Why did I not have a desire to see Warrior when it was in theaters? The stellar-looking cast including Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton didn’t hurt but perhaps it was the seemingly overwrought story of two estranged brothers who each are fighting against each other for whichever predetermined important reason. (Was that even supposed to be a surprise in the final act? Because it’s all over the trailer!) Or perhaps Warrior didn’t strike my fancy since I am hardly a sports fanatic even though the brutality and testosterone-y aspects of MMA are pretty cool. Yet, all it took was one of my colleagues saying “You’ll want to tackle someone while watching it” that got me on board. For the record, he was right.

Even if you are Amish or have short-term memory problems, or have otherwise not seen the entire narrative spoiled in the previews, the story in Warrior is so expected that you can see it coming from two summers ago. Hardy plays Tommy Conlon, an angry and bitter man who has suffered through many hardships in life, many from his estranged father Paddy (Nick Nolte) who was drunk and abusive before finding religion and sobriety. Edgerton plays Brendan Conlon, brother to Tommy, who left his family at sixteen to be with his would-be wife. Brendan has not seen Tommy since then and is still hesitant about any contact with his father.

Tommy’s past is a mystery since he is emotionally withdrawn and does not talk about it to anyone, especially his prying father. We learn in bits and pieces about him fleeing with his mother only to watch her painfully die later on as well as his heroics in the military and a promise made to the widow of one of his fallen compadres. Brendan on the other hand has a beautiful wife and two girls but is in a bad financial situation to the point that he is about to be removed from his house without a substantial amount of money. With that, both brothers sign up for a MMA tournament against fourteen other top fighters in the world for a chance to win $5 million.

It is odd that a film like The Fighter, which is good but very predictable, can be nominated for Best Picture along with a slew of other awards and the only Oscar nomination for Warrior goes to Nolte. Granted, Nolte is great with his performance as the outside man desperately seeking redemption from his remaining family. He carries the knowledge of his past failures and is humbled because of them but both sons mostly cast him aside except for Tommy who clearly specifies he needs Paddy as a trainer and nothing else. Hardy also turns in a criminally under-appreciated performance as Tommy who hides years of physical and emotional trauma behind a steely facade with nothing but rage and aggression poking through when he is in the cage.

Rounding out the trio of emotionally scarred Conlon men is Edgerton as Brendan who I first noticed and became a fan of from Animal Kingdom. Edgerton’s character has a good amount of time devoted to him but his character lacks the stress of Tommy or the rejection of Paddy rendering Brendan the more plain character out of the three. He still does a remarkable job though as Brendan is the underdog throughout the process and is given the most material to sympathize with. For most of the film, Tommy comes off almost as an ungrateful punk who doesn’t give a damn about anyone so connecting with him is a bit more difficult.

Even though the story seems a tad unoriginal, co-writer and director Gavin O’Connor infuses the film with so much energy that I feel comfortable in saying that you too will want to tackle someone at parts of the movie. The fight scenes, of which there are many, never feel overly staged or choreographed and the typical handheld camera shots are not overdone to risk confusing you as to what is going on. Punctuating the fight scenes are conversations between Tommy and his father, Brendan and his wife, and so forth but those don’t feel like filler or padding the way some sports movies throw in “heavy” scenes. Even if you are not a fan of martial arts or sports movies, it is close to impossible to watch this film and not get teary-eyed when appropriate or otherwise invested in the characters. I haven’t seen a lot of the heavily lauded films from last year so I can’t proclaim this is the best but I am disheartened that this top-notch drama did not receive a bit more recognition.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows picks up close to where the last one left off. Holmes (Robert Downy Jr.) has spent an untold amount of time between films piecing together a continent wide conspiracy. With Watson (Jude Law) getting married, Holmes knows he has to finagle him into also being interested in the conspiracy. There have been bombings throughout Europe and Holmes concludes that his arch nemesis, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) is behind them. He safely stops one bomb just for the mark to be assassinated none the less by the hit man. During Watson’s bachelor party, Holmes sets out to collect more clues. Enter Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) as Madam Simza, the soothsayer. Fighting ensues and a disastrous and drunk evening winds up with a disheveled Watson late for his wedding the following day. Holmes is used to being the smartest man in the chase until he tangles again with Moriarty. The professor is always two steps ahead and not shy of grand gestures to aid Holmes in meeting his maker even if innocents are hurt. The great reveal comes with Moriarty admitting that even if he didn’t start the world war he was fine taking the world over financially with supplying the weapons to maintain the wars’ destructiveness. Throughout the film, the history is slightly tweaked to fit the plot and help the audience make sense of it all. The climax and confrontation is set (where else would it be in a comic book style storyline) at the Summit Meeting between the nations.

Downy’s performance is successful in delivering the quirky, intelligent, animated, lovable performance that we received from the first film. With Law bringing his cynical, realistic outlook on life attitude back they are a match still made in heaven. There’s been some time since such a male pair shared such charisma and elegance on screen together. They both put their best feet forward. The only downside, for the writing more so than performance, is there was no depth given to Holmes’ character. There were instances where you know there is going to be more than his intellectual insanity but it fell away as quick as it appeared. Watson seemed to see through the exterior but it was never delved into further than him acknowledging non-verbally that it there. Frustratingly, there is an entire underdeveloped subplot with Watson being married at the end of their adventure that would have left Sherlock alone in the flat which could have been used to really define Sherlock’s need for companionship. The loneliness behind his smile should have been given some room to be explored. However, It was still a very well put together action film.

Noomi’s character should have been given more of a role than just a plot device as her talent was not used to the best of her ability. I guess when coming from such a spectacular trilogy maybe it was a personal choice to cross over to the American cinema with this type of role. She is not bad by any means and she still works well with what she was given but there should have been more provided for her character. When you take such a strong actor and give them a mediocre role it shadows their true talent. Harris kicks in the door with his performance. I have never loved and hated a character so much. He is a genius in his evil, super villain with pizzazz role. You began to root for him and his despicably absurd ploy for financial world domination. With what we know of Moriarty I was shocked that it look so long for the hand-to-hand combat to come. His devilishly handsome and overly confident self meets Holmes move for move to leave us holding our breath as they get close to the edge of the falls.

The entire film is action and adventure sprinkled with dialogue and great direction. There are moments like when they get to the Summit that seem a little dragged out to make up for too many fighting sequences. The attention to detail is lacking in the action sequences and some may never notice but I did. Sherlock Holmes resides in Britain for most of his life, so why is it that he has an Eastern fighting style? I understand it is what most movie goers these days expect but that little anachronism changes the way I see the Guy Ritchie franchise of the great detective. It is why there is so much action in the movie bringing the film more current than the actual setting to appease the audiences. If some of the extraneous scenes were dropped the two-hour-plus movie wouldn’t have felt more like three. Ritchie stayed true to his form with the slow motion this-is-what-went-down technique and flash backs to cover what had previously happened but was skipped temporarily in the film. Over all it was a very enjoyable film and I would say it is slightly better than the original but sets expectations higher for a third installment to set itself apart from this film.

Let me just start off by saying how thankful I am that there is not another colon before the ‘Ghost Protocol’ subtitle. I think that would irritate me beyond belief, potentially to the point of not even doing a review at all. Whew. Crisis averted. Now as far as big-budget action franchises go, M:I has always been all over the place for me (and a lot of folk by the ratings and reviews). The first had its moments but was decried by some for its handling of establish characters from the TV series. I didn’t care about that so much but it had long stretches of nothing that my 14-year-old brain didn’t like. M:I 2 was much the same but with far too little talky parts and far too many random explosions and whiplash-inducing edits. M:I 3 I rather liked but I’ve only ever seen that once, on TNT or something, at 3 in the morning. So I’m not too qualified to make a firm declaration on that one.

As Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol got underway at the helm of Brad Bird (you know, the awesome director from likely your favorite Pixar films) and Jeremy Renner joining the cast, I was tempted from the start. The initial, and somewhat ongoing, talk was that Renner’s character Brandt was likely to take over for Captain Insano himself for any future installments. Anything that results in less Tom Cruise in my life is always a good thing. Sadly, I did not get to see this in IMAX which means that I didn’t get the DKR prologue (damn!) nor to experience some of the moments that others raved about. I can certainly imagine that those scenes would have been quite amazing in IMAX but I don’t think that the lack of a super-huge screen detracted from my enjoyment … at least not as much as the story.

At the start. we find Ethan Hunt (Insano Cruise himself) stuck in a Russian prison as the team of Jane (Paula Patton) and Benji (the returning Simon Pegg) are attempting to break him out. Of course they succeed since the opening credits have not even begun and Hunt is quickly thrust into a mission to retrieve files from the Kremlin. Things go awry, the Kremlin blows up, and the US government initiates ‘Ghost Protocol’ which is not a version of Call of Duty, but the shuttering of IMF and basically stranding Hunt and his team on their own with a new IMF analyst, Brandt (Renner) tagging along.

If you’ve seen Alias, any James Bond film, or most any other “spy/covert action” movie, you could probably guess there is a deranged man with a major weapon that requires the team to travel to exotic locales to track down clues and contacts and ultimately stop World War III. As far as the story goes, there really is not a lot of new ground broken in this installment sadly. Please do not mistake the rote steps I described for boring as writers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec use those genre tentpoles as effectively as possible while transitioning between the exposition and the action very seemlessly. Unlike another recent action-y/spy thriller Salt, the big sequences and showdowns feel naturally inserted into the story instead of a loose plot written around said sequences.

Bird as director deserves a lot of credit for this as well. Perhaps the many years managing the doubtlessly painstaking process of an average Pixar film is a much better training camp for action directors than say, music videos and commercials. Ghost Protocol is almost the antithesis of a Michael Bay film as you actually have a firm grasp of the setting and the blocking so you can tell what the hell is going on. Those transitions between the dialogue and the action and then back again are quite fluid for lack of a better word which is more desirable than the typical “throw in as many cuts as possible to confuse the audience into liking it” sense that seems to permeate action films nowadays.

Since 1996, Cruise has been the face of the M:I series so that sadly has not changed for now but he does well-enough with his smarmy, smug persona to pull off Hunt as well as before. Patton has a few decent scenes but nothing too spectacular. The main standouts for the cast are Pegg and Renner, and that statement might be only slightly partial since I am a fan of both. Pegg does little wrong (I haven’t seen Paul so I can’t say no wrong) so his portrayal of the new field agent Benji is just the right amount of smart and confident with a bit of naivete to him that serves as a great comedic foil for the mostly stone-serious cast. Renner may be among those serious characters but I’ve liked the guy in everything I’ve seen him in and he is quite versatile as an actor with action, drama, and a hint of facetiousness coming through here. While the villains are too blase to remember their names, the dynamic from the ex-IMF team as a whole made up for them. And Anil Kapor was excellent, although not too important in the grand scheme of things.

As a whole, Ghost Protocol doesn’t come together quite as well as I remember the last installment and it may not stick out as a great action film along the lines of Die Hard. But that’s no bother. The pedestrian story aside, there is more than enough here to satisfy with some great performances by Pegg and Renner as well as the type of pacing and structure that action films should strive to abide by.

To prepare for the upcoming “Epic Finchercast,” I revisited Alien 3, or Alien Cubed if you so prefer, since I haven’t seen it since the early 90s after its debut on HBO. Since I was but maybe 10 or 11 at the time, I cannot hold myself too accountable for my disdain for this film since of course, at the time, I had not yet experienced Se7en, Zodiac, or Social Network. On the surface, Alien Cubed is a decent follow-up to the Alien saga. When viewed with the rest of director David Fincher‘s body of work, this was just the beginning.

The main consternation of Alien 3 seems to be around the death of Newt and Hicks. Now, I love Aliens (and Michael Biehn) just as much as the next guy and at the time I was sad to see them perish off-camera in rather rudimentary ways. But as the crew’s ship crash lands onto a Company-owned maximum-security prison/iron works/whatever, this time I began to see why that decision was made. Hicks was basically incapacitated and Newt, while cute and all, was still just a pesky pre-teen girl that would have otherwise been surrounded by the rapists and murderers on Fury 161. It’s tough to say but those characters had outlived their usefulness but Ripley, of course, has not.

Say what you want about the Alien series proper as a whole, but Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has always been the backbone and Alien 3 shows exactly why. As she is told by the medical officer Clemens (Charles Dance) that her companions have perished, Ripley still has the nagging thought that an alien is behind their demise even though she is curiously restrained in explaining that. After the bodies of Newt and Hicks are cremated and a rescue team has been summoned, Ripley receives confirmation that an alien was on-board and has likely infiltrated the small camp of prisoners and corrections officers.

Having watched the theatrical cut and the “assembly cut” back-to-back, the omissions that were made are puzzling. Even knowing about the longer, fuller cut in advance, the theatrical version seems either far too sloppily edited or too truncated to do the film any justice. Out of the twenty five remaining in the facility, only a handful are ever given any characterization (such as Charles Dutton‘s Dillion) or even names (like the survivor Morse) in the regular cut, leading to the bulk of the film just an alien chasing random dudes down dimly-yellow-tinged hallways. The “assembly cut” or as close to Fincher’s director’s cut that we will likely receive is about twenty five minute longer and features not only more prominent characterizations of the important inmates but also a quite enthralling plot point that was completely omitted from the final film.

Since I have watched an ungodly amount of Fincher films in the past month, it is easy to see the visual style that he would hold onto with following films. The low- and high-angled shots, the yellow hues that permeate, and even the emphasis on character rather than flashy visuals that would define him almost two decades later are present in Fincher’s debut film. Sadly, that mostly holds true for the “assembly cut” rather than the theatrical version since a good chunk of the story was left out in the latter version. Even the other little details like the grimy set-pieces or the ruthless anonymous thugs speak toward Fincher’s other works and they certainly stand out here as Fincher seems to be more interested in the visual than the constantly changing narrative.

Even though it has been largely criticized by the movie-watching community, Alien 3 is a worthy follow-up to James Cameron’s Aliens in that it is almost completely different in its execution. Aliens was more focused on non-stop action whereas Alien 3 is more of a melding of its two predecessors. There are many horror-esque moments especially as the prisoners do not know about the threat but yet still many action sequences such as the alien chasing men through endless corridors, all while it is scaling walls and ceilings. Those chase scenes close to the finale, and even those throughout the film, are captured with almost a raw intensity that defy you to be nonchalant during them. Even the assembly cut ending which still has Ripley sacrificing herself is more impactful as the queen does not bust out just before. It not only is more fitting for the ending of a Fincher film but also makes Ripley’s journey more impactful.

There’s tons of stuff to beat this movie up on from the cruddy CGI to the underdeveloped characters but Alien 3 was nowhere near as abysmal as I feared it would be. The assembly cut is the one to watch if you have the chance but even through the studio fuckery, the theatrical cut is still a pretty powerful film on its own, and one that tries to stand up to its bigger brothers in the franchise.

I was quite disappointed when Attack the Block did not receive a proper screening anywhere close to the Movie Scum headquarters, especially after hearing so much advance acclaim from the gazillion festivals and select screenings it had. Yet, the film is now in reach at your local Redbox or Blockbuster and I highly recommend a viewing for many of the same reasons given before: this is flat out a fun movie experience.

Think back to when we (proverbially speaking of course) were kids and there were globs of adolescent empowerment films about kids saving the day while the adults were just sitting on their thumbs. Writer and director Joe Cornish is clearly a member of that generation as the best description I can give of this film is The Goonies meets Alien. Set in a not-so-nice part of downtown London, our core cast consists of a gaggle of delinquent youths, some legitimately of the tougher sort, some not. The gang, led by Moses(!) (John Boyega) holds up the meek and defenseless Sam (Jodie Whittaker) on her way back to her block, otherwise known as an apartment building for all us ignorant American-types.

The mugging is interrupted by a projectile that destroys a car nearby and Moses is attacked while scrounging in the car by an unknown creature. Moses, not the kind willing to turn the other cheek, hunts down the being and kills it. The group brings it to Ron (Nick Frost) in an attempt to identify it as a hairless orangutan or something else. While there, they top off with ample amounts of weed since Ron runs the cannabis business inside the block for Hi-Hatz. It is not too long after that more things fall from the sky right outside the building and the tough youngsters suit up to wage war. Little did they know they were up against a few dozen feisty aliens who target the kids wherever they may go.

I’ll warn you now that you may want to turn your subtitles on while watching this. I blame equal parts poor sound design (the music drowns out the dialogue in quite a few places) and some contemporary English slang that I was quizzical on until I had the proper context. Nevertheless, Cornish quite effectively crafts the characters by way of these terms unbeknownst to a guy like me. I’m no expert and this may or may not be representative of the linguistics of London’s young adults but the many dialogue exchanges (especially in the early parts of the film) feel genuine, especially with the delivery from all of the actors. Seriously, the cultural barrier may be a factor, but there is not a single performance that I doubted during the film.

Even though the film takes place entirely in a single building and in its immediate surroundings, it is quite an adventure as the group of kids are chased around from floor to floor, apartment to apartment, with little down time in the mix. What down time there is usually provides some quick comedic bits especially with Ron and Brewis as they sit and ponder an alien invasion while getting stoned or the preteen troublemakers Probs and Mayhem as they desperately try to keep up their delinquency with the big boys. The rest of the time though is used to effectively weave elements of action, sci-fi, and horror all together as those darn aliens creep up at the most inopportune times.

I must give Cornish and the special effects teams mounds of credit for the aliens as well. Their design is very minimalist yet effectively menacing and creepy especially as you see their pronounced features in the backgrounds of dimly-lit hallways or outside of windows. There are quite a few moments that, while not “scary” per se, are very tense with the monsters popping out after the group. While some of the cast is either in too few scenes to make a difference, there are many characters that stick out, either with random quips or complete character arcs. Of all, Boyega as Moses is one of the more compelling written and performed characters in a while as he gradually learns to embrace responsibility and self-sacrifice.

There is a ton more that I quite enjoyed in this film that I just briefly touched on, but suffice to say, all of the hype and acclaim that Attack the Block received is well-deserved. As a bonus, you can even make an effective drinking game out of the abundance of times bruv, fam, or innit are said.

Originally published January 7, 2010

Surprisingly, I had been missing out on John Carpenter’s The Thing until a few years ago when a friend of mine turned me on to it. I thought it was a very effective movie and the DVD was great, featuring commentary by Carpenter and Kurt Russell as well as an in depth documentary on the making of the film. Sadly, my original DVD was not anamorphic so I had no desire to watch the film in recent years until I upgraded my disc to the re-release from a few years back. For some reason, I didn’t remember much from the film so it was almost like watching it for the first time all over again.

A loose remake of the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, Carpenter’s version puts us in the middle of an Antartic research team who uncover a monstrous alien who has already devastated another research camp. As the being infiltrates the tight group of men, it takes their appearance and mannerisms leading them to doubt as to who is human and who is not. It is a very simplistic story, one which has been ripped off (or maybe its an homage depending on where you stand) by other films and even TV series.

It works so well because it is very well-produced (one of Carpenter’s best in my opinion) and has a great confined atmosphere of dread. It is really not a scary movie. It has a few jumps but more importantly, it has a palpable tension especially as the characters start putting the pieces together and figuring out that something is not right.

One of the biggest standouts of the film is the effects by Rob Bottin to create the creature. As it changes from a dog to a venus-fly-trap-headed man to even as a man’s head separates from the rest of his body as the alien tries to survive, the visuals of the monster are genuinely frightening, never looking gimmicky or fake. This is a movie that special effects gurus should look to for why practical effects are much more effective and realistic than crap-looking CGI which may allow more creativity but destroys any credibility.

Its a real shame that Carpenter has been on a decline and all but disappeared over the past several years. While I haven’t seen all of his films, I have seen a fair amount to be able to tell the difference between old Carpenter classics like Prince of Darkness or Halloween and new Carpenter dreck like Village of the Damned and Ghosts of Mars. He seems to have returned to form recently with his well reviewed episode of Masters of Horror and his upcoming film The Ward.

Let’s hope that the threatened Thing remake either fizzles out or turns out to be decent. While it won’t destroy the original, I don’t think Carpenter could use another dud, even if its just in credit only.

With George Lucas’ 13th revision of Star Wars hitting Blu-ray recently, I figured I should honor that somehow. But not with those reviews. That would be painstaking. If you read old reviews of Mel Brooks‘ Spaceballs, the consensus is that it came far too late to be an effective parody of those famed sci-fi films. Funny enough though, I saw Spaceballs likely when I was under six and didn’t see Star Wars until well into high school. Thus, the spoof aspect never really stuck out to me. That’s fine because that part is only moderately funny.

Brooks’ film works best when it breaks the 4th wall and pokes fun at unrelenting merchandising of lunchboxes, flamethrowers, and toilet paper. I especially enjoy the one-off jokes such as the cross-eyed gunner Asshole or Mr. Rental. The cast is largely decent considering the unevenness of the story with John Candy, Brooks himself as two characters, and the lovely Daphne Zuniga as the standouts. Some laugh-out-loud moments exist but those are buried too far under countless bits that fail. Watch it for nostalgia’s sake but not to expect a good film. That is, until Brooks’ realizes the potential for a touched-up Special Edition.

First off, I have never read the graphic novel, so I swear to God, if you negate my review if this film wasn’t faithful to the source material, I will sick Kane Hodder on you.

Scott Pilgrim is 100% pure entertainment. Every fucking thing about it. From the comic booky words that fly on the screen, to the insanely clever script that is basically a group of well constructed lines stacked in order of hilarity that assemble a story. Visually, aurally, intellectually and otherwisely this film is extremely pleasing.  It’s almost guerilla like in its blatant disregard for seamless scene transitions. Which, by the way, is awesome. Pretty much every scene or line is completely unexpected and hilarious. There literally is a laugh about every 1.5 seconds.

I have accused Michael Cera of being repetitive in his characters.  This is the first film in which even though he still employs some of the same traits, I did notice that he does actually distinguish his character from all others.

Also, Kieran Culkin extremely hilarious as his roommate. But, then again, so is every person in this film.

I suppose I should mention the plot. In a nutshell, Scott Pilgrim is in love with Ramona Flowers. She is resistant to his “charms,” but eventually succumbs due to his persistence. However, they both discover that if they are to be together, Scott has to defeat Ramona’s 7 ex boyfriends. What ensues is a film that will delight video game, music, comic book and just anything fans.

I am really serious when I say that there is something to like every single second of this film. Whether it is a funny line, a bright color, a word flying across the screen, I have never seen a film that has stimulated so many different parts of my brain for the entirety of its running time.

I realize that this is a short review, but when you have nothing but positive things to say about a film, brevity is the result. I am probably the last person on Earth to see this, but I’m glad I did.

Perhaps it was just presumptuous of M. Night Shyamalan to promote his upcoming adaptation of the Avatar: The Last Airbender tv series at the end of The Happening on a little girl’s backpack. Around these parts, The Happening is one of the most laughably awkward movies ever made and it sure did no favors including the otherwise promising The Last Airbender film. I guess, since we were collectively watching the end of The Happening, we should have known that The Last Airbender would be a steaming pile. Yet, I watched it all the same.

I’d heard from several friends and colleagues (not in the 6-12 age range that the original cartoon targeted) that the Avatar series was excellent. I have thus seen about five episodes of the first season and can confirm that the animated tale of the titular last airbender is not only quite entertaining, but one of the most universally excellent animated series in recent times. It (and the movie, but we’ll get to that later) centers around Aang, who has been literally frozen in time for a century discovering his role in the ongoing war between the Fire Nation and the other subsets of the human race. Aang is an airbender who can harness and control air with his skills. The Fire Nation can control fire and are apparently pissed at something and decide to exterminate the Airbenders and are waging war against the Water People and Earth People. Thus, Aang and his friends Katara and Sokka must fight the Fire Nation and some dethroned prince or something. I haven’t gotten that far in the series and damn if the movie did anything to clarify.

I need to get a few things out of the way before the review can continue. M. Night sucks balls and should go back to filmmakers’ school or wherever will no longer insult my sensibilities. And the cartoon (even only seeing maybe 1/20th of it) is far better than the movie. Allegedly, this was intended to be the first in a trilogy of films that cover the series’ three seasons, each tackling Aang mastering one of the other elements. The movie failed (at least critically) so that may never happen. Upon watching the series (after the movies for the record), I was struck by how heartful and genuine it was. The series is not dark and brooding like the film, and in fact embraces the innocence of childhood as Aang is quickly thrust into an authoritative figure that he is not cut out for. All of that was lacking from the film but that is not all.

Sure, it is ambitious to try and condense a 22-episode season into a film. M. Night deserves accolades for that in theory at least. But just like watching every other episode of a TV series, you may get the gist but it is rather awkward and jarring. What took the 22 minute series premiere to cover, M. Night gets in less than seven minutes or so but with the side effect of stripping any redeeming character moments or mystery from it. The story is interesting (thus what got me watching the superior TV series) but as certain plot points are efficiently hit, I really lost track of why the hell I should care since I barely knew these characters or what they were up against. The fact that this movie had more voiceover than what I hear the original Blade Runner is like and characters that exist ONLY for exposition only cements that we are not watching a full story, only a condensed version of it.

This entire review won’t be comparing the film to the series (but there’s no contest, go watch the series NOW) so I will move on to things specific to the film. M. Night is no stranger around Movie Scum and I believe I mentioned once before that he should stick to directing. Scratch that … he should stick to producing or retiring. There are some things that I enjoyed about the film (namely the cinematography and the production design) but most everything else was lackluster at best. Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, and Jackson Rathbone as Aang, Katara, and Sokka respectively all turned in garbage acting. In fact, there was not one (1!) actor in the film that I could pick out as decent against their horrendous counterparts. Across the board, it is that bad.

Likewise, the special effects are not too spectacular considering this was a multi-million summer release which should have had all of Paramount and Nickelodeon’s money behind it. Yet, some were okay, most were bad, and some were head-scratchingly abysmal which makes watching this film (not in 3D mind you) a headache in and of itself. The boats employed by the Fire Nation though were awesome and especially the design of the different worlds whether the ice-capped Water People world or the beautiful Earth People world (these were rather glossed over in the film) were impressive even if there were jettisoned for horrible storytelling at every angle.

I may not be the most attentive movie watcher, but I swear there was a girl in the final third of the film who merely showed up, seemed to be important, and then died in a triumphant matter (oops, spoiler!) without the chance for me to even catch her name. And thus, the main failure point of the movie (not counting the horrid acting) is that the story is literally 480 minutes of story truncated into a feature film with no regard to the playful nature or even attempting to scratch the depth of the source material.

That said, The Last Airbender is not a crap category type of film. It is beautifully shot but simply incompetently directed in every other regard. It might be worth seeing just what the “hype” is about but it does not contain the awfulness as some of the other films we’ve reviewed.

I have no idea what Hollywood is thinking sometimes. With the constant remakes, reboots and re-imaginings of so many movies clogging up the theater it’s hard to find something … different. If it’s not a “classic” movie from only 10 years ago that is being shoved back in our faces, it’s the deluge of “Super Hero” movies filling every marquee in town. I, for one, am quite simply, sick of it. That is where Hobo with a Shotgun comes in.

It’s plain to see from the title alone that this is not your ordinary movie. When I first saw the box when it was released, I was skeptical. I have proven that I have a increasingly strange and probably unnatural love of bad movies. Having said that, even I don’t make a purchase on a whim knowing absolutely nothing of what I am plopping down my hard earned cash for. However after seeing some reviews online, twitter, and personal friends recommending the movie to me, I made my choice. (Quick side bar; I actually purchased the movie with the full intention of watching it that way, until it popped up on Netflix. Thus saving me the $20. Score!)

Hobo (as I will refer to it from here on to keep things short) stars a haggard-looking Rutger Hauer in the titular starring role. The character he plays is never given a name other than “Hobo” so it’s not like I am just forgetting it. The hobo rides into a new town on the rail car with nothing more than a bindle, cane, and the hopes of starting a fresh new life. Once in town Hobo soon realizes that this is not a happy place to make a new start. Crime is rampant in the streets. From the very beginning of the movie the hobo is witness to a brutal murder of a man at the hands of his very own brother and nephews. The murderers are “Slick”, “Ivan” and their father “The Drake”. Drake runs the town, and rules over the people inhabiting it with a bloody iron fist. Those that oppose him are brutally murdered. Hell, even those that DON’T oppose him are brutally murdered.

Hobo is trying to just stay out of the way, keep his head down, and turn his life around without dying. This all changes when he steps in to help save a prostitute’s life. Unfortunately for him he got on the bad side of “Slick” who is Drake’s more violent and sadistic son. Slick decides to take his revenge on the Hobo and the girl (Abby though she is credited as “Prostitute”). Well that is enough to send the hobo over the edge of crazy cliff. He snaps, buys a shotgun, and well… decides to kill just about everyone that gets in his way. In his own weird murderous way, he is just trying to clean up the town, and maybe take down an insane dictator along the way.

I was told that this movie would be one that was insanely bloody, gruesome, and more than most can handle. I guess that would have been the case if I hadn’t seen so many crazy Tokyo Shock movies before this one. There was only one scene that was kind of out of line involving children. However given that the ENTIRE movie was so crazy over the top, it wasn’t that bad. Also the payoff for that scene later in the movie makes it all worth while. For the most part, it was really bloody, sure, but nothing that any fan of gory horror movies isn’t accustomed to.

Surprisingly enough, the acting is pretty good. Hauer straddles the fine line between crazy and caring pretty well. Sure, he dips to one side or the other in certain scenes, but it never felt over played. I don’t think the rest of the cast has ever been in a movie before (at least not that I am familiar with) but they all do a great job. I actually really liked the guy that played “Ivan”. It felt like he stepped right off the set of some 80′s midnight movie and on to this one. One spot in the movie however was so completely OVER acted it was literally laugh out loud funny. I won’t spoil it but it involves a doctor and nurse that may be just a little stressed out at work and not willing to lose their patient. Hilarious, trust me.

Even though this was not a true “Hollywood” movie, the big production companies can learn a thing or two from Hobo. Sure it won’t win any Oscars or Golden Globes, but it was original and that goes a lot farther than a remake. It reminds me of “Planet Terror.” A movie with high production value, that was made for the one thing that people seem to have forgotten about… Fun. Going to the movies should be fun again, and this movie goes a long way to restoring my faith in future directors. Also, how can you go wrong with the line, “We’re going on a trip to hell, and you’re riding SHOTGUN!”

Republished with permission from 3SMOVRadio.com