega Piranhas but the big beasts just shrug it off and eat the sub.

The Mega Piranhas are now heading for Florida! Secretory of State Bob Grady wants to launch a full nuclear attack which would hopefully take out the fishy menace but also "sadly" remove the state of Florida from the map. Now Super Soldier Jason Fitch has an idea, earlier he got into a knife fight with one of the piranhas (seriously) and when he injured it the other piranhas went into a feeding frenzy. So his plan now is to lead a Seal Team of scuba clad morons to go toe to fin with the Mega Piranhas who are now reaching the size of two story houses. They'll shoot them in the eyes or gills to make them bleed and spark off a feeding frenzy so that they will wipe each other out (I'm really not sure the makers of this film know how a feeding frenzy works).

Now what truly makes this movie awesome is the Mega Piranhas attack. We get scenes of people screaming and running down the city streets in panic and one would immediately question "Why are they running from piranhas in the middle of a city?" Well that would be because the Mega Piranhas tend to favour suicide attacks by leaping out of the water and crashing into buildings (a visual that left my sides aching from laughter). One Mega Piranha leaps out and impales itself on a lighthouse like a giant shish kabob. Brilliant! This movie is a must see for fans of aquatic menaces. Two big thumbs up!

Seven years after a jet engine fell on her brother we find Samantha Darko on a road trip with her best friend Corey as they both want to escape their former lives. Their car breaks down in a small town in Utah and they are stuck there until their car can be repaired. Samantha of course has Darko superpowers and while she sleepwalks her time traveling zombie ghost girl self wanders around giving advice to the local nut (a post traumatic war veteran), and warning that the world is going to end in a few days. There is also the "Mystery of the Missing Boys" to be solved (spoiler: it's not) and a gaggle of weird characters to meet; the drunk teen who is brother to one of the missing boys, the nerd who is infected by a meteorite, the aforementioned crazy vet, the creepy motel manger, the priest with a shady past and his freaky girlfriend. The movie rewinds the time line twice so that we can see things happen differently, with no real logical effect or reason, and the second time is just a big f*ck you to the viewer who has just wasted 100 minutes of their lives watching this piece of crap. Richard Kelly has nothing to do with this sequel (it's directed by Chris Fisher) but after Southland Tales I'd still like to blame him.

"The Haunting of Molly Hartley" is basically a "What if Rosemary's Baby went to a prep school" and sadly the film even fails on that simple premise. The acting is bland across the board, the scares are nonexistent (not a good thing for a supposed horror movie), and the shocking revelation is so predictable and boring that it staggers the mind that this actually got a theatrical release.

So of last couple of movies I've watched recently this and "Red Sands" were both just so damn boring. Hell, neither of them could even pull off a single cheap scare.

It use to be that even the worst horror movie could be relied on to be at least a little fun, but now it seems as if they are venturing into the land pure unwatchableness

A group of US soldiers stationed in the Middle East come across an ancient statue and one of them decides to shoot it up. This was a bad idea as it was containing a Djinn and now it's free to bore us to death. The "monster" barely has a screen time of 20 seconds and when it does make an appearance it's cheap ass CGI. This movie was ninety minutes of coma inducing torture. The movie has a surprise kicker ending only if the viewer has never seen a movie before in his or her life.

Boring actors, lame script, and bland locations all add up to a movie not even worth mocking.

Watched the premiere tonight and can truthfully say that it had some of the best action set pieces to ever grace the small screen, it's just too bad they couldn't have found some decent writers. Lena Headey (Queen Gorgo from 300) plays Sarah and she's fine it's just that her British accent sneaks in every now and then and was a bit distracting, Thomas Dekker (Heroes) is decent but still a far cry away from some one you'd believe could lead any kind of resistance, and then there is Summer Glau (Firefly) as the good Terminator and I'd say she's turning into quite the action star.

It's the plotting and dialog that is really what is going to prevent this show from reaching the level of the new Battlestar Galactica.

John arrives at a new school, going under the alias John Reese, and when he identifies himself to the substitute teacher during attendance he finds himself being shot at by said teacher who had a gun hidden in his leg (he cuts it out of his thigh with a letter opener as he reads off the kids names), a girl who had earlier shown and interest in young John jumps in the way and takes the bullet hits (don't worry she's fine as she is played by Summer Glau and is the good Terminator). John immediately makes for the windows and dives out. Next comes the moment where you realize the writers are complete morons as the Terminator turns to all the kids who are cowering behind their desks and says, "Class dismissed." Yes, they give the Terminator an Arnie one liner. How sad is that?

I'll certainly be tuning into the further adventures of Sarah Connor as, unlike the recent Bionic Woman, stuff actually happens and some of it darn cool. We can only hope the writing improves though some of the time travel war elements introduced in the pilot are bit too goofy to give me too much hope.

While on a North American raid a young viking boy refuses to kill a defenseless Native American woman and her child so is left behind be his evil fellows. He is then raised by the kindly Native Americans and grows up to be Karl Urban. When the vikings return, this time lead by Clancy Brown, Karl shows his people that their spears and arrows are nothing against the might of the vikings, and that only he, Karl Urban, can stop them and that they best just run and hide.

The viking warriors in this movie are so cartoonishly evil it would be laughable if they weren't somehow made to be so boring as well. They dress with so many skulls, horns and spikes it's as if the filmmakers thought the orcs in The Lord of the Rings were too warm and fuzzy looking. Also every shot of the invading vikings has them backlit through the trees with large amounts of smoke, to the point you had to assume that some of the viking crew were providing the illumination for effect.

Not to be spoilerish, but obviously this is well documented fact, that Karl Urban defeats the vikings and the Native American people were never troubled by white man again.

Here are a few questions, in no particular order, that came to me during and after seeing the film: *Be warned some questions are a bit spoilerish*

1) Why didn't the Broadway play producers not know that Mary Jane's voice wouldn't carry past the first row? Isn't that something you find out during the audition process?

2) Did the story really need to have Gwen Stacy and Eddie Brock connected?

3) Is the half-torn Spidey mask now an official look for him?

4) What was they symbiote doing in Peter's apartment in the time between it arriving and it leaping on him? Watching soap operas? 5) Why did Eddie Brock get sharp teeth when the symbiote joined with him?

6) Does Spider-Man have some kind of one person per rescue quota? After he saved Gwen I couldn't help but wonder about the poor crane operator. Was the crane still out of control? Were they able to cut the power?

7) Why would a villain with a "heart of gold" like Sandman join up with a clearly evil creature like Venom?

8) Was the New York subway system designed by the same people who created the mine tunnels in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?

9) Why would Mary Jane go along with the whole "Dump Peter or I'll kill him" plan that evil Harry proposes? Did she forget that Peter is Spider-Man and that he can pretty much take care of himself in a fight? Or did she just use that as an easy out for what she really wanted?

10) And where was the scene where Evil Peter would fight Good Peter in a junkyard?

As a genre Christmas movies are probably most hit or miss, for every Miracle on 34th Street you have a dozen more like Santa Clause Conquerors the Martians. Now in 1985 the Salkinds decided to take a stabbed at it and with Supergirl director Jeannot Szwarc at the helm that's exactly what we got….stabbed.

The movie starts our promising enough as we pan down from a starry sky to a snowy Scandinavian landscape and wood cottage full of people. They are all waiting for their beloved friend Uncle Clause (David Huddleston) to bring toys for all the children as he does every year. Many are impressed that Clause can cut wood for the whole village and still have time to carve all the wooden toys he provides each year, but it is his love of children that makes it possible. After giving out wonderfully hand carved toys to the children he and his wife Anya (Judy Cornwell) bid their friends goodbye as they have more stops to make, and even though the weather is getting bad they can't think of disappointing the children who live on the other side of the forest. The storm intensifies and soon their reindeer collapse in exhaustion as the snow whips around them. Clause embraces his wife as the winter storm takes their lives.

The Northern Star appears and a cone of light descends on the frozen countryside and out of it steps a large contingent of elves. Clause, his wife, and reindeer all wake up as the group of colorfully dressed little people approach. They are led to their new home at the North Pole where they are informed by the Ancient Elf (Burgess Meredith) that Clause is The Chosen One and will fulfill the duties of the prophecy. That is live forever and give out toys to all the children of the world. And this is where the film runs of the rails and into a morass of boring maudlin scenes coated with syrupy crap.

At 108 minutes the film really drags with overlong montages of the elves making toys, endless shots of Santa flying around with his reindeer pulled sled, and it's not until about the 40 minute mark that the real plot of the movie starts to rear its ugly head. A seemingly overworked Santa Clause promotes an elf named Patch (Dudley Moore) to assistant, but his radical ideas of mass production results in shoddily made toys and unhappy children on Christmas morning. A now disgraced Patch runs away to prove he is useful. Of course he ends up hooking up with the films villain B.Z. (John Lithgow) an evil toy manufacturer who is being investigated by a Senate committee for producing dangerous products. Throw in a poor little boy who lives on the street and the rich girl (also stepdaughter of B.Z) who befriends him and you may need to take a couple of insulin shots to survive a viewing of this film.

About the only real enjoyment I got out of this film was watching Lithgow hamming it up with the evil cranked up to eleven, but as his character doesn't show up until the hour mark it's really not worth the wait. Like Supergirl this Christmas disaster just seemed to meander around without purpose, now Jeannot Szwarc pretty much stopped directing movies after Santa Clause: The Movie but has made a decent mark for himself in episodic television (he even directed an episode of the excellent show Heroes). So if you're looking good Santa Clause movie keep on moving as this one is not going to fill the bill.