Here’s part 2! We spend a lot of time discussing upcoming sequels. Also, Kenny finally admits that G.I.  Joe* may not be that good after all. Enjoy!

*I’m not linking that piece of shit.

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So, out of nowhere, Puck wanted to do a podcast. Then Kenny from UFG got involved. We started talking about movies and a 2 and a half hour conversation took place. I simply started recording so there is no formal introduction, just great movie talk. In Part 1, we cover Paranormal Activity, Battleship, Smurfs and I think I may have stolen a joke from Dane Cook. Kenny’s audio varies in quality, so you may have to turn your volume up a bit during his parts. Enjoy!

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I was just recently looking up information on a movie that is scheduled to come out in 2011 called Never Say Never.  Based on the title, I assumed it was going to be some kind of remake or reboot of the pseudo-Bond film Never Say Never Again from 1983.  Oh boy, was I ever wrong.  Turns out it is a film about the life a career of Justin Bieber.  You know, the seventeen year old pop singer with a music career spanning an entire less than two years?

Honestly, the only things I knew about this kid before writing this article what that he was a singer and that he was popular with squealing pre-teen girls.  The mind- boggling bit about this film is that it is a documentary/biopic about his life and career.  There are only two reasons I can think of for making a biographical film about a boy this early in his life.  Either he has some sort of terminal illness that he hasn’t told anyone about yet and is not long for this world, or the producers and promoters in charge of this project realize that he is a flash-in-the-pan pop star and need to make a movie quick before his marketability is lost and Bieber fades into obscurity and alcoholism.  Don’t believe me?  Well, the movie is also coming out in ‘Real D’ 3D for no other reason than to insure that all the kiddies (excuse me, all the parents of the kiddies) will have to pay $12.00 a pop to watch this pointless fiasco.  No, this venture doesn’t have the stink of “Cash Grab” radiating from it at all.  Honestly, what has he done his life that so damn amazing that it must be captured for ever and always in movie form?  Pop singers like him have been chewed up by the recording industry and spat out like cheap bubble gum for decades.  He never had to cut off his own arm with a pocket knife to escape from a canyon like Aron Ralston.  He’s no Charlie Wilson, or Julia Childs even.  I will concede that, through the tiny amount of research that I have done, Justin looks like a gifted musician with a lot of potential.  Hell, at some point in the future he may become the greatest singer/songwriter in the history of mankind, or he could discover the cure for AIDS or male-pattern baldness. (anything is possible)  But, at this point in his career, he’s just a mouthpiece for a record label that’s squeezing as much money as possible out of excitable tweens with horribly bad taste in music.  The only thing that’s even remotely different from the legions of garish pop musicians that have come before is that he was discovered on You Tube.  Seriously, that’s it.  If you’re so much of a sheep that you’re excited about seeing this film (in unnecessary 3D, no less) then you diverse to be separated from your money, but anyone that can think for himself or herself is going to stay far, far away from this trite piece of trash, and rightfully so.

The role of a monster in storytelling is to be the manifestation of our fears and anxieties. The reason monsters come in so many varieties, (undead, giant beasts, aliens, demons, radioactive mutants) is because each one represents a different part of our world of which we are afraid. Zombies, vampires, and other humanoid monsters represent parts of the human condition and our own nature that we would rather not acknowledge. Aliens, on the other hand, represent our fears of things that are foreign and unfamiliar. As we are creatures of reason and define our world based on what we know, the unknown is a terrifying concept. The recent independent film Monsters tries to tap into both of these areas of the human psyche, with both alien creatures and with an unflattering portrayal of how society and governments deal with said giant aliens. The premise is that a U.S. Space probe returning to Earth carrying samples from one of Saturn’s moons crash landed in northern Mexico. What ever those samples were supposed to be, they had biological material in them that grew and developed in the wilds of Mexico and became giant octopus-spiders that are quite destructive. The whole northern half of Mexico is now under quarantine as an “infected zone” and the United States has constructed a massive wall along the Mexican boarder to prevent the monsters from entering the country. I think this is supposed to be some kind of allegory for America’s stance on illegal immigration, but within the context of what is happening in the movie building a giant wall to defend against dangerous monster attacks is a pretty sound idea.

The story centers around two Americans stranded on the wrong side of the infected zone. One is Andrew (Scoot McNairy) a photographer and the other is Samantha (Whitney Able) the over-privileged daughter of Andrew’s boss back in the states. Andrew is called from his journalistic endeavors to locate Samantha and escort her to a boat that will sail her around the infected zone so she can get married to some dude that is not important. While Andrew does get Samantha to the ferry safely, her incredibly overpriced ticket is stolen and there will be no other boats to take her home. Samantha then pawns her engagement ring for the money needed to hire a group to lead the two through the infected zone back to the U.S. boarder. Things do not go well as those hired to lead them through the jungles and ruined cities are killed off one night when a giant spidopus flattens their convoy. Andrew and Samantha now have to make it on foot by themselves back to the U.S. This movie is a great idea on paper and I was very excited when I heard the concept and that it was all being shot in a guerrilla style on a tiny budget with almost all of the extras being the residents of the various locations in which they filmed. There are only two complaints I can level at this movie, but they are big complaints. First, the actors that director Gareth Edwards got for the two leads, who must carrying the entire film, are not very well-layered or convincing actors. Many of the parts that should have been heavy moments when they were reacting to the vast amounts of devastation or witness to people being slaughtered by the creatures came off as stiff and amateurish. Their roles required a lot of subtlety, but Scoot and Whitney were just not experienced enough yet to handle such roles for a full ninety minutes. The second complaint is that the monsters in this film looked too much like a regular Earth octopus. These are supposed to be creatures that evolved in an entirely different ecosystem. Whoever was in charge of creature design really messed up here. I can see why it would be beneficial for the aliens to have traits that the human brain can recognize and relate to other things, but putting an octopus on stilts strikes me as lazy and uncreative.

Some people consider 1950′s era drive-in science fiction a low point in American cinema. It is true that a lot of garbage came out of studios who green-lit half-hearted scripts because they included space aliens or nuclear energy in them. Although several well made classics came out in the same time span, the stigma of the B movie is a hard one to shake. While there is no reason to be ashamed of enjoying the cheese, what reason would anyone have in making a film now that is intentionally cheesy? A movie that is part bad-sci-fi celebration and part bad-sci-fi parody is Alien Trespass, the story of an invasion in 1950′s America. Eric McCormack plays Ted Lewis, an astronomer that one clear night in his home near a California desert, prepares a wedding anniversary celebration with his wife loving wife Lana (Jody Thompson). Ted sees a bright shooting star in the night sky, which turns out to be a flying saucer that crashes in the desert. On board the ship are two extraterrestrials. One is the dangerous Ghota, a tall, one-eyed, tentacled beast that was being escorted as a prisoner by Urp, a silvery humanoid that is very Gort-esque. Ghota escapes into the desert and begins on a plan to devour the locals so he can self replicate. Ted investigates the crash site, thinking it is a meteor, when he is confronted by Urp, who merges with Ted to better move about the town to locate Ghota. The next morning Urp, in the form of Doctor Lewis, returns to the Lewis household, acts really weird, and discovers that salt will harm the Ghota. Lana believes that her husband is suffering from some kind of illness or stress related condition, and does not believe his story about aliens and such.

At the same time, a trio of teens head into the desert to see what people in the town had reported as some kind of plane crash. Penny (Sarah Smyth) and Dick (Andrew Dunbar) stay in the car while Cody (Aaron Brooks) looks around for a bit. While Cody is gone, the young couple is attacked by the Ghota and, in an attempt to escape, run into a pair of local cops. In true B movie fashion, the two officers (one of which is played by Robert Patrick) are very skeptical and critical of the teen’s claims of being attacked by a creature, and the group is hauled off to the station. Meanwhile, Tammy (Jenni Baird) a waitress who is out driving on a errand, sees Urp as Ted walking down the side of a desert road. She pulls over to pick him up, and after a lengthy conversation where Urp discusses his home planet and his current dilemma, Tammy agrees to help him stop the Ghota. This film has a strange dichotomy to it, where it seems to want to take itself seriously on some level, but will also point at itself and laugh from time to time. If the film were going for humor all the time by being intentionally bad, then I feel it would be pointless as anyone can make a bad movie on purpose. Most people probably wouldn’t enjoy this film, but if you grew up on corny sci-fi like I did, then it’s a nice little treat.

If there is one thing I have learned from watching creature-features in my lifetime, it’s that monsters love New York City. King Kong terrorized New York, although he was taken there against his will, the Beast from 20000 Fathoms rampaged through New York of his own accord. Even the fake Godzilla from the terrible 1998 American film thought New York City would be a lovely place to raise a brood of hatchlings. So, when it came time in 2008 to throw a new giant monster into the mix, what better place to have him destroy than the Big Apple. Unlike classic creature films, Cloverfield takes the audience on a journey through the eyes of the displaced masses. Basically, the story is told from the perspective of the guy that you would only see for a split second pointing and screaming in a Godzilla movie. It all comes to us via “found footage” from the hand-held camcorder of Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) and starts off with footage recorded a few days before the event in question when Rob and his formerly platonic friend Beth (Odette Yustman) have just sent a romantic night together and are planning to spend the day having fun at Coney Island. While most of this footage has been recorded over, some of it will still pop up between cuts of the primary story. The parts that have been taped over start with Rob’s brother Jason (Mike Vogal) and his girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas) preparing for Rob’s going-away party. You see, Rob had just accepted a job transfer to a Japanese branch of the company for which he works. The video was meant to capture everyone’s well wishes at the party so Rob would have something by which to remember all of his friends. During the preparations, camera duty is passed off to Rob and Jason’s mutual friend Hudson (T. J. Miller) or Hud for short. Hud becomes the voice behind the camera when, during Rob’s party, a tremor rocks Manhatten. When several of the party-goers perch on the roof of Rob’s apartment building to get a better look at the disturbance that caused the quake, a massive explosion in New York harbor is witnessed by all and debris from the blast rains down all around the masses.

It isn’t until the main group make it down to the street level that we find out just what is causing the disaster. While most people run for cover as something very large moves through the near-by streets, one of Jessica’s friends named Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) was in a state of shock after seeing a creature move through the city eating people. If you haven’t seen this yet, then you need to. It holds the distinction of not only succeeding in being a fantastic monster movie, but also being a fantastic movie in general with good performances from relatively unknown actors (which helps with the believability of the found footage) and a well written set of larger than life circumstances that the characters must endure. The monster’s design is one of the most original I have seen in a while, and considering how many monster related movies I watch, that’s saying something. I will admit that this is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, especially if you find guerrilla-style or “shaky-cam” photography annoying or distracting in any way. For what it’s worth, this is one of the best giant monster movies out there, and many of its memorable moments are character related bits that don’t even feature the creature. Find it. Watch it. Love it.

No one can deny that Stephen King is one of the most prolific writers working today. He has over forty-five published novels, nine collections of short-stories, and dozens of credits for films, TV shows and TV mini-series. While the success and worth of his various film adaptations is debatable, his impact on the entertainment industry is certain. One of my favorite movies to bare Stephen King’s name is Frank Darabont’s 2007 adaptation of The Mist. The set up for the film is easy enough to follow. Thomas Jane plays David, a professional artist living with his wife Stephanie (Kelly Collins Lintz) and five-year-old son Billy. (Nathan Gamble) After a vicious storm knocks out the town’s power and knocks over several trees onto people’s cars and boat houses, David’s vacationing neighbor Brent (Andre Braugher) who is a New York attorney and has a bit of a history with David, asks David for a ride into town do buy some supplies. Before leaving, David and his wife notice a strange thick mist rolling off the nearby mountains, and on the way into town Brent, David, and his son see several emergency and military vehicles on the streets. At the local grocery store, all hell breaks loose when an air raid siren goes off and people can be seen running from the approaching wall of mist. After the mist reaches the grocery store, the ground shakes briefly, then silence. Now everyone is stranded inside the store, and almost the entire movie takes place inside this one location. A few of the workers try to go outside quickly to unplug the exhaust for the store’s generator, but the bag boy Norm (Chris Owen) gets attacked by some crazy tentacles and dragged off into the mist, and we never see what’s controlling those tentacles. This lets everyone know that there are some strange, dangerous things out in the mist.

While one would expect that all of the danger is outside the store, although the many things could very easily break through the front windows, the group of people inside the store begin to fight amongst themselves. This is where the movie gets very interesting, you know, beyond it just having a bunch of slime beasties trying to eat people. The major division starts with old Brent, who has convinced himself and a few other people that there are no creatures in the mist. He and some of his supporters of the no monster theory leave early on. While all this is going on, an odd and some what annoying woman named Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) has been trying to convince everyone that this event is actually the biblical apocalypse and is trying to save the souls of as many people in the store as possible. Now, in theory, this doesn’t seem like a very destructive idea, but Mrs. Carmony goes pretty Old Testament with this plan and starts convincing most of the people in the store that she knows everything about what’s going on. So, we have giant bugs and pterodactyls and tentacles outside and a religious zealot directing a group of scared and desperate people inside. In the middle of all this sits David and his son, just trying to find a way out. The monster effects here are well done considering the relatively low budget the film had (around $18 million) but are still obviously computer generated. The monsters look much better when they are obscured inside the mist. Now, many people I know say that this movie was ruined for them due to the ending, and I’m not going to spoil the final scene, but it has a polarizing effect on audiences. At the very least, I will say that this is not a “feel good” ending, but keep in mind that this is a horror story, so deal with it.

I’m going to diversify things up a little here today and throw a lady monster in the mix. Darkness Falls is the story of a young boy Kyle who is terrorized by, of all things, the Tooth Fairy. This isn’t your grandma’s Tooth Fairy I’m talking about either, or the Tooth Fairy from that other horror movie The Tooth Fairy that came out in 2006. The undead creature haunting this picture is Matilda Dixon, and she wins the award for most complicated back story of any monster, ever. Matilda’s legend begins when she was a kindly old spinster woman in the town of Darkness Falls (sounds like a cheerful place) where she was loved by all the children for paying them money for there baby teeth that had fallen out. What she did with those teeth is anyone’s guess, but she was eventually caught in a house fire and her face was burned so badly that she hid her face behind a porcelain mask. On top of all that, she was blamed for the disappearance of two children and hanged by the towns people. As Matilda swung by her neck, she cursed the town that her spirit or corpse, or something would keep taking teeth, I guess. I’m actually not sure, the legend gets kind of confusing there, but the point is that she is now a ghostly monster that takes teeth, wears a mask, hates light, and will kill anyone that looks at her. So the story proper starts a century or so after all that stuff when young Kyle (Joshua Anderson) looses his last baby tooth. He accidentally sees the Tooth Fairy and runs to get his mother. Kyle’s mom tries to tell Kyle that he’s just imagining things at that his room is perfectly safe, but then she gets snatched up by Matilda and killed off screen.

Skipping ahead twelve years, we find grown-up Kyle (Chaney Kley) still traumatized from his almost being killed by a monster experience and on a heavy regiment of medication. Caitlin (Emma Caulfield) was Kyle’s childhood friend and calls him in regards to her younger brother Michael. (Lee Cormie) It would seem that Michael is suffering from night terrors, but Kyle realizes that Michael has gotten on the bad side of the Tooth Fairy as well. Kyle heads back to his old town of Darkness Falls to help Michael. He is eventually arrested by the local authorities under suspicion that he is insane and possibly killed his own mother all those years ago. This puts Kyle in a bit of a pickle and he struggles to convince everybody that the Tooth Fairy is coming to kill little Michael, and him.  Although the film did get a theatrical release, this is a direct-to-video quality movie at best that stars nobody you’ve ever heard of and has barely enough scares to keep a horror fan interested the whole way through. The effects are pretty good, but the story is just so banal and, worse yet, the lore about the killer just makes no sense. Where did Matilda find the supernatural powers to will a curse on a whole town? Do the collected baby teeth give her arcane powers? I don’t get it.

Several legends of the common monster stable originated in European folklore, so it is oddly fitting when the creatures that American film industry have made popular become the focal point of a European production. Such is the case with Neil Marshall’s horror film Dog Soldiers, which has no shortage of -Spoiler Warning- werewolves. The film starts off with a young couple out for a romantic camping trip far from civilization, which in horror movie terms is pretty much a huge neon sign reading “Please attack us.” Sure enough, a big wolf hand reaches into the tent and makes short work of the two. Not too far away in the woods, a man is trying to escape from pursuers, but is eventually taken down. The man is Private Cooper (Kevin McKidd) and this was an exercise to test his resourcefulness for the British special forces. Captain Ryan (Liam Cunningham) is considering letting him join his team, but denies him entry, and beats the tar out of him, when Cooper refuses a direct order from Ryan to shoot one of the dogs that tracked him. Many months later, Sergeant Wells (Sean Pertwee) and his team, of which Cooper is a part, are dropped off in the same area of Scotland for a military training exercise where they must locate an opposing team of soldiers. All goes well, until night fall, when a mangled deer carcass is dropped into their campsite. The next day, the team sees a flare shot from another part of the woods. When Sergeant Wells’ team makes it to their new destination, all they find at the abandoned post are some weapons, some random organs and gore, and Captain Ryan in desperate need of medical attention.

Everyone should be getting a solid Predator vibe from the situation at this point. Ryan confirmed that something slaughtered his team and that they need to leave right away. The team tries to stabilize Ryan and call for extraction, but to no one’s surprise, communications are down. Communications always go down. The squad moves out, but they are being stalked by something, and Wells is caught and mortally wounded by one of the creatures. Cooper rescues him and in spite of Well’s orders to the contrary, picks up the injured Wells and continues to run away from what ever is chasing them. When they attempt to cross an isolated road, the soldiers almost get flattened by a woman in a jeep. She quickly tells them to get in, as if she is aware that something is amiss. She introduces herself as Megan (Emma Cleasby) and assumes that the soldiers were called in to take care of the creatures in the woods. She takes what’s left of the team to a cabin where she has been researching the disturbances in this area and, as the soldiers fortify the cabin and tend to the wounded, tells them that she believes the creatures to be werewolves. This film is kind of a low budget derivative of movies like the aforementioned Predator as well as Aliens (once they get to the cabin for their stand-off) but while feeling familiar, it manages to have its own flavor too. The characters are all well rounded enough to be interesting and the action is shot well enough to be genuinely exciting when the wolves start breaking into the house to pick off the soldiers one by one. Practical effects are used for the wolves, which I like, but the werewolf suits must have been heavy and stiff, because the on screen monsters are rarely dynamic.

In most movies that involve a monster of some sort, you usually get a story that revolves around one type of creature or ghost or alien. Rarely, a monster movie will have two or three different varieties of creature, but in the science-fiction comedy Evolution, you get an entire ecosystem’s worth of imaginative creatures. Ivan Reitman, most well known for directing Ghostbusters, took a serious and straight-forward script about an unusual alien invasion and turned it into a humorous outing in his own style. It begins with a meteor from the unknown reaches of deep space crashing to earth in the Arizona right on top of Wayne’s (Seann William Scott’s) car, turning it into a smoking hole in the ground. Ira Kane (David Duchovny) a professor at the local community college finds out about the meteor impact and suggests to his friend and geology professor Harry Block (Orlando Jones) that they check it out. Ira takes a sample from the meteor and discovers it contains nitrogen-based single-celled organisms of extraterrestrial origin. Upon showing Harry his discovery, the organisms have changed from single to multi-celled organisms. After a return trip, this time toting some students along under the guise of a field trip, they find that the tunnel in which the meteor has crashed into is completely overrun with the ever evolving creatures, this time having developed as far as flatworms and fungus that convert our atmosphere into gases that the creatures can metabolize. However, just when these two think they have the greatest discovery in history on their hands, the U.S. Military swoops in to take over the operation.

It turns out that Ira used to work for General Woodman, (Ted Levine) the guy in charge of this operation. Although Ira and Harry try to get in on the investigation, Woodman and one of the scientists involved with the project named Dr. Allison Reed (Julianne Moore) successfully bar Ira from the project due to his previous failures as a government scientist. While all this is going on, those alien creatures have turned the tunnels under Glen Canyon into their own constantly developing home. Many of the monsters are using the mine shafts to escape into the surrounding areas and have a few run-ins with the locals. There is a four-legged fish that jumps out of the water to attack a man at a golf course, a frumpy little frog that bites some woman with a mouth on its tongue, and a flying dinosaur type monster that becomes tolerant to Earth’s atmosphere and lays siege to a mall. It is here that Ira and Harry meet up with Wayne and try to contain the rampaging aliens, loading up with shotguns to take out the flying dinosaur thing. The appeal of this film, to me anyway, comes form the sheer variety and creativity of the creatures being showcased. The core premise of the story lends itself to the writers and special effects team creating a huge number of monster-based gags and set pieces that are each unique and escalating in scale through the movie’s running time. The actual plot of the movie, however, has some logical holes in it and the comedy is hit or miss most of the time. The actors do a good job in their respective roles, but it feels like we are being rushed through the story at break-neck speed, like there were too many ideas that were squeezed into the script. The ending is also hard to believe, as the solution to the alien problem is entirely based on a hunch that just happens to work. But still, it’s hard to find more monster bang for your buck than in this film.