Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist

Being that I’m a huge video gamer (check out my retro gaming vlog on YouTube, The Old Ass Retro Gamer) I never pass up watching a flick based on one of my favorite properties. A little over a year ago I came across a series of promo videos on YouTube advertising an independently produced Street Fighter mini-series that would be shown on Machinima’s channel and was fully endorsed by Capcom. I immediately became excited because not only are the Street Fighter games some of my favorite brawlers, but it looked like it was going to be taking a very serious approach to the material. This is a drastic contrast to the Jean-Cleaude Van Damme cheesefest from the early 90s.

Unfortunately I completely forgot about this series until it recently popped up on Hulu in movie form. A very, very long movie. We’re talking 2 ½ hours long. I thought to myself “this had better be good”.

Martial artists Ryu (Mike Moh) and Ken Masters (Christian Howard) live a traditional warrior’s life in secluded Japan learning the ancient fighting style of “Ansatsuken” (Assassin’s Fist) from their master, Gôken (Akira Koieyama). As their skills are honed over the years they also learn about the tragic past that this way of life has brought upon their teacher, and that history may repeat itself if they cannot find a way to change their destiny.

For starters I was immensely pleased that this miniseries decided to go simple and focus on just two of the characters from the long running video game’s huge roster of fighters. Ken and Ryu have always been the main stars of the series and I was happy that they were front and center, especially after how they were mistreated in the aforementioned Van Damme cinematic abortion. I was also happy that there was some nice drama, character moments and pleasant throwbacks to the source material. There was also a clever bit about Gôken buying Ken and Ryu a copy of Mega Man 2 to play on their Nintendo to relax while not training.

However, this miniseries is basically one overlong, drawn out and pretty damned boring take on the material. It took me two days to make it through the whole film because I kept falling asleep. There’s no real plot to the games so the writers had to come up with something that not only would be worth watching for the fans, but would also appeal to those not familiar with the material. This double-edged sword rarely works and in this case I’m pretty sad to say that it failed on both sides. As a fan I’m torn.

Here’s what I liked about the film:

-       The actors really commit to their parts. Not only do they look like their respective characters, but they do all their own fighting as well.

-       The remote locations featured within are breathtakingly beautiful and some remind me of the arenas from the games.

-       The game is accurately represented for the first time and the script stays true to what the spirit of the games felt like.

-       The fight scenes are short, but well choreographed and exciting.

-       Seeing Ken and Ryu’s special moves, like the Hadoken and Shoryuken attacks, performed with some outstanding special effects and stunt work put a smile on my face.

-       The origin of Akuma was kind of rad.

-       There are plenty of throwbacks to the source material, from musical cues to lines of dialogue.

-       Seeing Ken and Ryu developing their special attacks was cool as hell.

-       The cinematography, special effects and costumes are tops for a low budget internet miniseries.

Here’s what I didn’t like about the film:

-       The acting is a mixed bag. The two leads, Mike Moh and Christian Howard, turn in decent and likable performances as Ryu and Ken respectively. Akira Koieyama is fantastic as Gôken. But the rest of the cast, especially Joey Ansah as Akuma is a total blight on this flick. He’s downright horrible and reminded me of the acting seen in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

-       The plot is so drawn out that it is tiresome in the extreme. There’s only so many times that you can see someone wandering the countryside in silence while contemplating their destiny before it loses its meaning and becomes frustratingly annoying.

-       The flashback structure works at the beginning, but it too loses its focus and in the end becomes a series of redundant scenes that serve no purpose but to pad the runtime.

-       The subplot about old man Gôtetsu (Togo Igawa) is lame and predictable.

-       The writing, while very fanboyish, meanders and doesn’t really have a point to make until the final 30 minutes or so. It is very one note.

-       While I like the idea of the film being a prequel to the games, it would have been nice to have a character or two from the series make an appearance instead of being about just Ken and Ryu. Plenty of other characters from the games trained with Gôken too, so why couldn’t they have popped up in the script to liven things up?

-       The film ends with a cliffhanger that could have easily been resolved within this film’s runtime if some of the pointless filler was excised and the narrative sped up to a tolerable level.

-       The make-up for Akuma is dreadful. Borderline racist. The character starts off as Gôki, played by Asian actor Gaku Space, and when he becomes Akuma the role is taken over by African actor Joey Ansah who is given faux-Asian features and a really bad wig. It’s insulting.

I liked aspects of this film and found the rest to be a waste of time. Sure there’s lots of fanboy love flowing freely throughout the entire production, but it felt more like a high budgeted fan film than an actual film. I understand that the direction of the script was most likely due to budget constraints, but why bother making a Street Fighter film if there’s hardly any “fighting”? It kind of defeats the purpose.

If you’re a fan of the video games I recommend you check it out just on general principal. Everyone else should just stay away and play Street Fighter IV on their iPhone or watch the superior Mortal Kombat: Legacy.

2 out of 5

Jupiter Ascending

The Wachowskis have been getting a lot of flack in the years after their trilogy of The Matrix films ended, some might say it began right after The Matrix Reloaded was released, due to their strange affinity for making ultra cheesy films that are a lot of style with very little substance. I’m not one of those people.

I am a big fan of their heavily panned Speed Racer not only due to the beautiful visuals that fill the film, but the simple and (as far as I’m concerned) well told story that was incredibly hokey but also likable and surprisingly heartfelt. Unfortunately it didn’t make the kind of cash at the box office that their previous films had so The Wachowskis stepped back from filmmaking for a short while (and to allow for Larry to transition to Lara out of the limelight).  I also thoroughly enjoyed their super serious and somewhat convoluted co-directing follow-up project with Tom Tykwer, Cloud Atlas. Audiences felt otherwise and it was a huge bomb.

However, words cannot describe how excited I was about their next film, Jupiter Ascending. The Wachowskis excel at world building and the trailers to their newest epic sci-fi yarn looked to be filled to the brim with creative tech, bizarre costumes and (unfortunately CGI) set designs that made my eyeballs melt a little bit with how colorful and rich they were. And then it was delayed from its summer 2014 opening to the dog days of February 2015 for some unknown reason. I feared the worst since 96% of the films pulled from their release in this fashion are done so for one reason and one reason alone – they are shit and the production company doesn’t know when a good time would be to unleash said cinematic skid mark upon the world and hopefully turn a profit. Still, I held out hope that these two fellow Chicagoans hadn’t finally lost their edge and churned out some unwatchable crap like another former favorite filmmaker of mine. You might remember him… Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Deep Blue Sea, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master).

I saw Jupiter Ascending, which was shot here in Chicago (a couple filmmaker friends of mine actually worked on the film as well), opening weekend in IMAX 3D. While it isn’t the second coming of The Matrix like some people expect it to be, it is a super fun and campy trip into the absurd that reminded me of a beloved cult classic from 1980 – Flash Gordon.

Lowly housecleaner Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) learns that she is the heir to the planet Earth due to her alien DNA, and along with a hybrid bodyguard (Channing Tatum) attempts to trace a bounty placed on her head back to its off-world source.

Honestly this is not a good movie. Not a good movie at all. What it does have is an infectious sense of fun and adventure that I ate up. The plot is simple and pulpy, and the film wears its intentions plainly on its sleeve. It is filled to the brim with insane visuals, fast paced and somewhat bizarre action scenes (that bit that takes place above the Sears/Willis Tower is completely bugnuts), stupefyingly awful dialogue (“No, my mother never cleaned a toilet in her life.”), mediocre acting, overblown CGI, beautiful costumes and sets and some of the coolest technology I’ve seen invented for a movie in years (I want a pair of those gravity surfing rollerblades). Yes, this clearly is a case of style over substance but in the best possible way because this film is just fun on top of fun on top of fun.

Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis don’t set the world afire with their thespian chops, but they do share a nice chemistry and that works wonders for their likeability on screen. Sean Bean kills it in his small part and the rest of the cast chew the scenery like no one’s business, specifically Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne as the lead villain Balem Abrasax. Some of Redmayne’s dialogue deliveries are so over the top that it made me laugh out loud because most of the time he speaks in a whispery voice, but when he loses his cool it explodes all over the place. His performance is a total blast that reminded me of Gary Oldman’s Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg from The Fifth Element.

The main reason to see this flick is the ridiculously awesome technology invented for the story. Like I said, The Wachowskis are great world builders in their films and they have carefully crafted a ludicrous amount of awesomeness to fill out the weird and wonderful universe of Jupiter Ascending. Their creative touches fill every frame of every scene. If you thought some of the ideas behind The Matrix were cool you haven’t seen anything yet. And those starship designs… SPOOGE!

But this is not going to be a completely positive review. I mentioned earlier that this is not a good movie. Why? Because it is too long, features way too many characters and ideas that go nowhere, focuses on shady business deals and other pointless One-Percenter crap that reminded me of George Lucas’ simplified politics from the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the love story is a goofy joke in and of itself (“I love dogs, I've always loved dogs.”) and the MacGuffin of the story is a large scale rip-off of Soylent Green.

There also are some serious storytelling glitches that bugged the crap out of me. For example, at the top of the film we are rapidly and rather awkwardly introduced to the lead villains of the story as they walk through a demolished world. This is a completely unnecessary scene that should never have been shot. It ruins the surprise of the outer space elements that should have been shown off at the same time that Jupiter learns about them. As an audience member I would have appreciated discovering this new world outside our own alongside the main character.  What if the audience was shown the real world outside the Matrix before Neo was unplugged? The big reveal wouldn’t have had the same impact as far as I’m concerned. Ball dropped.

The Wachowskis may have come up with creative visuals and tech for this flick, but the story lacks it in the same amount. Some of it is downright stupid. But sometimes I just want to watch a big idiotic spectacle for the sake of sheer escapism which is why I love Flash Gordon to this very day. The siblings probably took some of the criticism aimed at Cloud Atlas to heart, namely the fact that it was overwhelmingly serious and intense, and decided to go for something light and frivolous for their next project. In my opinion it was a great decision since their epic space opera is a ton of dumb fun. I highly recommend it if you have a high tolerance to cheese flying at you from all angles. If that sounds appealing to you I’m pretty sure you’ll find a lot of love about Jupiter Ascending. If not stay clear as you might become lactose intolerant by osmosis.

3.5 out of 5

Homefront

I will freely admit that I am a Jason Statham fan. I’ve seen nearly all his films (even the direct to video ones) regardless of the quality. Yeah, most are poop. Some are decent. Rarely do I find one that is absolutely rad (Death Race, Safe, Transporter 2, Snatch). His newest endeavor, Homefront, falls into the middle category.

Retired DEA agent Phil Broker (Jason Statham) moves to a rural Louisiana town with his young daughter (Izabela Vidovic) for some peace and quiet. Due to a series of misunderstandings he becomes the target of a deranged meth cook (James Franco) who has alerted a few of the criminals Broker put away to his current location.

Let me get this out of the way first, Statham can actually act. He proved it with his outstanding performances in The Bank Job and Safe and he continues to show off that he has what it takes to play serous roles instead of just generic action oriented ones. I really liked him in Homefront despite the fact that at the twenty minute mark he seemed to give up on his American accent and reverted back to his usual British brogue. And of course when it comes time to whoop some ass he always delivers. His chemistry with Izabela Vidovic, who plays his daughter Maddy, is tops and I totally believed that they were father and daughter. If he can continue to hone his dramatic skills I can someday see him moving away from action films and into some more dramatic fare.

I also liked James Franco’s very low key performance as meth cook Gator. I usually cannot stand the guy (except in 127 Hours, Pineapple Express and This is the End), and I was expecting him to go completely bat shit crazy over the top with this part. Surprisingly he did the exact opposite in giving Gator a sort of slow burn intensity that really came off as creepy and frightening since you never knew what angle he was going to come from. You could see the gears turning in his head, and I thought that was pretty cool and made him out to be a very scary and unpredictable villain.

The rest of the cast is so-so. I have never liked Kate Bosworth (IMO she is the absolute worst Lois Lane EVER in Superman Returns) and apparently neither do casting agents. I haven’t seen her in anything of note for years (ever see The Warrior’s Way?), and for her to turn up as a redneck meth addict in a Statham movie pretty much shows how desperate for a part she really was. She looks like a meth head, but didn’t convince me she was one. Winona Ryder pretty much slums it here and collects a paycheck as Gator’s on/off girlfriend. Her eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head most of the time, so maybe she went method for this part. All I know is that she stunk. Clancy Brown looks bored as the town sheriff and the rest of the townsfolk do as well. I did enjoy Omar Benson Miller as Teedo. He’s naturalistic and I actually gave a shit about his character when the shit went down in the end.

The script by none other than Sylvester Stallone (based on a book by Chuck Logan) is decent. It has all the right ingredients for a good action drama and delivers on all the promises it makes early on. My problem is that I don’t like films where it’s about stupid and ignorant people doing stupid and ignorant things for its entire length. The redneck characters are annoying and completely unlikable even after they sort of change their attitudes toward the main character. Sure Gator remains a douchehammer for the whole film, but most of the others are supposed to come off as bound by some immature and outdated sense of family pride that really rode my nerves. If I was supposed to come to like these asshats by the end of the movie I have to say that it was a failed mission. Completely.

Director Gary Fleder (Kiss the Girls, Impostor, Don’t Say a Word, Runaway Jury) keeps things on the DL for the most part. It’s a low key film without any flash or crazy camera tricks. It’s as straightforward as they come and I assume he didn’t want this to turn into a parody as he made it. If it even remotely went into cheese territory it would lose the audience completely and I was happy that he never went in that direction. He also keeps the action (when there is any) in wide shots so we can see what’s going on. He isn’t completely successful with his actors, but at least they didn’t suck. They were just underwhelming.

One aspect I really enjoyed was that we are shown the effect the actions the parents have on their children. We get a good sense that the inciting incident, Maddy being bullied in the schoolyard and fighting back, was taken a bit too seriously and leads to some horrible events of retaliation that not only effects Maddy when people come to kill her and her father, but the boy who initially bullied her as well when his family shows their complete disdain for any form of human decency. The shot of the bully listening to his meth head mother arguing with Gator on their front porch and realizing that all of this drama and violence was caused by his one moment of acting like an asshole on the playground makes for my favorite moment of the film.

In the end Homefront is a decent flick. It has what you expect from a Statham film (martial arts/action) and what you expect from something Stallone has written (‘Murica!). It doesn’t’ mix all that well in some cases, but you could definitely do a lot worse than this entertaining waste of 90 minutes. I recommend it, but only if you have a very high tolerance for f-bombs. I swear, there were at least three dropped every minute.

2.5 out of 5

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

As I’ve started many, many times before in past reviews – I do not bring baggage with me when I see a film based on a novel, comic book or video game that I like. If I want the book, I’ll read the damned book. I want the movie to work on its own without needing to have prior knowledge of the property as well as being the best movie that it can possibly be. Anyone that feels the need to constantly compare the original property to the film version should just stay home and shut up. But that’s just me.

So here we are with the sequel to The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Yes, I have read the book and enjoyed it to an extent. I did feel it was the weakest book in the series because, to be completely honest, it’s simply a rehash of the first novel with some minor tweaks to the formula. Not surprisingly I feel the movie follows suit.

Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), victors of the 74^th Hunger Games, are under the impression that they are out of harm’s way. That turns out to not be the case when tributes for the 75^th Hunger Games, known as the Quarter Quell, will be drawn from past winners. As talk of a rebellion begins to spread throughout the Districts Katniss and Peeta must once again fight for their lives.

I will admit, new series director Francis Lawrence (Constantine, I Am Legend) does a much better job of bringing the world described by Susanne Collins to life than previous director Gary Ross. Gone is the annoying shaky/floaty cam nonsense and the shots now linger a little longer to allow the audience to soak in all the details. His sense of style is also a better fit, especially during the action scenes which are much more logically shot and edited so that they make sense.

Acting is quite stellar across the board. Of course Jennifer Lawrence is phenomenal as Katniss. She is turning into one of the premiere actors of her generation and she makes this character insanely likable even though she isn’t written that way. Josh Hutcherson is also great as Peeta, giving his character a slow burn romance angle that you can always see bubbling beneath the surface. As always Liam Hemsworth gets the short end of the stick yet again as Gale. His character is barely in the film, but he definitely makes his presence known. The same goes for Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks and especially Lenny Kravitz as Cinna. His big scene at the halfway point broke my heart as much as it did when I read it over a year ago.

The newcomers to the thespian fold are all extremely well cast. I especially liked Jenna Malone as the fiery Johanna and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Havensbee. Sam Clafin’s Finnick Odair didn’t quite work for me since I never bought into his shtick. It was nice to see some familiar faces in the tributes, such as Daniel Bernhardt (The Matrix Reloaded, Mortal Kombat: Conquest) and Alan Ritchson (Blue Mountain State).

The story is also paced more evenly thanks to screenwriters Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt. It never gets too boring during the dramatic moments and never goes over the top during the action beats. The problem isn’t with anything they did. They actually managed to stay extremely close to the book which will make the eyes of the fans roll back as they blow their collective loads. The problem is with the source material.

Like I said earlier, this flick (and the book before it) is a simple retread of the original and nothing more. Another movie, another Hunger Games and regardless of who is involved in it this time and the circumstances surrounding it the fact remains that it’s yet another Hunger Games. Been there, done that. Nothing new could have been thought up by Collins for her follow-up? I would have preferred to see the beginnings of the rebellion from the point of view of Katniss living her life of pseudo-luxury in District 12 while dealing with the repercussions of her big lie than another Hunger Games. But no, the story goes the easy route and repeats itself.

And to make matters worse the film is set up in a similar style to The Matrix Reloaded in that it’s set up as the middle film in a trilogy in the same way. Even the final shot is exactly the same. And the film just ends. We get a big revelation and BAM! End credits. Lame. I want some fucking closure, not another cliffhanger! It’s a practice that Hollywood has been employing for a number of years now to set up franchises, but we all know there is yet another book to be adapted so the need for a cliffhanger is completely unnecessary.

In the end I was as let down by this movie as I was the book. I’m not comparing, I’m just stating a fact. I’m not saying the movie is a disaster or anything. I’m just saying that it could have been much more than a rehash of itself, and that is more disappointing to me than any other aspect of the film. Not that any of those other aspects are actually complaint worthy. In fact this is a better made movie than the first by leaps and bounds. The story is just missing something...

Creativity.

3 out of 5

Lexx 4.0: Giga Shadow

So here we are at the final film in the Lexx series before it was picked up for a full series. Giga Shadow is just as strange as its predecessors (!) and yet introduces some new ideas that would eventually carry over into the show.

With Kai’s (Michael McManus) protoblood running out and Zev’s (Eva Habermann) libido going into overdrive, the crew of the Lexx make the decision to return to The Cluster in order to get the supplies they need to survive. What they find is the Giga Shadow, a gigantic insect with the essence of His Divine Shadow, ready to devour the universe.

Okay, so this supposedly epic finale just so happens to be the weirdest film of the bunch. It’s also slightly disappointing with how silly it ends up getting with the introduction of Squish, Kai’s pet cluster lizard that is obviously a hand puppet and the goofy way the Giga Shadow is taken out by it at the end. This one also ditches the crew of the Lexx a few times to focus on the turncoat cleric Yottskry, played by special guest Malcolm McDowell, and his quest to stop the Giga Shadow from being born and his accidental participation in its rebirth. Whenever the film moves over to Yottskry it screeches to halt and becomes so damned boring that I wanted to turn it off and make myself a sandwich. There are a lot of awkward tonal shifts as well with the plot going from a dark horror thriller to a full out slapstick comedy at the drop of a hat.

The acting this time around is a mixed bag. The major cast members all do their best to sell the craziness going on around them, but unfortunately a lot of the time they fail miserably. Habermann is especially awful here. She looks like she is through with this series and would rather be anywhere else, which turned out to be true since she left the show two episodes into the second season. Michael McManus’s Kai is made out to be the comic relief this time due to his relationship with Squish. It’s sad since he’s the most interesting character of the bunch and has been reduced to kissing a worm puppet as if he were its mother. Brian Downey is good as usual regardless of the strange places his character is taken over the course of this flick.

I did and still do find it immensely amusing to watch Malcolm McDowell in this film. He alternately looks dead serious and completely confused for the entire runtime. I’ve seen in interviews that he said he was baffled by the script and thought it was the strangest thing he’d ever read up to that point. It shows in his performance, which I think is very unintentionally funny in a good way. At least it looks like he’s trying to make sense of what’s going on and sell his character, but making that happen is just out of arm’s reach.

The biggest mistake made by the filmmakers is the inclusion of the characters of Smoor and Feppo, played by Andy Jones and Michael Habeck. They are so annoying and were obviously added into the mix to pad the runtime and give Stan something to do other than look constipated on the bridge of the Lexx. The whole molestation sub-plot is lame and unnecessary; serving as yet another overtly sexual idea the writers thought would be interesting but ends up being nothing more than an unnecessary distraction.

Director Robert Sigl attempts to keep the flick moving at a brisk pace, but more often than not it collapses under its own weight. Writers Jeffrey Hirschfield, Paul Donovan and Lex Gigeroff pile too many sub-plots into their script to the point that things become muddled and mildly confusing. They rush to the epic conclusion with little regard for the audience’s ability to keep up. While I like the visual panache on display at times and the quirky sense of humor, this one just goes for broke and tries to be too many things at once.

While I don’t find this final film in the series to be nearly as enjoyable as the first two (I Worship His Shadow, Super Nova), it’s definitely head and shoulders above the nearly unwatchable third film (Eating Pattern). It’s the middle ground one that serves to basically set up the ideas behind the full season of episodes that followed and attempt to wrap up the His Divine Shadow plot from the first film.

Giga Shadow is watchable, but it’s a mixed bag that doesn’t always work. But hey, it’s still Lexx.

2.5 out of 5

Lexx 3.0: Eating Pattern

When Super Nova ended Giggerota the Wicked had died, Kai’s homeworld of Brunnis was destroyed by a supernova and he was no closer to finding a way to re-animate himself.

In the third film of the Lexx saga, Eating Pattern, Lexx informs the crew that he is hungry and needs to eat in order to continue on their journey. Running out of food themselves, the crew lands on a nearby garbage planet so everyone can get when they need. Instead they find the indigenous inhabitants, led by the oddball Bog (Rutger Hauer), who are addicted to a substance called “Pattern” that feeds a parasitic organism they all are host to. The crew of the Lexx discovers that the drug is made from human body parts and that they are next in line as donors.

After two interesting and fun films in this miniseries I have to say that Eating Pattern is one of the most boring and directionless movies I’ve ever seen. There is no point to any of the events at all, it’s confusing and straight up dumb. Plot points are repeated ad nauseum and the story is so drawn out that it’s basically a joke. Whenever I attempt to watch this flick it takes me multiple tries to get through it because it’s so slow and dull that I keep falling asleep. The last time I played it it took me three days to do so. That’s pretty sad.

Have you ever seen an episode of a television show that is uncharacteristically simple and streamlined compared to all the others? The episode of Star Trek: Enterprise called “Shuttlepod One” comes to mind. I read that the budget for the first season was being burned up too quickly, so the writers came up with an episode that wouldn’t require much money to produce. It took place mainly in a small shuttlepod set with two actors and that’s all. That’s what Eating Pattern reminds me of. The filmmakers were attempting to save money for the big finale in the next film and had to compromise. This shit sandwich is the end result.

The worst part is that there is absolutely no further development of the characters. The last two features excelled in that aspect, but here it is stopped dead in its tracks. Basically all the main players are reduced to idiots in order to allow the stupid developments of the plot to play out. Stanley is inhabited by a parasite early on and goes “full retard”, Kai runs out of protoblood and dies in the opening so he is missing for the majority of the run time and Zev is turned into a damsel in distress. Only when Kai is reanimated near the 2/3 mark do things slightly pick up, but not by much.

The main issue that plagues this film is that the focus switches from the main characters to Rutger Hauer’s Bog once he’s introduced. I normally wouldn’t have a problem with that, but because Bog is such an idiotic, bumbling and useless character he drags everything down to the deepest depths of ineptitude. He shares a lot of screentime with Doreen Jacobi’s Wist, who ends up being the cause of the parasitic invasion. She is bland and unengaging, thus compounding the problems exponentially.

Visually this chapter is ugly and unappealing in the extreme. I know that’s intentional since the setting is a garbage planet, but it’s overwhelmingly cliché. It looks like every other garbage planet featured in numerous other sci-fi flicks (Soldier in particular). When the big finale goes down the special effects take a turn for the worse as well with a supersized Wist attacking the Lexx. It’s reminiscent of a Godzilla movie for a few fleeting seconds, but then things get dumb again.

The acting is pretty bad all around. Even the main players seem to be on autopilot due to the horrid script. Watching Rutger Hauer with an odd ponytail and wearing lipstick making a complete fool of himself is amusing at first, but he eventually begins to grate on the nerves and becomes annoying beyond belief.

I really can’t say anything overly positive about Eating Pattern. There are glimpses of what made the previous two films unique and entertaining, but on the whole this is nothing more but a filler episode stretched to bursting point. It’s nearly unwatchable.

0.5 out of 5

Lexx 2.0: Super Nova

At the end of I Worship His Shadow the crew of the Lexx, Stanley (Brian Downey), Zev (Eva Habermann), Kai (Michael McManus) and 790 (Jeffrey Hirschfield), had defeated His Divine Shadow and escaped into The Dark Zone to look for a new home.

In the second of the four made-for-cable Lexx features, titled Super Nova, Kai informs the others that he is running out of protoblood, the substance that keeps him reanimated, and he will die (again) without it. The crew seeks out Kai’s home world, Brunnis, hoping to find a way to bring him back to life permanently. They find the planet abandoned and on the brink of being destroyed by a nearby sun that threatens to go supernova if not kept in check by technology left behind by the Brunnen-G. The only remaining entity is the hologram Poet Man (Tim Curry) and he has sinister plans for his unexpected visitors.

This follow-up is not as psychotically paced as its predecessor, nor is it chock full of non-stop exposition. This one settles back and takes its time to further develop the central characters, especially Kai. We learn more about his people, the Brunnen-G, who we only saw briefly in the opening scene of I Worship His Shadow. We find out they were a race of warrior poets who loved to fight as much as sing and dance. They're like Klingons, but with beehive hairdos instead of forehead ridges. His Divine Shadow wiped them out to prevent the prophecy about a lone Brunnen-G ending his reign which came to pass in the last film.

We also get to spend more time with my favorite character from these films – Giggerota the Wicked, played with so much devilish glee by Ellen Dubin. She strikes a deal with His Divine Predecessors to steal the Lexx for them, and in return they will lead her to, and I quote, “The Planet of the Milk-Fed Boys”. Due to her insatiable hunger she takes a bite of everything she sees, going so far as to attempt to eat 790 (“Pail head will tell Giggerota, or Giggerota will eat CANNED food!”), one of the Moth shuttles (“Shut up, flying meat!”) and one of His Divine Predecessors, which are disembodied brains (“Ugh! Too salty!”). Her character cracks me up and is a hell of a lot of fun due to some great writing and Dubin’s awesome performance. It saddened me that this was the last time we would see Giggerota, at least in this incarnation anyway.

The regular cast are great as always for the most part, Downey and McManus being the best of the bunch. Everyone has a wonderful chemistry together, but I have to say that Eva Habermann stands out as looking a little lost for the entire film. I have a sneaking suspicion that she was hired for her looks more than her acting abilities because she doesn’t seem to be able to say her lines without an odd grin on her face, almost like she’s embarrassed to be reciting them aloud. I really like the character, but as I watched these films again I kind of wished they cast someone else in the part. Once again 790 steals the show when he insults Stanley or recites a dirty limerick to Zev (“Oh, universe of heartbreak!”).

Guest star Tim Curry looks like he’s having a blast playing the enigma-like Poet Man. At first he acts like a Brunnis tour guide, but as the story moves forward his intentions become clear. He’s is pissed he was left behind due to him being passed out drunk during the evacuation. He died hundreds of years ago leaving behind a holographic representation of himself just in case anyone ever came back. His hologram went a little batty over the years and now he wants to repopulate the planet with his own seed; at one point he tries to inseminate poor Stanley. He also tricks the others into taking part in the “Burst of Light”, which requires them to be sawed in half vertically and their memories stored on disc in a library. His character is funny and kind of creepy at the same time, his agenda not making a whole lot of sense since he’s a hologram. I will admit it was amusing seeing the look on Stan’s face when he realizes Poet Man wants to jam a sperm filed hypodermic needle into his taint. Curry is one of those actors who can make even the most ridiculous line sound like Shakespeare, and he shows off that talent for pretty much the entire runtime (“Mystery?! Ha! Life is the sweetest misery!”).

The design of Brunnis is interesting as they were a technologically advanced race that used insects as flying vessels. Sure some of the interiors are simple and cheap looking, but the exteriors where the CGI runs rampant look quite cool. On the flip side, the more we see of Lexx’s inner working the more perverted they get. Case in point: the penis shaped shower nozzle that spews all over a naked Zev. Some of these designs amuse me and others baffle me. This one made me chuckle like a little kid watching his first porno.

Unfortunately the pacing is once again a big problem. There doesn’t appear to be enough story to fill out the runtime of the film so we are constantly treated to overlong scenes that drag on and on, sometimes with repetitive visuals. Case in point is when Kai is to be sawed in half for the “Burst of Light”. It takes FOREVER for that damned saw to even make it to him, let alone when he’s actually being cut open. That whole sequence feels like its five minutes long when it should have been a minute tops. There are whole scenes like that just to pad the runtime.

On the whole Super Nova is a fun follow up to I Worship His Shadow that advances the characters and gives further insight into the universe they live in. It’s a bizarre place, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find it interesting in the extreme. The writers really came up with some cool ideas and situations regardless if they were pulled off well or not. This one is another winner.

4 out of 5