REVIEW: The Kingdom (2007)

Here's the basic problems facing you if you're trying to make military-related action films in Hollywood. Firstly, the old wars are getting played out. Now that the post-Russert "You rule, grammy and grampy!" resurgence of WWII films is starting to crest, The Great War will have been revisited in every concievable way for awhile now. WWI isn't fast-paced enough, and even our SMART youngsters have trouble telling you what it was about. Ditto the Veitnam genre. The Civil War hasn't made for a great film in years (no, Ron Maxwell's crap doesn't count) and the Revolutionary War... well, "The Patriot" for better or worse is kinda hard to top.

Secondly, doing it "current" means engaging the thus-far rather uncinematic War on Terror. Seriously, all political thorniness aside, the current war as film fodder is problematic: "Us" the high-tech war machine as good guys versus gruff, cave-dwelling improvisors as the bad guys cuts hard against the good-guy/bad-guy grain of the last decade or so of action movies: WE'RE supposed to be John Rambo, making an arsenal out of sticks and mud while the bad guys are supposed to be all slick and heavily-armed. Nevermind the fact that too much of our polarized country is going to either see or demand to see any War on Terror film as some kind of referendum one way or the other on Iraq and the Bushies - no genuinely good movie will ever be anti-war enough for "liberals" or "pro-American" enough for "conservatives."

How, then, one makes a good War on Terror action film is a puzzle that "The Kingdom" sets out to solve and - surprise, surprise - it mostly succeeds. The key, it seems, is in taking a two-directional long view of the situation: Bush, Iraq and Red vs. Blue states loom large right now; but Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism and the world issues it drives/ties-into has been around and will continue to be around longer. It's this bigger picture (driven-home by a stunning pre-credit sequence encapsulating American/Saudi relations from the discovery of oil to 9-11 in bullet-point format) that drives the events of the story, and enables it to sidestep the murky territory of messages and moral lessons in favor of mining the circumstances for drama and suspense. As a result, we have the first really solid American "War on Terrorism" movie that won't feel dated once Iraq has (one way or another) concluded.

In many ways, the film plays out as though "CSI: Miami" and "24" had baby - and then sent it to Finishing School to curb it of (most) of it's baser instincts. It's a fish-out-of-water cop story with an international scope and a Secular West meets Islamic Middle-East hook, with a tight focus on what the culture-clash in question results-in as opposed to what it "means" or how it makes one "feel." A horrifically cruel series of terrorist attacks on the living-areas of American oil workers and their families in Saudi Arabia raises the ire of an FBI forensics team (Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman and Chris Cooper) when a mutual friend turns up among the victims. Despite stonewalling by superiors, they semi-legally slip into The Kingdom with a small window of time to try and get some answers and possibly seek out Abu-Hamza, the terror kingpin believed to have planned the attacks.

That's all easier said than done, of course, or there'd be no movie: As if the expected troubles of trying to process evidence under the auspices of the strict social and religious customs of the society (Garner's female-hood invites glares, Bateman's passport has an Israeli stamp, and how DO you perform an autopsy when a non-believer can't touch the body of a dead Muslim?) aren't enough, the investigation as a whole is initially hamstrung by the tricky political navigations the Saudi princes have to make in regards to their volatile citizenry. Luckily, the Americans have a sympathetic ally in Colonel Al-Ghazi, (Arab-Israeli actor Ashraf Barhom,) a tough and highly-intelligent Saudi police officer who wants to ice Abu-Hamza AND strains against the forces preventing him from doing so every bit as much as the Americans.

All the more impressive since he's working amid such a talented overall cast, let me echo the sentiments of just about everyone who's been to see this so far and state that Barhom just about walks off with the entire movie - he's a STAR. Equal parts calm, collected detective; reluctant-but-efficient beaurocrat and gunslinging action hero, Al Ghazi may just be the first great, fully-realized, three-dimensional Muslim good guy character of post-911 Hollywood. This is no ethnic sidekick, nor is he a politically correct "wise foreign sage" cliche. He's essentially the moral center of the movie: The guy who not only aims to do the right thing, but also to do it the right way.

The refreshing no demonizing, no-idealizing, no-bullshit-PERIOD take extends to the film's overall approach to it's setting and it's indiginous culture: The 'differences' of Saudi Arabia are played, certainly, for exotica but not so much for outright shock or message-mongering. The callous scrutiny and sexism of the culture toward Garner's character is noted, depicted and (by Al Ghazi) lamented... but there's no showy speech about how wrong it is or about how we need to "respect other cultures" instead - it's there, she dislikes it, most of the audience will agree, but it's just an element of the plot. The film is more concerned with how this issue will impact the investigation than it is with the larger religious/political questions it raises. I still can't get over how pleasant it actually is to go see a terrorism movie that ISN'T just a longform essay on either the evils of Islam OR a conspiracy-piece about Big Oil and Halliburton.

Great cast playing great characters, interesting story in a fascinating setting, killer opening, smooth police-procedural second act, visceral action climax and a devastating final coda - this is one of the best action/dramas of the year. Yeah, if your a "conservative" hoping to see a kill-em-all campaign-commercial about the need to stay in Iraq OR if your a "liberal" hoping to see the evil imperialist/capitalist white-male-power-structure Americans 'get it;' you're probably not going to like it. But, then again, if you're THAT kinda crazy on either side, you're probably a pretty miserable person to begin with. Those of you with clear heads regardless of party affiliation who're aching for a DAMN GOOD actioner with brains to match? Get out there and see this.

FINAL RATING: 9/10

September 24, 2007

On September 24, 2007, an evil man took the stage to speak at Columbia University. A psychopath. A thug. Leader of nation that murders dissidents, jails reporters and imposes the death penalty for 'impure' women's clothing or homosexuality. An enemy of the United States who supplies weapons to Iraqis used to kill American soldiers. Who has threatened to destroy the nation of Israel for reasons not exceeding the practice of it's citizens of the "incorrect" religion. Who subscribes to a strain of religious fundamentalism that dictates the need to jump-start worldwide Armageddon.

For days leading up to this, the "conservative" pundit class had been excoriating Columbia for inviting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. "Liberal college students!" "Traitors!" "America-Haters!" Then the actual event got under way...



...and everyone, from the university president on down, essentially stood Ahmadinejad up on the stage and threw tomatoes at him. The president called him a petty tyrant without the intellectual honesty to answer their questions. The assembled students laughed in his face. They made a fool of him, dressing him down in front of a worldwide audience.

Set aside the fact that the right-wing talking heads owe Columbia an appology, though they most certainly do. Something extraordinary may have happened here. We may have seen the first real sign of International Politics in the age of "The Daily Show." Faced with a figure of Hitlerian ambitions and outright evil, these kids did what years of Jedi Training under Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart, "Borat" and "South Park" had prepared them to do: They tore evil a new rhetorical asshole. They mocked him. Derrided him. They dealt him a punishing media-age blow by robbing him, violently, of that which all like him desire most: Respect and fear.

This guy stands at his podium and postures like a man who needs to be feared and revered, and a bunch of snarky American college kids told him, loudly, that he's not. You're a JOKE, and we are not afraid of you.

I love my country. This is why.

SHORT FEATURE: THE ADVENTURES OF JUNIOR RAINDROP

"Just what I feared, he's formed a gang!" Is this short a lesson in environmentalism or a warning about the greater danger of delinquency in kids from single parent households?

Either way, the Catechism tells us that "The dominion granted by the Creator over the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be separated from respect for moral obligations, including those toward generations to come." It doesn't specifically mention managing resources in order to avoid the roving gangs of vicious killer raindrops, but I'm sure it's covered in there in principal.

WEEKLY NEWSREEL

Good evening Mr. & Mrs. Catholic and all you other Christians at sea. Listen to them, the children of the night, what music they make. No really, listen. Things are still a little off-key out there in celebrity land, but that's okay, because today's gossip is tomorrow's Bible study. Now off to press.

Variety music reviewer Phil Gallo is quite impressed with Joni Mitchell's latest release Shine. He especially likes the title track in which he believes "like so much of Mitchell's great work, there's a sense of hope that's there for anyone who choses to listen closely." So we listened closely. "Shine on Reverend Pearson, Who threw away, The vain old God, kept Dickens and Rembrandt and Beethoven, And fresh plowed sod" she sings. The Reverend Pearson reference we can decipher. He's the fine fellow who recently got the boot from Oral Roberts University and lost thousands of members of his congregation when he started preaching there was no hell. Fair enough. As our last review noted, that idea doesn't gel with Catholic doctrine, but there's no real shock in hearing it expressed by an aging folk-jazz hippie chick who's selling her CDs on the Starbucks label these days. However, following up in the next verse, Joni continues with "Shine on the red light runners, Busy talking on their cell phones, Shine on the Catholic Church, And the prisons that it owns". Huh? What the heck does that mean? "When I recorded it" states Ms. Mitchell on her website, "I was sick so a doctor prescribed some penicillin, which I had an allergic reaction to. I was delirious, stressed out, and we worked all night long." Similar things happen to us here also, Joni. We've found it useful to get some sleep and rewrite in the morning. It seems to help cut down on nonsensical ramblings. Oh well, I suppose it's like Bishop Fulton J. Sheen always said "There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church—which is, of course, quite a different thing."

Which brings up the latest Kid Rock interview with Entertainment Weekly in which he discusses his upcoming release Rock and Roll Jesus. Let's let the poet speak for himself shall we. (Bleeped for content of course.) "When we say ''G****** it, I'm scared to send my children to church,'' that's so f*****' relevant. And everyone thinks it, but no one's said it. I mean, all you hear about is priests molesting kids, and all this weirdo f*****' crazy right-wing Bible-thumping s***. It's like, I want to believe in Jesus, I do believe in Jesus. I am a f*****' good person. But I'm scared to send my kid to your f*****' organized religious crazy f*****' bulls***. And I don't know if anybody's said that. I haven't heard 'em. I might hear some left-wing f*****' hippie that wants to f*****' legalize drugs say it, but not anybody who's right down the middle saying ''Look, this is what people are kind of thinking in the back of their heads.'' And to put it in a way that really touches people right in their souls, and kind of takes 'em to church with rock & roll, it's pretty powerful to me." Wow. We're touched. Aren't you touched? With that kind of eloquence we can hardly wait to hear the moving lyrics to Track 10: Blue Jeans And A Rosary.

And in our final music related news we are reminded how the Catechism points out that "the Lord grieves over the rich, because they find their consolation in the abundance of goods." Rejoice then for the music industry as IMDB reports that record companies are drastically cutting their previously abundant budgets for music videos. (They blame Youtube for the dwindling interest of viewers, we merely point to our previous two news items.) When asked about the likely end of videos costing in excess of $1,000,000, director Samuel Bayer remarked, "A comet hit the earth and the dinosaurs are dying. There's a new age coming. I think those days are over with." Obviously, we at the B-Movie Catechism shed no tears over low budgets. Perhaps the lack of funds will force video makers to be more creative or possibly even (gasp) require the actual quality of the songs themselves to carry the burden of selling CDs.

For the time being, we here will simply shut off our radios and content ourselves with the dulcet tones of nature to be found in our upcoming review. Until then, we echo the words of the great Les Nessman (that's our boy up at the top of this entry by the way), good evening and may the good news be yours.

REVIEW: Eastern Promises

Sometimes, honestly, it can get a bit bothersome to be "the movie guy" in your place of business, or circle of friends, or family gathering. Usually, these times involve those instances when a question about a movie becomes so automatic and ubiquitous that you already know it's about to be asked just based on who's asking and what the movie is.

So, in the spirit of that, to my female readers: YES, you can his penis. Will that be all? It will? Groovy. Moving on...

"Eastern Promises" is probably the leanest movie of actual substance to come along in some time. It's so efficient and to-the-point, but (thanks largely to it's actors) so fundamentally alive that the best descriptive I can find for it would be biomechanical, which given that the director is David Cronenberg seems entirely appropriate. There's not an ounce of fat on this - every scene moves the story ahead, every line reveals something of vital importance about the story or the people in it, every fact we hear is important, every character has a specific and important role to play, everything means something. There's no stopping to smell the roses, no larger or broader themes to explore, no loose threads to leave for interpretation. Even a fairly "wowzer" third-act twist that anywhere else would be the key to blowing open a whole other "grander" level to the proceedings is here just a part of the machinery: It makes sense, fits perfectly with what we've already seen, and propels the story ahead to the next point.

Which, all told, makes it kind of a pain in the neck to review. I mean, c'mon David... think of us critics. We NEED extraneous digressions, vauge open-to-interpretation loose ends and subtle, small-detail hints to give us something to write all flowery and academic about. Why, you go and make something so bullshit-free and efficient all we can really do is tell the people what it's about and whether or not we think it's any good. Hmph! You're just a mean ol' Canadian spoilsport, is what you are :)

The story involves transplanted Russian immigrants and their families in London. Hospital midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) has placed in her care the newborn baby of dead, drugged-addicted Russian girl who's diary reveals (after Anna has it translated, as she doesn't speak Russian herself) that she was involved in the human-smuggling operations of the Vor v Zakone; a dangerous branch of the Russian mafia. This places the child, Anna and her family in danger - especially since, while seeking translators, Anna has unknowingly already gotten dangerously close to the local Vor leadership: Deceptively-gentle restauranture Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his psychotic son Kirill (Vincent Cassell.) She's also caught the attention of the enigmatic Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) Kirill's chauffer/bodyguard - and he's caught her's.

This all unspools with, as mentioned previously, a certain mechanical innevitability. Save for one significant reveal, there's never any question as to what's going on, what the stakes are and what eventually has to happen - it's all a matter of when and how. Credit Cronenberg for understanding how to wring all that can be wrung in terms of drama and suspense from material that isn't about to offer up "extras" on anything - there's no room for loligagging, but he knows just when to end a scene and when to draw one out to the maximum. The result: Not a single scene of dialogue or exposition goes on a fraction longer than it needs to, while other sequences like two decidedly un-slick throat-slitting murders (violent sawing instead of kung-fu-quick slice n' go) and a brutal knife/fist/wrestling fight between Nikolai and two attackers in a bathhouse become hugely-memorable setpieces. The bathhouse fight, in particular, is one of the most visceral and exciting brawls to hit screens all year, a (literal) knockout scene that makes the overrated "realism" of the "Bourne" series' action scenes look like so much shakycam'd flailing.

Credit also the actors, who may be in a no-frills crime picture but committ to their roles as though they're in a nothing-but-breathing-room character peice. These are fully-developed, richly-characterized beings who carry the full implication of lives and experiences outside the frame - even if the film-proper isn't at all interested in exploring them. Take notice, folks: It's work like this, not talking-head fests, where acting from the inside out really pays off.

Um... yeah. Like I said, not much else to be said beyond that. Russian Mob movie. Well made. Well acted. Go see it.

FINAL RATING: 9/10

COMING ATTRACTIONS: FROGS

REVIEW: Resident Evil: Extinction

That the "Resident Evil" movies are actually getting BETTER as it goes on is kind of quaint and alarming at the same time - alarming because you realize that "Extinction," a mostly-solid 'not bad' had two LESSER entries still make enough money to justify it's existence; but quaint simply for the notion that a mini-tentpole action franchise is still being executed at a workmanlike level where trial-and-error/learning-from-mistakes growth is going on organically between sequels. The original entry was simply dreafully, the second hugely entertaining but largely because of it's "whatever" vibe of startling-ineptitude... and now here's number three, a competently-made action/horror/scifi hybrid B-movie in it's own right. If they keep this pace up, in a few more sequels they'll make an entirely good movie.

Loosely following the broad plot-outlines of a long-running series of survival-horror video games, the series revolves around the sinister machinations of The Umbrella Corporation; a biotech conglomerate apparently powerful enough to build massive underground cities for research and keep private satellites in orbit even though the only thing we've been shown that they sell (in jokey ads for the second sequel) are high-tech anti-aging drugs. A chemical component of said drugs called the T-Virus, ostensibly designed to revive dead tissue, wound up doing it's job so well that it's caused a standard-issue Romero-esque zombie outbreak.

The living-dead and other assorted mutants ALSO unleashed by Umbrella's cavalier research overran a subteranean city in #1, a whole city in #2, and now in #3 they've taken over the planet and (somehow) turned it into "Mad Max" land in the span of a few years. Pockets of humanity roam the deserts looking for supplies and trying not to get eaten, while what's left of Umbrella toils safely in their underground shelter as the wicked Dr. Isaacs tries to find a "cure" for zombie-dom - or, rather, since it's Umbrella after all he's mostly trying to "domesticate" them in order to create a slave-race. Umbrella, evidently, got it's biotech feet wet in the conversion of lemons to lemonade. Give it credit where credit is due for finding SOME fresh material in the drained Zombie genre by focusing on the death of a humanity-deprived planet as opposed to the undead hordes.

In any case, Isaacs believes that the key to his 'cure' is the unique blood of series-heroine Alice, (still-stunning Milla Jovovich, again securing her crown as THE queen of B-movie action heroines,) who has been turned into a telekinetic superhuman by Umbrella meddling and now stalks the wasteland doing telekinetic superhuman stuff. When she hooks up with a convoy of human survivors in the ruins of Las Vegas, it puts her back on Umbrella's radar and sets up a confrontation between the good guys, an Umbrella-loosed hit-squad of Barry Bonds juiced zombies and eventually Dr. Isaacs himself - who seems to be going mad(er) with power.

Bad news first: Sorry, game fans, Alice is once again the prime focus and game heroes like Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) do the supporting gig. Things still look a bit on the cheap side, at least for a theatrical film. Mike Epps' annoying, ebonics-spewing caricature from #2 is still hanging around. "Tyrant" isn't nearly as much fun a monster as "Nemesis" was. Someone has made the (baffling) decision that Jovovich's closeups required digital-airbrushing, resulting in odd-looking shifts from shot-to-shot where she switches from being an insanely-gorgeous human to an insanely-gorgeous digital manequin.

Good news: As movies about spectacular-looking women kicking the tar out of zombies go, it doesn't get much better than this. Underrated genre veteran Russell Mulcahy ("Highlander," "Razorback," "The Shadow") is easily the most talented filmmaker to tackle the franchise yet. Larter holds her own and looks great doing it. Oded Fehr, the mas-macho Israeli action guy from "The Mummy" and "Sleeper Cell") is back in an expanded role. "Tyrant" LOOKS a lot less cheezy than "Nemesis" did.

Yes, fine, this is at best a goofy diversion of a movie, "best of the series" and all. Yes, you're going to get a more intellectually-uplifting, spiritually-satisfying experience going to "Eastern Promises" or "In The Valley of Elah." But if diversion of junk-food fun are what strikes your fancy, and you're perhaps not QUITE after the dizzying, mainling-pure-caffeine high of "Dragon Wars" (or you already saw it) this'll probably do it for you.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

DOUBLE FEATURE: EVIL BEHIND YOU & THE BURNING HELL

EVIL BEHIND YOU

TYPICAL REVIEWS

"Stripped of in-your-face blood and gore, adult language and nudity, Evil Behind You is a supernatural film that refreshingly promotes both the power of prayer and consequences of non-faith, but sadly fails to deliver any of the promised good old-fashioned terror." - Brandi L. James, Reel Reviews

THE PLOT

Lisa and Debra awaken in a sealed windowless room with no idea where they are or how they've gotten there. (The noticeable lack of blood and excrement should at least reassure them that they're not stuck in the latest Saw sequel.) In the center of the room Lisa's boyfriend David and Debra's husband Tony, along with two unconscious strangers, lie strapped to gurneys. It seems the couples have been kidnapped by Islamic terrorists who have injected the men with an experimental formula in hopes that it is the antidote to their latest biological weapon. You see, the diabolical villains plan on inoculating themselves with the antidote before releasing the virus on the Great Satan that is America. (I guess that whole martyr thing is becoming passé.) What nobody realizes, however, is that the serum actually alters the brain in such a way that the victim is able to see into the spiritual dimension. As all of those under the influence of the drug begin to freak out over the demonic figures lurking in the corners of the room, the terrorists rejoice in the belief that they have found exactly what they were looking for. But when the two strangers become possessed, attack the couples, and finally die screaming that they are being drug off to hell, the two Christians in the building start to figure out something real might actually be happening. Thus begins a desperate struggle to halt the experiment, escape the terrorists, and save the souls of those dying from eternal damnation.

THE POINT

Forget blockbusters like The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia. Forget even the success of modest Christian themed movies like The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Following the triumph of the in-your-face evangelistic Facing The Giants (budget $100,000, domestic gross exceeding $10 million,score one for the Georgia Baptists), expectations were running high at the 2007 Biola Media Conference over upcoming Christian movie releases. Christianity Today's coverage of the event, however, sounded a bit skeptical. "While some are excited about the potential of these efforts, some are also frustrated about the "bad art" that has already spun out of these initiatives..." Lisa Swain, Interim Chair of Biola University's Mass Communication Department, talked about her student's films. "We get a lot of prayer scenes, a lot of lingering looks, a lot of swelling music. And it's just superficial. There's no subtext whatsoever... We get so caught up in wanting people to see Christ, we forget that they also have to see us. And by seeing our struggles, then they will see Christ. You don't show Christ by showing them grace first. You have to show them the wound first."

Show them the wound? Well if that doesn't sound like a job for a horror movie, then I don't know what does. And I suppose that's also what the good folks at Given The Boot Ministries were thinking when they produced Evil Behind You, a self-professed "sci-fi thriller with Christian overtones". The recipe for Evil Behind You looks simple enough. Start with the basic premise from one of the most inexplicably popular ongoing film franchises (Saw III: budget $10 million, domestic gross over $80 million, someone explain that to me please), remove anything potentially offensive to the Lifeway Christian Stores crowd (a store which ironically doesn't seem to stock Evil Behind You), add a dash of evangelization, and voilà, instant Christian horror movie. Why not? It's certainly not as bad an idea as those Left Behind video games. (What kind of "Christian" video game gives you the option to play as one of the Anti-Christ's Global Community Peacekeepers? "I know we have to leave for the tent revival, Ma, just let me finish persecuting a few more of the faithful and I'll be ready!")

So how is our overtly Christian sci-fi horror movie? As a Christian myself I'm sorely tempted to go easy on Evil Behind You. After all, it does have its good parts. The actors are unmistakably amateur, yet earnest. The filming is competent, avoiding a lot of the errors so many shot-on-video productions make (poor lighting, dropped sound, etc.). The attempt to make a modern suspense film minus the gore is laudable. (However, if you're going to do this, don't stretch credibility by having a scene in which your lead actress beats a man to death with a metal chair. I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure in real life this would leave some kind of stain. It would at least dent the chair.) And, except for maybe the Universalists, the theology presented in the film is generic enough so as not to be offensive to any particular body of Christian worshipers. It's an admirable first effort.

Unfortunately, while the movie's heart is willing, its flesh is weak. The problems with Evil Behind You are just too crippling to let it off easy. The characters are scripted way too broad. The "bad" couple of Debra and Tony are so obnoxiously self-centered and unloving that even an atheist would swear on a stack of Bibles that those two were going to hell long before the demons show up to verify the fact. Lisa, a Christian supposedly undergoing a massive crisis of faith, really ends up being about as far from God as that little kid who gets mad at Mommy and runs away... all the way to the back steps until Mom calls him in for dinner. (Yeah, I did that once, but so did you, so stop snickering.) As for the Christian doctor forced to participate in the experiment, well, he's SO good you may as well start the beatification process now. (And use that fast-track one Mother Teresa is getting, not the slow bureaucratic one everybody else is stuck with.) But nobody in the movie is as broadly scripted as the eeeevil terrorists. Now unlike a lot of other reviewers, I'm not really offended that the terrorists are portrayed as Islamic extremists because, last time I watched the news, there were indeed Islamic extremists running around the world killing people. But I am offended by how unnecessary they are to the story. With any number of creative ways to place a group of people in a Saw-like setting, did we really need to use one-dimensional Muslim caricatures just to get in some theological jabs at Islam? Besides, you would think that in a movie whose underlying theme is ostensibly about personal salvation, at least one terrorist might have repented his murderous ways and avoided eternal damnation. But alas, such is not the case.

There's also just no way to get around mentioning the budget. While Evil Behind You actually had $200,000 to work with, twice the budget of the aforementioned Facing The Giants, the first time filmmakers just didn't seem to have the experience necessary to overcome the budgetary restraints. After a substantial part of the film's running time has passed in which the actors do a credible enough job building up suspense over the unseen forces lurking in the room, we finally get to see the demons themselves. Hmm. Yeah. Looks like someone on the crew learned how to use the free tool set to Neverwinter Nights... Neverwinter Nights 1. The effects are an absolute mood killer. Truthfully, the movie would have been better served never showing the creatures but rather just playing up movement in the shadows. (It can work. Go watch 2006's Salvage, made for only $25,000, and see what they do with stuff like half-glimpsed faces in doorways and such.) And if the climax of your movie is going to involve a huge explosion, at least try to leave enough money to actually blow something up. If you can't do that, at least leave enough for bus fare so you can travel to where somebody else is blowing something up and film that instead. Instead, the destruction of the medical facility in Evil Behind You is indicated by an anemic offscreen "boom" and an orange spotlight which momentarily flashes on the back of the main actresses' head. Breathtaking.

But what's most lacking in this Christian sci-fi horror movie is, well... the horror. Stephen King, who knows a little something about the subject of suspense and terror, wrote in Danse Macabre that a work of horror functions on two levels. "On top is the gross-out level... the gross-out can be done with varying degrees of artistic finesse, but it's always there. But on another, more potent level, the work of horror is really a dance - a moving, rhythmic search. And what it's looking for is the place where you, the viewer or reader, live at your most primitive level." Since the makers of Evil Behind You purposely avoided the gross-out effects, that leaves them with the task of mining those "primitive levels" in order to be an effective thriller. But despite all the talk about hell (and those eeeevil terrorists, of course), Evil Behind You somehow feels just a little too timid.

Okay, that's a little vague. You know what? Maybe I can explain it better if we take a look at a another no-budget Christian horror film which can be called a lot of things, but never timid.




















THE BURNING HELL

TYPICAL REVIEW

"Although the blood looks as if someone spilled red fingernail polish, and the performances from the parishioners functioning as on-camera talent are unbelievably stilted, the blood-spattered events and unrelievedly grim tone sent impressionable viewers screaming for the altar." - David D. Duncan and Jim Ridley, Psychotronic Video Magazine

THE PLOT

Tim and Ken, two aging hippy-biker types, talk to the Reverend Pirkle about their new church, the one down the street that doesn't bother with that hell stuff because it brings people down. When the two realize that they are talking to a preacher (somehow having previously missed this fact even though they're sitting in his office INSIDE his church) they apologize and leave, but not before Tim has one last laugh at the pastor's antiquated teachings on hell. Tim immediately crashes his motorcycle and has his head ripped off. (Which we get to see!) The grief stricken Ken leaves Tim's headless corpse behind on the road and returns to the church just in time to catch a sermon by Reverend Pirkle detailing stories from the Bible in which various people are cast into the fiery pit of The Burning Hell. (Which we also get to see!) Afterwards the preacher sadly informs Ken that, like all those sinners from the Bible, Tim is also burning in hell this very moment. More depressed than ever, Ken attends another service in which the message is (you guessed it) all about hell. Throughtout the sermon Ken is stared down and poked by a number of people who feel he needs to respond to the altar call. As the 20th verse of Just As I Am is sung, Ken is torn between his doubts and his desire to save his soul from eternal damnation.

THE POINT

Readers of this blog might remember the name of Ron Ormond. He was the auteur responsible for the legendary Mesa Of Lost Women as well as other freaky B-movie offerings such as 1963's Please Don't Touch Me and 1968's The Monster and the Stripper. (On my honor, those are 100% real titles.) But in 1970, Mr. Ormond had not one, but two forced landings in an airplane which caused him to reconsider the path he had chosen in life. Embracing his newfound Christian faith, Ormond decided he would no longer make bad low budget exploitation films. Instead he would make bad low budget CHRISTIAN exploitation films. Teaming up with Southern Baptist evangelist Estus W. Pirkle (On my honor, that's 100% his real name.), Ormond made three pictures using money the preacher raised from collections. As Psychotronic Video Magazine notes, "Each of them was a "soul winner," a term for movies that were shown in rural churches across the South and immediately followed by an altar call. The number of converted sinners replaced grosses as the measure of success."

And in terms of "soul winning", the most successful of these collaborations would have to be 1974's The Burning Hell, a film to which Ormond brought all of his low budget tricks into play to create a truly disorienting, yet oddly compelling, viewing experience. It starts with the very structure of the movie itself. In order to take advantage of the verbal arsenal that was the Reverend Pirkle's sermons, Ormond eschewed straight narrative, and instead filmed The Burning Hell in the psuedo-documentary style which was in vogue with all those cryptozoology films (The Mysterious Monsters, The Legend of Bigfoot, etc.) popular during the mid-70s. In those movies a narrator would lead the audience from skepticism (Is Sasquatch real or just a hoax?) to possible acceptance (Haven't we convinced you this is a real possibility?) using vignettes and reenactments to hammer home the films "evidence". It's the same thing here, except instead of the Loch Ness Monster, our narrator Pirkle want us to accept the existence of hell.

But not just any hell, my friends, he wants us to accept... THE BURNING HELL! Pirkle, being the good Southern Baptist boy he is, wants us to accept as literal truth the Biblical imagery of hell as a place of fire and brimstone. Oh, and don't forget the worms, the tormenting worms! (Out of all the graphic imagery this movie throws at us, Pirkle seems really, really concerned with the worms, mentioning them several times over the course of the film and even discussing the word's translation from the Greek.) Now, of course, Catholics have no trouble with the idea of hell. The Catechism teaches that "to die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice." and that "this state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell." But the Catechism is rather non-committal as to what hell actually is other than a state of being in which there is "eternal separation from God." Maybe it really is a literal pit of fire or maybe that's just the best image we have to describe something our human minds aren't capable of comprehending yet; we just don't know. (This is probably a good time to point out again that if you want a very good overview of all the differences between Catholic teaching and Pirkle's take on things, you owe it to yourself to check out D. G. D. Davidson's excellent review of The Burning Hell over at the Sci-Fi Catholic.) Acknowledging these theological differences, however, I'm forced to grudgingly admit that Pirkle and Ormond accomplished what they set out to do.

Which is hard to imagine given what's on screen, because by most standards this movie is utterly ridiculous. The closest thing this film has to an actor is director Ron Ormond himself who plays Tim the biker. And he kills himself off in the very first reel. Every other character is played by the finest pew sitters a pot luck dinner and chance to be in a movie can buy. (You've never seen King Herod until you've seen him portrayed by a guy with a thick Mississippi drawl who pronounces every word phonetically. Bet you didn't know the high priest of the Sanhedrin was named Kay-eye-foos.) And what about that dialog? I'll be quoting this movie for months to come. "The chances are he's burning in the flames of Hell right now, but I'm worried about you." "They relished his gluttonous intestines, what a nauseating stench." and my favorite "If you were in hell right now, in all probability, you would change your mind!" To top it all off, we get to meet Satan himself, complete with cape, horns, and clown-like stained glass face paint, bwah-hah-hahing maniacally as the damned claw at the worms, the tormenting worms, glued to their faces. Watching this movie today in gape-mouthed wonder, it's nearly impossible to believe anyone could ever have been affected by this stuff.

And yet I know from personal experience that this movie worked. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I was not raised in a Christian household. But one fine Summer during my elementary school days I found myself spending Sunday mornings with a school friend at his small Southern Baptist church. And on one such glorious morning the preacher skipped his sermon, lowered the lights, and started a projector. By the end of The Burning Hell grown men were sobbing at the altar and I was scared ****less. As soon as I got home I rushed to my mother and asked if I could be baptized the following week. (Not only did she say no, but I was never allowed to step foot in that church again. This was the moment I discovered my family was supposedly Catholic, which was news to me but also kind of neat, because in the movies those were the guys who kept gallons of holy water around in case the vampires attacked.) Sound crazy? Oh sure. Decades later, after scores of slasher movies, the advent of Industrial Lights & Magic, and now CGI, everything about this movie now seems quaint and camp. But in its day, this movie kicked people's spiritual butts.

But why? Why was this over the top cheese fest so frightening to people? I think if we go back to Stephen King's two criteria for a work of horror, we might be able to figure it out. On his first point, the gross-out, The Burning Hell is an obvious no-brainer. In this movie we get beheadings, slit throats, burning flesh, wailing & gnashing of teeth, and spears in the gut. Oh, and the worms, the tormenting worms! And while you can argue over the "degree of artistic finesse" in the movie's violent imagery, there's no denying that it effectively portrays the Dante-esque Hell it wants you to accept as real. But even Stephen King admits the gross-out only gets you so far. It can evoke a visceral reaction, provide a momentary shock to the senses, but it rarely leaves a deep or meaningful lasting impression.

I think where The Burning Hell ultimately succeeded (again, in its day) and where Evil Behind You fails is in their application of King's second criteria, in finding a place where the viewers live at their most primitive level. For the most part people have a basic desire to live, and if possible, they want to live happily. And if they're religious, they want to live happily ever after. Hell, whatever it may turn out to be, is the opposite of that. In both of our movies tonight, eternity in hell is the ultimate threat. Yet in Evil Behind You, they spend almost no time exploring what exactly that might mean for the characters. (Oh sure, it's apparently full of bad CGI demons, but so is the Sci-Fi channel.) The hell of Evil Behind You is too vague to invoke true horror. That's not a problem with The Burning Hell. They make sure you know what the stakes are and then some. Hell is not a plot point in Pirkle's movie, it's a matter of life or death, even after the credits roll. He and Ormond want to burn that fact into the viewers conscious and (again, for its moment in time) they pull it off.

All of this raises an interesting question for today's Christian, especially for those who don't accept the idea of a literal Burning Hell. The Catechism plainly states that "the affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion." So it seems we are still expected to consider the reality of hell with the same intensity as Pirkle and Ormond regardless of whether it's burning or not. But how are we supposed to convey the urgency of the subject to others? Let's face it, on the surface "eternal separation from God" just doesn't sound as frightening as neverending hellfire, brutal torture, or even the worms, the tormenting worms! If we're going to avoid the gross-out, how do we portray a "state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God" for the horror it truly is?

Look for the places where we live at our most primitive levels, of course. There actually is a movie which does this beautifully. In the final scene of 1991's The Rapture, the character played by Mimi Rogers stands on the bank of a small stream in the middle of a dark, barren landscape. On the opposite side stands her recently deceased daughter begging her to ask for God's forgiveness and accept his love before the world ends and she no longer has a chance to join her family in Heaven. Tragically, the mother is unwilling to "forgive God" for events which have occurred over the course of the movie and she chooses hell rather than release the anger in her heart. As her saddened daughter fades from sight and the world begins to darken, the camera (and therefore we viewers as well) slowly pulls away from the woman, leaving her isolated and completely alone for all of time with nothing but her pain and bitterness for company. It's a chilling and powerful image of eternal separation from God and everyone else we've ever loved. And there's not one single scene of burning flesh, or skewering, or even the w... well, you know.

THE STINGER

The truth is Christianity is no stranger to horrific imagery. If you actually pick up a Bible and flip through it, you find that Holy Scripture is full of gruesome stories that never make it into the kid-friendly readings at mass. (You might want to stop eating for a minute.) For example, Samson has his eyes gouged out by the Philistines, Jezebel is eaten alive by dogs, The Baptist gets his head served up on a platter, a Levite priest saws his murdered concubine into twelve pieces and has them delivered to the 12 tribes of Israel as a sign of coming retribution, the harlot Jael nails the sleeping Sisera's head to the ground with a tent peg through the ear, and (have you stopped eating yet?) after King Saul demands a dowry of 100 Philistine foreskins in exchange for the hand of his daughter in marriage... David personally brings them to him in a sack. Aieee, aieee, aieeeeee!

"The term "flesh" refers to man in his state of weakness and mortality." says the Catechism. Besides the fact that these are the terrible things people do to one another, graphic stories like these remind us that we are creatures of spirit AND flesh. This is important in Christian theology because "The "resurrection of the flesh" (the literal formulation of the Apostles' Creed) means not only that the immortal soul will live on after death, but that even our "mortal body" will come to life again." It's just another way in which Christian teaching stresses that the unique individual lives on rather than just becoming part of some universal consciousness or just disappearing into plain old nothingness.

NOW SHOWING AT A BLOG NEAR YOU

It's hard to imagine that anyone who reads this blog is unfamiliar with The Sci-Fi Catholic, but just in case there are one or two who haven't found their way over there yet, now is the time. Our pal D. G. D. Davidson has proven his bravery by trudging his way through the entirety of The Burning Hell and I can tell you from experience, it ain't easy. His comments on the theological problems a good catholic would find with the film are, as always, very insightful and graciously frees me from having to address them myself. My usual goofy take on the film will be up in just a day or two.

While you're at the Sci-Fi Catholic, you might also want to check out D.G.D. & Snuffle's reviews of the Korean CGI fest Dragon Wars, The Invasion starring Nicole Kidman, the anime classic Akira, and the Neil Gaiman adaptation Stardust. They seem to have liked a grand total of one of them, but I'm not saying which. You'll just have to read them all.

Other than that, we're stuck in the celluloid wasteland that is the end of summer and back to school days. There's just not a lot of people going to the movies. If they are, they're not blogging about it. Teofilo de Jesus over at Vivificat did grab the DVD of Babylon 5: The Lost Tales however, and seems to be pleased with what he saw.

And although not technically a blog, Anthony Sacramone of First Things did get a look at Milos Forman's latest cinematic excursion Goya's Ghost and was left with the burning question, "Huh?".

That's about it, though. I'll see you shortly with the much delayed double feature.

Michael Bay's "Legend of Zelda"

Yes, I DID in fact think the first gag was good enough to warrant a sequel. Enjoy!

REVIEW: The Brave One (2007)

A brief rundown of the sights and sounds awaiting you in "The Brave One:"

"I WANT MY DOG BACK!!!!!" BLAM!! (Yup! Somehow STILL in the movie despite being such a laugh-generator in the trailers.)

Jodie Foster, upon being told she "doesn't have the right" to vigilantism: "YES I DOOOOOOO!!!"

Terrance Howard, in a performance that suggests someone has dared him to try and do his "solemn, stoic dude tryin' hard not to cry" vocal bit for an entire movie.

BLAM!! "WHO'S THE BITCH NOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!????"

Foster-as-vigilante's only confidant, an older African woman, imparts sage-like wisdom about how "they give the children guns" in the old country. Because in bad "important" movies, every single person from Africa PERSONALLY experienced horrible violence, which has turned them into Gandalf and filled them with the singular desire to act as deeply-accented consciences to white people.

"You shouldn't smoke, it'll kill you." "I don't care." "Lots of ways to die. YOU gotta find a way to LIVE."

Jodie Foster stalking the neon-lit streets of New York after dark, hunting down scum to blow away while reading from Emily Dickinson in voiceover.

Yeesh.

If nothing else, you've gotta hand it to director Neil Jordan: When he's shoveling bullshit, he's using both hands. "The Brave One" a deathly-dull, horribly formulaic Lifetime-level script that slogs across the screen with all the energy and visual stimulant of a Z-grade "Law & Order" imitator. Every cliche of the revenge genre is mined and put to use, but drained of all life and vigor. Foster either looks like she's sleepwalking (it's supposed to pass for PTSD "numbness") or she's bellowing in over the top ACTING!!! moments so hysterical they'd get you thrown off of an Uwe Boll movie. The overall vibe, that of an attempted deconstruction of the "Death Wish" model, would reek of pretention if it weren't so hollow as to negate even an EFFORT toward pretense. Guys, listen: Making a lifeless clone of an "unserious" movie and plugging a take-this-movie-seriously actress into the lead isn't "deconstruction" - it's just making a bad movie. In this case, it's making one of the worst "serious" films of the year.

Maybe it wouldn't read quite as bad had we not already seen a vastly superior "Death Wish" reworking in the criminally-underpraised "Death Sentence" earlier this year. That film actually succeeded in finding new life in the genre by ripping out any semblance of sociology or "message" and focusing on the breakdown of a lead character's psyche - following Kevin Bacon's collapsing sanity into the darkest abyss... and then beyond it. With "The Brave One," sadly, we're right back to square one with Foster (in her default mode of seething semi-tomboyish indignance) filling the creaky genre-mandatory role of the naive "liberal" forced to confront grim "reality." This year's model: Erica Bain ("BAIN?" We're goin' there? Really?) the host of an NPR-style radio show in which she loving pines for "the good old days" of edgy, ugly/beautiful pre-Giuliani cleanup New York.

The business surrounding Erica's show, for the record, is the closest the film ever comes to establishing a coherent or even interesting theme: That of a bitter-raised middle finger to the romanticizing of war-zone era NYC. It's thusly meant to carry some note of irony when, after another day of waxing nostalgiac for the days of Punk Club scuzz and "Eloise," Erica and her fiancee have a horrific encounter with a very "old New York" element: Jumped by a gang of thugs (one of whom is recording the attack with a video camera to help add chaos to the editing - way to think outside the box, huh?) during a midnight park walk, both are savagely beaten and the fiancee winds up dead.

Suddenly, Erica's beloved city is feeling mighty dark and unsafe, and it's not long (in fact, it's quick enough to strain believability) before she's buying herself an illegal handgun ("30 days? I WON'T SURVIVE 30 DAYS!!!!") and morphing into a steely-eyed urban crimefighter. She starts out blowing away burglars and muggers, then quickly moves up to rapists and organized-crime kingpins before remebering to track down her initial attackers so that the film can stage one of the goofiest endings since "The Village."

She can have her dog... I want my MONEY back.

FINAL RATING: 3/10

SHORT FEATURE: LOVE STORY

Okay, so I'm supposed to make my "big" return with the promised review of our hellish double feature, and I will in just a few days now that the work crisis is becoming manageable. But I'm suffering from blog withdrawal (Is that normal?) and happen to have some old writings lying around. All I really need is an excuse to throw something quick together in order to get my blog fix.

Well, what do you know? Today marks the 18th anniversary of my wedding date, which is momentous enough. But my wife counts everything by our first date, which means yesterday was actually our 20th anniversary. (Using either date, that's really not enough time yet to have spent with this wonderful woman.) A few years back the folks who run my parish's religious education program asked me to write a little something about biblical interpretation which they could use as a starting point for further discussion. For some reason, I decided to approach the subject using the story of my first date with my future wife. It was meant to be a very basic introduction to the subject rather than a end-all be-all survey of biblical study. And that's all it is. But they liked it and they keep dragging it out every year, so I thought I would post it here in honor of this date and of the woman I'll spend the rest of my days with.

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There are a number of schools of thought when it comes to interpreting the Bible. There is the Historical-Critical Method, the Literary Analysis, the Canonical-Traditional Approach, and so on. And we're going to discuss every single one of them. Just kidding. Actually, before we even look at the Bible, it might be helpful to see what happens when we apply different methods of interpretation to other things in our life. For instance, let's talk about relationships again, in particular where they start. Let's try some different methods of describing that all-important first date.

THE HISTORICAL APPROACH: Shortly before lunch time on September 15th, 1987 I arrived to pick up my date. She was ready to go. She wore a pair of shorts and a top in the style appropriate for the time period we lived in. It took roughly forty-five minutes to drive to Zoo Atlanta, the location I had selected for our first date. The early fall weather was suitable for walking and the venue allowed for conversation. We made an effort to see all of the animals, although she was hesitant about entering the reptile house. On the return trip, my date informed me she had to be at work soon, but asked me to call her the next day, which I did. We were married two years later.

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH: On the way to the zoo my physiology had already started to change. As she walked next to me my pulse rate increased and my palms became sweaty on the steering wheel. As we talked, her face and chest area flushed, producing a rouge-like effect. Her pupils slightly dilated. Entering the reptile house, her heart rate quickened. By this time we were both secreting pheromones, sending unconscious signals to each others brains about our general fitness. Our minds were also registering visual clues regarding physical symmetry. After two years of dating rituals, we made the decision to form a lifetime pair bond.

THE "SPIRITUAL" APPROACH: By the time I arrived to pick up my date, I was little more than a shell. After years of wandering through the wastelands that was dating in the 1980's, I was ready to call it quits. But as we wandered amongst the animals, something odd was occurring. Surrounded by beasts, my own humanity was resurfacing, and there was only one reason. The girl walking next to me, the one whose hand had slipped into mine unnoticed, she was the cause. There wasn't enough time that day to explore this new found love, but somewhere deep inside, we both sensed we had started a journey that would take the rest of our lives to complete. We told the rest of the world that very thing two years later.

The first two approaches give us some useful information. The historical facts provide a stage for the characters and set up the situations while the scientific facts let us know something is going on internally. But for most of us there's still something missing. Left with the first two approaches we're somehow…unsatisfied.

It's the third approach which more closely resembles how we actually communicate things to each other. There are facts, yes, but there is also exaggeration, symbolism, and even a little bit of bad poetry. Everyone knows that a person can't literally be a shell, but the phrase adds meaning in a way the historical facts can't. Humanity resurfacing is just imagery, but it tells us a lot more about what's going on inside the narrator than the list of bodily functions provided by science. Despite its apparent scientific "errors", the third way of describing the event somehow ends up being intellectually and spiritually truer than the first two approaches.

A knowledge of empirical facts is important, (Forget the anniversary of your first date and you'll find out from your significant other just how important.) but there are some things for which they are just insufficient. As human beings, we need those other modes of communication in order to reach greater truths. Is there any reason to believe that the God who created us wouldn't understand this and account for it the Bible? This is the context we should read Holy Scripture in, not as some historical or biological textbook, but as the inspired human effort to communicate the greater truths behind science and history.

***************

Ahhhh, sweeeet. What do you want, I love my wife. For those who made it this far, thanks for bearing with my sentimentality. Our regularly scheduled programming will return in just a few days.

REVIEW: Dragon Wars

Assigning a numerical rating is the hardest part of writing any one of these reviews, and even harder to explain. That's why, when an example comes along that offers an easy insight as to how I arrive at these numbers, I feel a certain obligation to reveal it. So, then: "Dragon Wars," a hugely successful Korean-made (but American-set and English-speaking) giant-monster blockbuster, features a sequence in which a gigantic monster serpent easily the size of several city blocks coils it's way up a skyscraper and does battle with a fleet of armed Apache attack choppers - NO MOVIE WHERE THAT HAPPENS CAN GO BELOW A "5." It's that simple. There could be NOTHING else of value or worth in the entire enterprise and it would STILL be at least average, because it has a giant snake wrapped around a building fighting helicopters.

There's a period in the 2nd act when "Dragon Wars" achieves, if only for a brief time, a kind of transcendant greatness that some overall "better" films can only dream of: Buraki, the above-mentioned giant snake, wraps himself around the above-mentioned Los Angeles skyscraper. Down below in the streets, a combined force of SWAT troops, LAPD cops, Army troops and a squad of tanks engaged in a pitched battle with the Atrox Warriors - Buraki-worshipping evil soldiers clad in gleaming silver armor, astride dinosaur-like steeds and backed up by waves of lumbering slug/lizard behemoths with cannons mounted on their backs. Above, a flock of winged, dragon-like Bulcos engage in dizzying dogfights with attack-choppers. Fireballs are spewed. Giant monsters throw rows of cars about like piles of dry leaves. Swords clash with bullets. Monster-launched missiles tear through concrete.

It is, all by itself, instantly one of the single greatest scenes of monsters attacking a major city in motion picture history - fit to be displayed alongside "King Kong's" New York rampage, "Godzilla's" first seige of Tokyo or the genre-defining attack of "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" Rhedosaurus. It's a revelation, a symphony of sights genre fans have been waiting to see for as long as they've BEEN genre fans. "Transformers," a far, FAR less delightful offering of giant-creatures tearing up urbania, WISHES it could be this portion of "Dragon Wars." If the rest of the film was able to measure up to this one glorious stretch of it's running time, we'd be looking at a modern classic right now.

Well... it doesn't, and so we're not. Truth be told, there are HUGE parts to the film that are laughably goofy, much of it borne from a palpable language barrier between the Korean filmmakers and their primarily American cast. It's labyrinthine, destiny-centered, flashback-ladden plot makes only the barest semblance of sense. And so we're presented in-whole a kind of raw-chaos mashup of elements: One-part gloriously-realized fantasy-infused creature feature, one-part unintentional-camp train wreck resembling nothing so much as one of the lesser "Highlander" installments. And yet, like some strange accident of evolution, the ridiculous result WORKS. It darts back and forth between hillariously-awful action-movie stock scenes and jaw-droppingly awesome giant-monster action, and BOTH paths are hugely entertaining in their own way - go for the dragons, stay for the howler dialogue and mind-bending exposition.

Some six full years in the making by Korean comedy icon turned FX-film groundbreaker Hyung Rae Shim (late of the far inferior "Yongarry" remake years ago,) the film does feature an interesting (if insanely over-complicated) setup. The central plot revolves around ancient Korea and The Imoogi, a species of king-sized snake monsters who wish to evolve into proper Dragons (of the flying, ribbon-shaped Asian variety) and can only do so via the sacrifice of specially-destined young virgins. There's also an evil Imoogi, Buraki, who wants to devour the gal and claim Dragon-hood for himself and has enlisted an army of followers to help him out (exactly WHY a seemingly-immortal super-serpent NEEDS help is a little vauge.) The whole operation hit a snag 500 years ago when a warrior fell in love with his sacrifice-to-be charge, and the two did themselves in rather than submit to the attacking Buraki. They've both been reincarnated as 20-somethings in modern day L.A., and right around the time destiny rears it's head again Buraki and Company are already about the business of tearing the place apart looking for The Girl. Most of this information is imparted to us by Robert Forster (!!!) as a reincarnated, shape-shifting Korean warrior monk who owns an antique shop. Really.

Despite the central presence of the big-bad Buraki, "Dragon Wars" has less in common with Godzilla than it does with the kitchen-sink lunacy of the Ray Harryhausen "Sinbad" films - right down the dizzying menagerie of beasties and the one-damn-thing-after-another plotting. In a way, it's somewhat unfortunate that the bulk of "Dragon Wars" media blitz has focused on older audiences. While it's true that grownup monster geeks and fans of "what the HELL??" moviemaking will likely find a new guilty pleasure here, the real proper audience for this is kids. Fast-paced, not terribly gruesome and stuffed to the gills with monsters and magic, this film will be MANA to any young lover of monsters/dragons/dinosaurs for whom wooden acting and psyche-melting dialogue are infinitely forgivable in the face of colossal monster battles or armored, dragon-riding baddies charging against a phalanx of tanks.

Had this film existed when I was around 7, no force on Earth could've kept me from watching it into memorization. To the current generation of film geeks this will be an instant "camp" cult hit... but for the NEXT generation it's going to be a seminal title - non-monster-related parts that don't hold up notwithstanding. At the showing I attended, a pair of young boys sat a few rows ahead of me along with an older woman (probably a grandmother to one one or both of them); and while the grownups (myself included) were laughing like hyenas for much of it, these kids were enraptured. Got a kid in your family that collects toy Dinosaurs or seeks out Godzilla flicks on TV? Take him or her to see this, you'll be their hero.

Folks, I'll be honest. I've had a massive downer of a week. Crappy time at work. Rainy weather. Just a big long "man does adulthood tend to SUCK" time... and "Dragon Wars" was exactly the tonic I needed. A huge-scale giant-monster B-movie complete with MST3K-worthy acting for laughs and extended sequences of fantasy/creature warfare for genuine thrills. I was laughing, I was applauding and, at times, I may as well have been ten years old again, amazed to be seeing Monster Movie scenes that I thought would only ever exist in my dreams. I'm not sure (though I'd hope) if director Shim's human characters would be less spectacularly dopey when his crew speaks the same language as his cast, but he's proven himself a prodigy at arranging sequences of giant monster carnage - and he gave me MORE than I wanted and EXACTLY what I needed.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY

Well, that'll teach me to watch movies about getting dragged down to Hell. Out here in the non-cinematic world the eldest of my business partners has decided to take off a few years earlier than anticipated. As a result I've gotten tied up completing some of his assignments as well as my dealing with my own substantial workload.

I've only got the most basic of stat counters on the blog, but it's enough to know I've got a few regular readers out there. So I just wanted to drop a quick note and say thanks for the support so far and hope you'll bear with me as it will probably be the end of the week before I can get the next review out.

I'm sure those of you who enjoy things like eating and paying the bills will understand.

REVIEW: Shoot 'Em Up

In the period in which I did my time as an art student, "mixed media" junk-art was big. Maybe it still is, I dunno, I don't live in that world anymore. For those of you who've NEVER lived there, the basic idea of the stuff is to make something that looks as much as possible like it got mashed together "organically" (translation: "by accident") yet wound up looking in some way compelling. You're already thinking, "sounds easy, just bash some crap around and bullshit a rationale for it," but that's not exactly true: Most of the professors could always see through that, or at least were good guesses as to which of us were likely to pull it. (::raises hand::) No, the "trick" was to actually do your best BUT, if you made an actual mistake, to pass it off as one of the many "intentional mistakes" making up the greater piece. If you were REALLY ballsy, or if you were a woman and suspected that the professor harbored an ambition of sleeping with you, you might even get away with "that wasn't the original intention, but it wound up opening new possibilities so I kept it in."

Short version: The two inherent problem with art-imitating-junk are, #1: It can be tough to tell how much is imitation and how much is just junk, and #2: It can be even tougher to argue how much it, if at all, it ought to "matter." (all-time champion "textbook case" movie of this type: "Attack of The Killer Tomatoes.") Consider: If a fellow shows up tommorrow with the cure for cancer, does it really make any difference if he found it through years of dogged, meticulous research or if he just spilled the "wrong" random chemicals into the same kettle?

In this particular case, we can take a certain amount of weight off the issue immediately by confirming right off the bat that "Shoot 'Em Up" is, in cinematic terms, most definately NOT the cure for cancer. It's not even really the cure for a hangnail. Or even acne. In fact, if it WERE some kind of medicine, it likely wouldn't even be very effective against mild heartburn. Despite the requisite Internet hype, this is NOT the "next level," "perfect example," "ultimate extrapolation" etc. of ANYTHING. Even amid it's own genre, it's not nearly as good as the two "Transporter" films. But it IS art-imitating-junk, and thus it does beg the troublesome "how much" and "does it matter" queries.

For analysis, it's best to start with the "junk" in question. Though it's obvious from the setup - black-clad gunslinger (Clive Owen) protects baby from army of killers - that actionphile writer/director Michael Davis has "studied under" John Woo, along with most of the other "Asian Masters" of the genre (the supremely icky "evil scheme" and the particular fetish that Monica Bellucci's "hooker with a heart of gold" heroine specializes in indicate he's also "up" on his Takeshi Miike and Chan Wook-Park) but those are generally 'good' action movies...

...And "Shoot 'Em Up's" ambition, seemingly, is to be a BAD one. After about ten minutes or so it becomes clear that the film is charging, fully-aware and with great commitment (or maybe not, but lets not get ahead of ourselves), away from Woo and into the realm of "Double Team," "Tango & Cash," "Stone Cold" and the collective filmography of Lorenzo Lamas: The land of "so bad it's good" disasterpieces action-adoring movie geeks prize for their grand-scale "are you KIDDING ME???" spectacle of unintentional hilarity. These are the "heights" "Shoot 'Em Up" hits, but the sticky-wicket is that it appears to go there on purpose: The difference between this film and a genuine-article like "Half Past Dead" is the difference between seeing a skateboarder hurt himself in a funny (to you) way while attempting what was meant to be a cool trick and seeing Johnny Knoxville hurt himself in a funny (to him AND you) way while attempting to hurt himself in a funny way.

And believe me, "Shoot 'Em Up" has it's so-bad-it's-good action movie bases covered: The gunfights make no logical sense, defy all known physics and involve a nigh-superhuman hero who never misses a shot tearing through waves of bullet-magnet henchmen who couldn't shoot a legless elephant. It shamelessly thrusts vulnerable targets (pregnant women, babies) into great danger in order to provide the suspense an un-killable hero lacks. The good guy has a "cute tic," in this case he's constantly chomping carrots a'la the similarly-unstoppable Bugs Bunny (get it??), and caps off his most impressive kills with groaner one-liners. The bad guy (Paul Giamatti) speaks Smartypants Supervillian Condescension fluently to his henchmen. Exposition on things we've already figured out is delivered with thudding literalism, usually in ADR voiceover.

It's obvious that Davis intends most or possibly all of this to be a lark, a self-parody joke to his fellow genre devotees. The trouble arises in how difficult it seems to be to sort out how much of the "funny" is there intentionally and how much happened organically. Example: Of course the hero's insistance on post-kill punchlines is an in-joke, but is the fact that the jokes are stunningly bad PART of the joke or just honest-to-God bad writing? Ditto some of the just-plain-awful straight dialogue. On the one hand, it's hard to imagine that any film that has a character say of the hero "I figured out who you hate most: yourself" and NOT be doing so as satire, but on the other hand I DID see "Transformers" so I guess it's possible. On the OTHER hand, strongest possible evidence that this is all one big joke: Amid all the massively fetishized (hell, outright sexualized) footage of firearms and their workings, "Shoot 'Em Up" eventually positions itself as, I shit you not, a pro gun-control message movie. For real.

So, which is it? Art-imitating-junk or junk-masquerading-as-art-imitating-junk? Overall, my guess would be that it's a lot more of Option #1 than most of it's detractors will admit, but ALSO a lot more of Option #2 than it's makers will readily "cop" to. The more uneasy question is whether or not the answer matters. "Shoot 'Em Up" is a so-bad-it's-good junkfood action epic of absolutely no nutritional value, and on that level I enjoyed it the same way I enjoy "The Adventures of Ford Fairlane" or "3000 Miles to Graceland." If all, or even MOST, of it's eye-poppingly ridiculous execution was an intentional mash-note to bottom-shelf action trash, Michael Davis just might be an expert genre-analyst/satirist. If it's often startling (seeming) ineptitude really IS ineptitude, then he could be ::shudder:: another Uwe Boll. But, so what? If I liked the final product, and I did with reservations; and if others hated it, does the "intent" really make a substantive difference for EITHER opinion? A like is, after all, a like and dislike is still a dislike.

How can YOU expect to react? Well, I can think of at least quick test. The Brian Bosworth vehicle "Stone Cold" is one of the silliest, dumbest, most inane action movies ever produced. I love it to death, and bought it the first day it was out on DVD. If you know of this movie, also bought it or WILL buy it now that you know the DVD is out, you'll probably have a good time with "Shoot 'Em Up"... though possibly not the good time you were intended to.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

REVIEW: 3:10 to Yuma (2007)

The reason that "3:10 to Yuma" is the best thing to happen to the Western genre in a good while is that it's not trying to be the best thing to happen to the Western genre in a good while. Ever since "The Wild Bunch," nearly every Western that's come out has either been trying to "deconstruct," "revise" or "examine" the genre, and every OTHER Western has been attemtping to counteract those efforts through re-mythologizing. Now, for the first time since "Tombstone," we've got a Western that isn't asking to be judged as anything other than what it is: A pretty damn good action/drama that happens to be set in the Old West. Is it going to be the movie that turns old-school cowboys into the "new" superheroes? No, and I'm grateful that it knows better than to bother.

Christian Bale has the lead as Dan Evans, a one-legged (Civil War wound) rancher who's impotent innability to make the land work or fend off the Railroad Company goons trying to run him off it is (possibly) starting to cost him the patience of his wife and has (definately) already cost him the respect of his eldest son - who prefers as a role-model Ben Wade, a notorious outlaw he's read about it dime-store paperbacks. As it turns out, the ACTUAL Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) has recently led his gang of brutal thieves into the area for a coach robbery. Wade is one of those inherently-brilliant improvisational supercrooks who's always cool, collected and Zen in the manner of someone who's thinking ten steps ahead of everyone else, to the point that he barely registers mild annoyance when a posse of Pinkertons (overheard at the screening: "Dude, which guy is Pinkerton?") and a crotchety Bounty Hunter (Peter Fonda!!) bust him in Evans' cozy little county.

Problematically, Wade's gang is comprised of super-dangerous cutthroats who tend to go a little feral without The Boss around to guide them. Even MORE problematically, while they'd be trouble enough scattered to the four winds, Wade's full-blown-psycho of a Second in Command (Ben Foster) is more than a little... um.. well, obsessed with his mentor, and opts to hold the wolfpack together as a lethal-force rescue squad that announces doom to any town that keeps them from Wade. With this imminent attack acting as a ticking clock, a posse forms to transport Wade to a secure train bound for Yuma Prison. Seeking reward money to settle his debts, Evans joins the team. Seeking Ben Wade and the chance to prove his mettle, Evans' son follows.

So, it's a "prisoner transport" movie, Old West style. Works for me. You'll not be too surprised, I trust, to learn that it's really about the psychological duel between Crowe and Bale - urbane, witty criminal versus earthy, emotionally-scarred honest farmer; both of whom are carrying baggage and secrets. and, really, thats all there is to "report." There's no straining for shocking twists or groundbreaking metaphor - it's a "set up and go" action picture, plain and simple.

There's exciting chases, big gun battles, encounters with Indian raiders and sadistic Railroad workers, macho battles-of-will and a big climactic shootout in the middle of a not-precisely-lawful town. The stuff Western genre-pics are made of, done well with good actors and a tight little script. In many ways, it reminds me of a "cowboy version" of "The Departed," another deceptively "classical" genre film that became a crowd-pleaser and Oscar winner. Don't even think of it as a "Western," think of it as a "Cowboy Movie." And enjoy.

FINAL RATING: 9/10

Memories

If you spend any amount of time in the video-game centric corners of the Web, you've likely heard of or experienced the work of James Rolfe, better known as "The Angry Nintendo (now more broadly Video Game) Nerd." Short version: Relentlessly-profane, disturbingly-informative reviews/trashings/history-lessons on old-school video games of the deserved-obscure and/or famously-awful variety, posted semi-regularly to GameTrailers and the glorious ScrewAttack.com.

Part of what's made The Nerd an online fixture is that his rants and raves have a certain intimately familiarity to his fans: If you're one of the millions of now-grown gamers who grew up as Rolfe seems to have, i.e. a child-of-the-80s firmly-ensconsed in the video game culture of the time - especially the Nintendo-branded variety, some or even most of his digressions will awaken some pretty powerful nostalgia in you. It has for me, but never so much as his most recent posting in which The Nerd sets aside (mostly) the anger for a pure-nostalgia look back at "Nintendo Power," the Nintendo-published magazine/company P.R. machine that was MASSIVELY popular in it's day and retains a cult following even still.

It seems corny, but I got literally misty watching The Nerd reminisce in detail over the strange ads, letters, etc. of the magazine... which as a kid I would read each of to the point of memorization. Literally every single thing he mentions here I recall, vividly, with accompanying memories tied to it. Some good, some not so. I remember getting my Issue #1. I remember "Howard & Nester." I remember the LETTERS he reads from the letters page. I know, silly... but I found myself honestly moved by this short little webisode. So I'm tossing the clip and link on here, just to share and also to do my part to introduce more people to The Nerd. Give this guy a look, he's a lot of fun:




Thank you, Angry Nintendo Nerd, for a truly pleasant entry into what has been an increasingly mezzo-mezzo sort of week.

SHORT FEATURE: SWING YOU SINNERS!

Paragraph 1021 of the Catechism reminds us that "The New Testament speaks of judgment primarily in its aspect of the final encounter with Christ in his second coming, but also repeatedly affirms that each will be rewarded immediately after death in accordance with his works and faith." In honor of Going To Hell Week here at the B-Movie Catechism we give you the 1930 Max Fleischer classic Swing You Sinners! in which Bimbo receives his just rewards. In song no less.

You're so wicked baby, and you're depraved
You can rave
It's apparent that you have misbehaved
To your grave
But if you should wanna be saved
Jus' behave
Swing you sinners!

WEEKLY NEWSREEL

Good evening Mr. & Mrs. Catholic and all you other Christians at sea. Sorry about the pants thing, but if Britney and Lindsay can do it, why not us? Maybe our first story has a clue. Now off to press

DATELINE: VENICE - GO AHEAD AND CALL IT LIKE YOU SEE IT, BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS ALREADY SEEN IT

Making the rounds at The Venice Film Festival, IMDB News overheard actress Keira Knightley commenting on the recent behavior of other young female starlets. "I'm not going to get blind drunk and then stumble out and fall over an puke up in front of people. I'm not saying I don't do that in private, but I try not to. The whole celebrity thing is not magic. They're real people proving they're s**ttier than everybody else because they don't even wear knickers." Perhaps Ms. Knightley once heard someone quote The Catechism where it states that "modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden." That probably goes double if it's supposed to be hidden by knickers. And while the Catechism doesn't explicitly address puking up in front of people while drunk, it does point out that modesty is considered an integral part of temperance, so we're pretty sure it's covered in there somewhere.

DATELINE: ISLA NUBLAR - FILM FRANCHISE NEARS EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT

Speaking of things that might potentially cause your gorge to rise. Contradicting rumors continue to fly over the expected plot line of Jurassic Park IV. Bloody-Disgusting.Com reports that the producers may be backing off of a story which features Laura Dern's character from the original movie running afoul of a government agency training dinosaurs to carry weapons. While this story would almost certainly highlight the Catechism's teaching that "the dominion granted by the Creator over the... animal resources of the universe cannot be separated from respect for moral obligations" as the beasts inevitably turn the weapons on their masters, let's face it, this just sounds like a bad Sci-Fi Channel movie waiting to happen. On the other hand, if Michael Bay was to film a live action remake of Dino-Riders...

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES - ADVANCE TO ABSURDITY, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200

And since we brought up sequels and remakes, we may as well mention this. MovieWeb tells us that director Ridley Scott is considering a film adaptation of the board game Monopoly. Seriously. For real. Look, we don't have any reason to lie to you. Well, you may have noticed the Catechism asserts that "we believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance. God creates freely out of nothing." Apparently now, so does Ridley Scott.

What else is there to say after you learn the guy who made Bladerunner is adapting Monopoly? Not a thing. Just remember as we close another Newsreel that today's gossip is tomorrow's bible study. And as the great Les Nessman always said, "Good evening, and may the good news be yours."

REVIEW: Death Sentence (2007)

Mild Spoilers.

'Round these parts, when one enters a room and notices among it's denizens an elephant, it's considered polite to acknowledge him (the elephant in the room) first, just to get it out of the way.

So, then, about politics and "Death Sentence." This is a "you hurt my family, now I hurt you"/take-the-law-into-your-own-hands vigilante vengeance movie about a suburban family man who, failed by "the system," opts to take the fight personally to the vile inner-city street gang that murdered his son using a literal bagful of guns. It's poster-slogan is "Protect What's Yours." Any way you slice it, possibly by intent and definately by execution, this winds up as a merger of "zero tolerance is the only deterent" urban-crime nightmare fused with a "right to bear arms" frontier-justice fantasy - as almost all such stories are when told with sincerity or, at least, intellectual honesty.

Depending on where you fall on the "gun issue" and to what degree you can divorce your personal belief in this regard from the analysis of what isn't really a "message movie" will have a lot to do with how you end up assessing the film: Too many of the virulently pro-gun are likely to elevate it into something that it isn't, while a smattering of those virulently anti-gun will certainly react as though director James Wan had just burned a cross on their front lawn. And they'll both be missing the overall merits of the film, chiefly the way in which it asks the audience to indulge in the fantasy of metting-out shotgun justice on their enemies but also shoves them headlong into confrontation with the logical toll such actions can take on a person. It's exploitation with a brain... that it uses to figure out how to become even more exploitative.

Kevin Bacon, his simmering intensity somehow ramped up even higher here than it was in "The Woodsman," has the Charles Bronson role as the suburban dad with the perfect family: Lovely wife (Kelly Preston), two great kids (one an artistic type, the eldest a varsity hockey star), a slick V.P. job at an insurance firm in the Big City and a quaint lil' house as far away from urban jungle as it can be. All of this is shattered, you will be unsurprised to learn, when Dad and Number One Son make the mistake of stopping for gas in the blighted inner-city after dark and the local gang of psycho-thugs turn up looking for an "initiation kill" for their newest recruit. Exit Number One Son.

In the first of a few interesting mini-twists on the well-worn "Death Wish" formula, Dad is already so enraged at the murder of his son that he doesn't even give "the system" a chance to fail him: When he learns that the killer may only get, at best, a short sentence; he opts out of the trial, tracks the guy down on his own and takes his eye for an eye. Unfortunately, he's not exactly a killer by trade, so the act itself freaks him right the hell out and sends him on a slow but innevitable train to Crazy Town. More unfortunately, his prey was also the younger brother of the gang's leader, and he and the whole "family" (irony!) take the killing as an act of war that they are all too happy to answer. So, there's your movie: Vigilante-justice sets off a full-blown shooting war between The Burbs and The Hood.

This is, we all realize, well-worn cinematic ground. And while it wisely avoids an overindulgence in reference or homage "Death Sentence" lives openly in the shadow of cut and dry "they-pushed-him-too-far" revenge thriller titans like "Death Wish" and "Vigilante." What distinguishes it, eventually, seems to come from a willingness to chase the darkness that Wan has brought with him from his more familiar horror work: Most "serious" films in this vein are willing to end in the comfort of ambiguity over "where it all MIGHT end," but Wan and Bacon are prepared to pull the audience down in the deepest, darkest waters of the revenge thriller pool... the waters where "Taxi Driver" and "Straw Dogs" swim. Ironically, this provides the "realistic consequences" that the genre's most strident critics most-frequently rail for- but in doing so it "crosses a line" that most of those same critics simply will not be able to handle.

This kind of movie is the squeamish critic's worst nightmare: It's absolute, balls-to-the-wall, brutal, punishing, attention-demanding stuff... but it's ALSO smart, well-made, sincere and excellently-acted - so they can't couch their "I just couldn't take it" review in the veneer of more analytical criticism. "Saw" already showed that Wan was a prodigy at visceral onscreen-terror, "Death Sentence" hints that, with the right projects, he could have the makings of another David Cronenberg or Paul Verhoven.

FINAL RATING: 9/10