Silent Night

I don’t know if I’m becoming jaded toward slasher movies in general or if it’s just that the current crop of them have been absolute trash. Whatever the case may be, Silent Night, the loose remake of the cult classic Silent Night, Deadly Night, is a pretty shitty flick. I’ve never seen the original, but I know of it and the storyline. Other than one death scene being identical to the infamous antler impaling and the killer wearing a Santa suit this is an “in name only” remake/reboot.

A small town is being stalked by a psychopath in a Santa mask and suit who is going door to door picking off those he has deemed “naughty” in various grisly ways. The local sheriff (Malcolm McDowell) and his deputy (Jaime King) must figure out who the killer is before it’s too late.

First off, I cannot stand the work of director Steven C. Miller. A few years back when he was attending Full Sail University he made an ultra low budget zombie film called Automaton Transfusion that was picked up by Dimension Films. I rented it out of curiosity and was absolutely appalled that someone thought that the eyeball raping I had just received was good enough to be distributed at all. It was one of the worst excuses for a movie I had ever seen at that point. But I guess it made a lot of cash and Miller went on to make more low budget films which I refused to watch on general principal. I guess he eventually gathered enough clout to get decent genre stars like Malcolm McDowell, Jaime King, Donal Logue and Lisa Marie to star in this shitstorm of a movie.

Miller has no concept on how to build a narrative, suspense or even something remotely watchable. Basically the audience gets to spend 3 minutes with Jaime King’s deputy in the opening to develop her character and that’s all. From that point on the majority of the dialogue is made up of pithy one-liners, non-stop vulgarities and screaming. No character is given any development in the slightest therefore there is no one to care about except who the script has shoehorned into the sympathetic part. I know that these types of movies are all about the killing, but the ones I tend to enjoy the most are the ones where we have a likable character to root for during all the craziness like in the original Halloween, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street or even Jaime King’s character in the remake of My Bloody Valentine. But when everyone comes off as an asshole, an idiot or a coward I just couldn’t give two shits if you lived or died.

While the kills are pretty nasty and mildly creative they just sort of happen randomly and have no real motivation behind them. We learn at one point that the killer has marked those he intends to kill as “naughty” by sending them a present, but the reasons as to why he has marked them are never given so it looks like he picked names out of the phonebook. How this person knows that these people are naughty is never explained either since the killer (when revealed) turns out to be no one of consequence who would be in any sort of position to witness all the sordid things these people have done to deserve being slaughtered. I mean, we know that one dude was cheating on his wife, but how did the killer know? We know that little girl is a foul-mouthed little shit, but how did the killer know? We know that the mayor’s daughter is a slut, but how did he know? The killer doesn’t even seem to be a townie, so none of the set-up makes any sense. The only death that does make any sense is King’s father for reasons I won’t divulge. At least in the original there was a story to go along with the gore. There’s none of that here. It’s just death, unnecessary dialogue scene, death, unnecessary dialogue scene, death, etc. Writer Jayson Rothwell is just as much to blame here as Miller, but I put 75% of it on Miller since he’s the one interpreting the crap screenplay into something worse than I’m sure it ever was on the page.

All the acting here is pretty bottom of the barrel. Most of these actors can and have been amazing in other projects, but Miller just seems to want to get to the gore bits instead of even attempting to have his troupe look like they give a shit about their performances. Malcolm McDowell chews the scenery like a madman as the sheriff, but he cannot pull off an American accent at all and his scenes end up being corny as all hell due to it and his ultra hammy deliveries. Jaime King looks like she’s trying her best, but is losing the battle due to the incompetence of the director and script. Even Donal Logue can’t be convincing as a local drunk Santa with anger issues. He should be able to pull that one off in his sleep.

The only bright spot is the cinematography by Joseph White. He makes this bargain basement production look like a major Hollywood picture in a lot of ways, be it a creative lighting set-up or an unexpected angle that makes a mundane set look interesting. Outside of that I can’t say anything more positive about this mess except that he made a great looking movie destined for the direct-to-video heap. The “Garbage Day” reference put a slight grin on my face as well.

In this day and age I like to think that hungry young directors would be more interested in producing films that show their creativity and passion for their craft. Miller seems intent on being the next Albert Pyun, who keeps churning out garbage film after garbage film. If I were the person who presented him with his diploma from Full Sail University I’d demand that he give it back so I could burn it. This guy doesn’t deserve to call himself a director, a filmmaker or an artist. He’s a hack plain and simple and his “films” amount to nothing more than increments of time the audience will never be able to get back.

0.5 out of 5

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I’m just going to say this at the beginning of the review to get it out of the way early…  I read “The Fellowship of the Ring” and vowed to never read another novel by Tolkien again. Boring, drawn out and bogged down with pointless characters and descriptions, I found the book a chore that I had to slog through. Everyone seems to have some sort of insane love for his Middle Earth books, but I cannot fathom why. Not to say that there isn’t a great story there, there most definitely is. Tolkien’s writing style is what completely turned me off, so when I heard a trilogy of movies based on his novels was being released I was excited to finally be able to see what all the fuss was about without having to read one of those tedious books again.

Peter Jackson’s adaptations were absolutely fantastic for the most part (I’m not a fan of The Two Towers). And now, ten years later, he’s returned with the film version of Tolkien’s prequel story, The Hobbit. The problem is that he’s taken a book that one could read cover to cover in an afternoon and broken it up into three movies (the plan was originally to be two movies, but in the summer of 2012 New Line Cinema demanded out of greed that Jackson produce a third as well). The end result is that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is an unnecessarily long and slow mess of gargantuan proportions.

60 years before Frodo set off on his adventure to destroy The One Ring, his kinsman Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is volunteered to help thirteen dwarves reclaim their home from the dragon Smaug by the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellan). Along his journey he meets the creature Gollum (Andy Serkis) and comes upon The One Ring.

Like all Peter Jackson films since The Lords of the Rings trilogy, everything looks absolutely fantastic from the set design to the special effects to the cinematography. He manages to make even the most bland landscape look stunning and the most humble set look like a million bucks. His talents in the technical departments have never been in question, and I’d like to think that they will stay that way in the future. His problem is that he doesn’t know when to reel in his tendencies to revel in pointless details and long-winded dialogue scenes, which has been an issue since his overblown King Kong remake. It’s this issue that pretty much killed my interest in this film as I watched it.

The first hour of this is absolute torture. While we do get some decent character development of Bilbo and Gandalf, the dwarves are pretty much all glossed over except for Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) regardless of the excessive amount of time we spend with them in The Shire. The dinner scene where all the dwarves invade Bilbo’s home feels like it was shot in real time and lasts for what seems like an eternity due to its lame attempts at humor and the aforementioned multiple underdeveloped characters. The problem is that all the dwarves are introduced at the same time and aren’t given any chance to separate themselves from one another, therefore they all look and act pretty much the same and makes it difficult to tell them apart even after their names have been given. Truthfully I couldn’t tell you which one was which if asked. The characters have what are supposed to be meaningful dialogue exchanges, but it all feels forced in order to pad the run time. At least in The Fellowship of the Ring the story moved away from that setting pretty quickly, like within the first half hour. Here we spend nearly an hour there and nothing of note really happens.

Once the story moves on from The Shire we are introduced to the world outside, and while this is all supposed to be new and wondrous it seems overly familiar and tiring because we’ve seen it all before in the previous films. The scene with the trolls is a welcome break in the tedium, but it too goes on for far too long and outstays its welcome. This is what happens for the entire run time. Walking, walking, walking, some random action scene happens that turns out to not really be an action scene that drags on and on and on, rinse and repeat. For the first half I have to admit that I was fighting the urge to take a nap because of this. I was not being entertained, but bored to death due to the episodic feel of the whole production. Where the story of The Fellowship of the Ring was constantly moving forward (due to the movie being based on one complete book instead of a third of one), here it is constantly taking sidesteps instead of just getting to the point.

It’s not until the characters reach the Misty Mountains and Bilbo stumbles upon Gollum in the goblin tunnels does the movie finally begin to live up to its pedigree. The scene between Bilbo and Gollum is nothing short of amazing in both performance and writing. Gollum looks better than ever due to the advances in CGI since we last saw him. Those huge expressive eyes show more emotion than any of the CGI creations in George Lucas’ Star Wars prequel trilogy. The following action scene with the goblins, while very derivative of the Mines of Moria scene in The Fellowship of the Ring, is quite exciting and slightly comedic (“That’ll do it!”). Although I tired very quickly of seeing the characters falling off cliffs and having to be pulled back up (it happens probably four times). But I did gather more information about these characters in the last hour than I did for the first hour and forty-five minutes, which says a lot about the choice to make three movies out of source material that would barely fill out one.

There are pointless characters introduced as well, like Radagast the Brown. His scenes are somewhat silly and unnecessary, and his appearance is just plain goofy. The dude has a bird’s nest in his hair and his face is covered with dried streams of bird poop. He also rides on a sleigh pulled by rabbits. I know this was all part of a children’s book, but c’mon! It was nice seeing Elrond, Galadriel and Saruman once again, played by Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett and Christopher Lee once more, but the entire scene with them in Rivendell was not needed and yet again dragged out the story needlessly.

The inconsistency in tone is also an issue. One moment we'll have characters taking pratfalls and the next a villain is graphically being disemboweled. The fact that the source material was designed as a children's story made me think that the film would take the same direction and be a lighthearted adventure yarn. But Jackson has the tone swapping back and forth from childish to dark and disturbing way too frequently. He should have picked one style and stuck to it, but instead he unsuccessfully tries to give the kids stuff to giggle at and adult fans of the previous trilogy what they want. It's very distracting and annoying at times.

And here’s something I’ve finally noticed after seeing how it played out here as well… Gandalf is kind of a dick. We know exactly what he can and can’t do magically speaking after seeing how powerful he is in the original trilogy, yet he seems to hold back on using his gifts for no apparent reason other than to allow his fellow adventurers to fall into effed up situations so that he can swoop in and rescue them at the last second. He does this at least three times here, and even more in the original trilogy. Example: Frodo is dying on the side of Mount Doom after destroying The One Ring, and Gandalf comes to save him with a flock of giant eagles that take him to safety. Why didn’t he just have the eagles take everyone to Mount Doom in the first place?! Asshole!

The acting from the leads is spot on. Martin Freeman does an admirable job as the young Bilbo, McKellan is a joy as always and Armitage does a decent job as Thorin, giving his somewhat unlikable character a nice sympathetic feel as the story moves on. I couldn’t tell you if the actors playing the other dwarves were any good since I couldn’t tell one from the other. Andy Serkis pretty much steals the show once he turns up as Gollum, which is a given since he did the same in the original trilogy.

Howard Shore’s score once again was tops! I’m not a fan outside of his Tolkien work (Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs being the only exceptions), and he once again delivers a sweeping and epic musical accompaniment to the film. Most of the time the music does a better job of getting the point of certain scenes across that the visuals.

I guess I’m just extremely disappointed by this film. I’m not going to automatically like something just because it’s part of pop culture. Every franchise has its stinkers and I’m afraid to say this falls into that category with me. Peter Jackson has grown quite an ego since he won his Oscar for The Return of the King. His follow up movies, King Kong and The Lovely Bones, were nothing more than examples of him making films based solely on his newfound clout. King Kong was an excessive boring mess while The Lovely Bones had the distinction of being my choice for the worst film of 2009 due to it glorifying the murder of the main character. I know he has a passion for this material, but he’s treading a fine line here by stretching the story out this thin, and as far as I’m concerned he is holding onto that line by his fingertips. I could care less if he’s using info from “The Silmarillion” to fill out the story or not, I wanted to be as entertained as I was with The Fellowship of the Ring and I was not. This should have been a one shot film and that’s all there is to it. Instead we are being given sub-standard product, and being ripped off in the process, due to greed. Not unlike the nine kings, wouldn’t you say?

2 out of 5

The Collection

What is it with the recent sequels to horror movies I like totally sucking ass?!*

The Collector was one of those rare horror movies that completely caught me off guard. Rented on a whim via Netflix I found this low budget flick competently made and surprisingly effective. Written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (who wrote Saw IV-VII, the Feast films and Piranha 3DD), and was the feature directing debut of Dunstan, it showed a great amount of talent from them both. To actually pull off something scary in film nowadays is a minor miracle and this film excelled at it. The cliffhanger ending left me wanting more and now 3 years later the sequel has finally arrived…

I’m guessing that The Collector was a fluke because The Collection is exactly what I thought the original film would end up being-- a generic Saw rip-off.

Picking up not long after the finale of The Collector, we find that Arkin (Josh Stewart) has been left behind in a red trunk at a rave after the title character massacres everyone there, but not before kidnapping a rich tycoon’s daughter, Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick), for his own sick needs. A group of mercenaries ask Arkin to help them find Elena since he is the only person to ever escape his clutches. He leads them to The Collector’s hideout, an abandoned hotel which has been booby-trapped to the extreme. Within they discover just what The Collector has in store for Elena.

In the original film we don’t really get any background info on The Collector at all. He’s sort of like Michael Myers in that he’s a blank slate and I believe that’s why I felt the film was so successful. However, I was totally game for some insight into this character to see what makes him tick and why he is collecting all these people. What we get is pretty lame; some people he collects so he can allow them to freely roam his lair as companions, some he lobotomizes/mutilates and has them guard the lower levels to stop intruders, some he chops into pieces to create human art that looks vaguely insectoid. Why? We are never really told except for an assumption made by a character at the close of the film. His motivations are never explained and he's not as interesting as I had hoped. It’s almost like the writers were trying way too hard to make him a new horror icon by giving him all these different methods of torture, but none of it comes together to make any sort of cohesive sense.

The movie zooms by at such a rapid pace that it’s hard to keep up at times, and the movie is over before you know it (it clocks in at barely 80 minutes). Ideas are introduced and dropped just as quickly, characters that are supposed to be professional military types do ridiculously stupid shit, and it ends on a wholly unsatisfying note. I don’t know if there was a lot edited out of the film (some of the gore scenes felt truncated in the extreme), but there was barely enough going on here to justify a whole movie. The creepy and intense style that Dunstan showed in The Collector is absent here as well. Everything is too well lit to look scary (like in Saw II) and there is no panache. It looks like a standard direct-to-video slasher film.

The acting is pretty bad as well. Josh Stewart was pretty good in the original, making for a sympathetic and flawed hero. Here he looks, literally, like he’s been taking sleeping pills for the entire film. His eyes are always half closed and he mumbles a lot of his lines. I did like Emma Fitzpatrick’s turn as Elena. I hope she becomes a new scream queen alongside Jaime King and Danielle Panabaker. Lee Tergesen (Oz, Wayne’s World) isn’t trying too hard to be convincing as a bodyguard, and the underused Christopher McDonald pops up for an unneeded cameo as Elena’s father. But the worst sin in this department is The Collector himself. In the first film he was portrayed by Juan Fernandez, a Colombian actor. His face was even shown at one point before all the booby-trapping shenanigans went down. Here the part has been recast with stuntman Randall Archer instead, and it’s plainly obvious that it’s not the same guy from the original since he’s white as a sheet. Fernandez was bald, this guy has a full head of hair. Fernandez had a particular body language that made the character creepy, this guy lumbers around like Jason Voorhees. The character is not scary or threatening anymore, and for a movie of this type that’s a major issue.

I will give this film props in the gore department. We see a club full of people get shredded, crushed and sliced into pieces. There are stabbings, shootings, iron maidens, impalements, incinerations, autopsies, disturbing body art sculptures and more. I could have done without all the bones being broken since that’s the one thing I can’t bear to watch, but for the most part this film provides the bloody goods. But that’s it.

A hobo shooting aside, I did not find much to like about The Collection. The script felt unfinished, the directing is uneven, the production looks cheap and hokey and it’s not scary or tense at all. I'm going to have to say that this flick was a complete bust. I hope they don’t further add insult to injury by making a third film. The filmmakers effectively killed this franchise with this misfire.

1 out of 5

*Silent Hill: Revelation

The Raid: Redemption

 

Ever see an action movie that totally took you buy surprise and got you so psyched after seeing it that you were compelled to whoop some ass of your own? Well, that’s exactly how I felt after walking out of my screening of The Raid: Redemption back in April. I didn’t kick the shit out of anyone, but it had been a long time since a martial arts film got me so hyped up like that.

The story begins when Rama (Iko Uwais) and his fellow Indonesian SWAT team members raid an apartment building that is run by drug lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy) and his gang of ruthless thugs. Things go awry and the team is nearly taken out. Rama survives along with a small number of his team, and together they attempt to complete their mission.

First off, I’m going on the record as saying that Iko Uwais is going to be the next big star in martial arts movies. This guy is absolutely fearless when it comes to kicking ass and I don’t think I’ve seen someone perform crazy shenanigans like he does since Tony Jaa in the original Ong-Bak. His fight scenes, especially the one that takes place in the finale, are freakin’ amazing.

That being said, the movie follows the standard action movie plot of a few against many. It doesn’t break any new ground (and is extremely similar to the set-up for Dredd 3D which was made at the same time) and is predictable as hell, but it is made with such enthusiasm that it’s hard not to be swept up in the plight of the characters. Director Gareth Evans knows exactly what needs to be done in order to ratchet up the suspense and tension followed by a serious display of brutal violence, be it martial arts based or gunplay. He also has a keen eye for shots that compliment the action. He also keeps the camera far enough away from the actors/stuntmen so that we can make out each and every move they perform, unlike most of Hollywood’s films where the action is so zoomed in we can’t make heads or tails of what we’re seeing (The Dark Knight Rises).

The film isn’t wall-to-wall action. There is a plot at work here. Rama knows someone inside Tama’s organization, maybe a family member of some sort, that he has sworn to protect and get out alive. I won’t ruin anything here, but it’s pretty predictable. It’s the catalyst for the final battle which is one of the most astoundingly choreographed and violent fight scenes ever committed to film.

The other plot device at work is about a possible insider within the police that is responsible for the deaths of the majority of the team attempting to take the building. This sub-plot is not so successful. It too is predictable, but serves as more of a distraction from the main characters. The resolution at the end I felt was pretty disappointing and typical for the genre.

I have to give some special props to Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park) and Joseph Trapanese’s rock/techno infused score. If the action scenes get you worked up, their music amps it to a whole other level.

I’m not going to go into much more detail about this film, because it’s something you just have to see for yourself to get the full effect of its awesomeness. I for one cannot wait to see Gareth Evans’ future films as well as Iko Uwais’ progression up the action star ladder. These talented dudes are going places, and their work can only get better and better with time.

4.5 out of 5

Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn

After Neill Blomkamp’s motion picture adaptation of Halo was cancelled I feared we would never get to see the adventures of Master Chief on the big screen. Deemed too expensive to make during a period of diminishing box office returns, studios were fearful of the mammoth production regardless of the knowledge that its guaranteed fan base would turn out in droves to see it. Fans were pretty outraged when it was cancelled and rightfully so, especially after seeing how amazing the film Blomkamp made in that project’s wake, District 9, turned out.

So jump ahead a few years and the imminent release of the highly anticipated Halo 4 is upon Xbox 360 owners everywhere. The series’ original creators, Bungie, gave up the development duties on any installments after Halo: Reach, so Microsoft hired 343 Studios to take over. With a new studio at the reigns, many fans feared the worst. So how else could you get back in their good graces and build a massive amount of excitement for their game? You make a movie.

Basically Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn serves as a prequel to the entire series and is not in any way related to the storyline of Halo 4. It follows a group of young adult cadets at the Corbulo Academy of Military Science who are being trained for combat by the United Nations Space Command to stop a civilian insurgency. Cadet Thomas Lasky (Tom Green) is having trouble fitting in due to high expectations brought on by the memory of his military family’s pedigree, and only seems to get along with fellow cadet Chyler Silva (Anna Popplewell). As a romantic relationship begins to grow between them the Academy is attacked by an alien force and Lasky and his squad must fight for their lives to survive. Help arrives in the form of an armored super soldier known only as Master Chief (Daniel Cudmore).

The fact that this was made primarily as a commercial to advertise Halo 4 and was broken up into 5 parts and distributed online (one episode was released each week leading up to the release of the game on the website halowaypoint.com) doesn’t detract from the fact that this is a quality production. Made for only $10m, there is a polish to this project that some of the large budgeted Hollywood films can only dream about possessing. I credit director Stewart Hendler and writers Aaron & Todd Helbing for making something that is not only visually exciting and action-packed, but gives us a look at the beginnings of the Covenant War through the eyes of all-new characters that are interesting and relatable.

Every one of the young actors turns in a nice performance, especially Tom Green and Anna Popplewell. Popplewell, who most will recognize from The Chronicles of Narnia films, gives a very down-to-Earth feel to her character of Chyler that makes her immediately appealing. Tom Green, while starting off a little whiny and annoying, comes into his own after the first 20 minutes and becomes the emotional center that grounds the film. When the shit hits the fan at the 40 minute mark they also prove, along with their co-stars, that they are adept at handling action scenes as well.

The special effects have to be mentioned not because they are fantastic, but because this film rarely relies on CGI unless absolutely necessary. Sure during the invasion scene there are aliens running about and strafing runs by starships, but the script smartly stays focused on the main characters and rarely strays form them. Even when there are insane things going on around them the camera remains with them as they flee for their lives or prepare to mount an offensive. The film becomes intensely immersive due to this approach and I again have to give credit to the filmmakers for making yet another intelligent choice.

And then there’s the one person all Halo fans have been clamoring to see realized on film for a decade-- Master Chief. Daniel Cudmore (Colossus in the X-Men films) has the gargantuan task of playing this video game icon here, and even though we never see his face he gives Master Chief a lot of personality through his body language. Steve Downes provides the voice for the character as he has for every game, and it was awesome to hear him in a live-action Halo production.

While the story takes a while to get to the action scenes I will admit that it’s never boring. The characters are interesting and for a fan it was incredibly cool to finally get a bit of backstory on the beginnings of the war (especially for someone who never read any of the expansion novels). The action, however, is kick ass. We get to see Brutes annihilating waves of Cadets while tearing apart the Academy, a tense Warthog chase through a forest and to cap it all off we are treated to Master Chief taking on a Hunter with only a single grenade as a weapon. If you have been waiting to see a live action Master Chief whooping ass and taking names you are in for a treat.

I can imagine that my main beef is the same one all Halo fans share, and that would be that I wanted to see more of Master Chief. He shows up nearly an hour into the film and while he does a lot of cool stuff (seeing him run across that exterior walkway while dual-wielding put a smile on my face) I still wanted more than what we were given. He’s the focal point of the games and I can understand that leaving him out of the majority of the storyline was an intentional choice by the filmmakers to keep the budget low and give a nice build-up to his arrival later on, but the fact remains that every fan associates Halo with Master Chief. But I shouldn’t complain because I’m just happy that we even got a Halo film at all.

For a 90-minute webseries meant to serve as a glorified commercial, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn ended up being all I ever wanted in a live action Halo film and more. It has everything you could ever want: drama, action and well defined characters played by some talented young actors all wrapped up in a sweet Halo bow.

Now imagine this… if something this good was made for only $10m, what would a feature film made for $100m look like?

4 out of 5