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Sploich

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Sploich Reviews The Dictator (2012)

Posted by Sploich on Wednesday, 16 May 2012 in Film Review

Sacha Baron Cohen is back, this time as Admiral General Aladeen, ruler and dictator of the African Republic of Wadiya. After being threatened by the rest of the world to stop oppressing his people, Aladeen travels to the United States to speak to the United Nations. But he is forced into a life of American mediocrity when his right-hand man Tamir (Ben Kingsley) attempts to murder and replace him. Aladeen now has to rise back to power and stop his beloved country from becoming a democracy.

I think Cohen is a very talented comedian. He does a great job in every movie I've ever seen him in, no matter how bad the movie itself is. But he's one of those people who is only able to deliver other people's lines well. His own material, for the most part from what I've seen, just doesn't work and is not funny. It especially doesn't work in a standard comedy format like this. The reason Borat worked was because it was a mockumentary. The jokes work most of the time because the people are reacting to real situations, and when it is staged they kept to the same film style and at least faked it well. Here it's just lazy, unfunny improv wrapped around a very thin plot.

This movie wants so desperately to offend, but because of how desperate it is being, and because we've already seen this done a million times (by Cohen himself even), it just doesn't work. It backfires and feels as desperate as it is, like they weren't trying as hard to make funny jokes but just say offensive things. There are several moments where lines come out of nowhere, without anybody's lips moving. It's incredibly obvious when they just dubbed in a quick joke, none of which ever work. There's a reel of lines and scenes they didn't go with that play during the credits and none of them are any funnier than the material they actually used, leading me to believe they just didn't come up with very good material. And it's kind of hard to come up with material when its on the spot like that, which is one of the reasons I'm slowly coming to really hate improv artists.

I can't think of anything about this movie that works, really. I think Anna Faris, who played Zoey, a woman Aladeen befriends in New York, is just as good as she ever is. That isn't to say she got any good jokes though. I like Faris, but she has nothing here. Nobody does. Chris Parnell shows up in this as a news anchor and I like him too but his scenes in this movie are just worthless. In fact, there are a number of scenes in the movie that have absolutely no reason to exist and jokes that just go nowhere. I do recall, early on, chuckling at a couple of things. I can't for the life of me remember what they were now, but I do remember it happened. After that though, I just couldn't wait to get out of the theater. The only reason I don't hate it is because it doesn't deserve my hate.

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Sploich Reviews Underworld: Awakening (2012)

Posted by Sploich on Wednesday, 16 May 2012 in Film Review

A lot has happened between Underworld: Evolution and Underworld: Awakening. The humans have discovered the vampires, the lycans and their war and have decided to put a stop to it. Twelve years after the purging, Selene (Kate Beckinsale) awakens in a laboratory and set out to find Michael. But on her journey she encounters a little girl (India Eisley) who may be the key to finding what she's looking for.

This is a huge leap forward for this series and admittedly a tiny step backwards. First of all, the production quality far exceeds that of the previous three with much nicer cinematography (possibly necessary for the 3D, which I have not seen) and a lot more graphic violence than ever before. We're back to the crazy, over-the-top gun blazing and unabashed blood-gushing that this series does best, but the story is also a lot more engaging than it has been. The stakes are much higher now (no pun intended, vampires and all), not only because the humans have actually won the war against non-humans but because Selene is no looking for what's left of what she could call a family. There's also a group of lycans working on a serum that would be able to turn them into super-werewolves, able to absorb silver and be virtually impenetrable.

I had a lot of fun watching the first three movies, but this one really blew me away. It is action from start to finish and it only stops to let you breathe for a moment and then dunks you back into the excitement. Because so many things change so drastically between films, it takes a moment just to take it all in. But the film never gives the characters that moment like most other films would. It's nice to have that moment in those other movies but it would probably feel out of place and unrealistic here. These characters are running for their lives and they really never stop running. There are twists and turns all throughout this movie with characters dying when you least expect it and several unexpected surprises. I also thought it had some really great sound work, with plenty of metal crashing into other metal and walls, lots of roaring from the lycans and all sorts of other sounds that made it even more epic.

The only real downfall this movie has, and the only reason I don't give it the 10/10 that I wish I could, is the dialogue. I can honestly see this dialogue completely killing the film for anybody who doesn't already love these films. Almost every single line is exposition, a lot of which we don't even need, and they talk a lot. Sometimes it can be really campy and almost sort of work in a funny way, but other times it's just annoying and repetitive. I really wish they'd focused a little bit more on this because the rest of the film is so entertaining that it sucks that there aren't a lot of memorable quotes or anything. At the very least the movie should follow the "show-don't-tell" method that the other films sort of followed.

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Sploich Reviews Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

Posted by Sploich on Tuesday, 15 May 2012 in Film Review

Centuries before the events of the first two Underworld films, lycan (werewolf) Lucian (Michael Sheen) was in love with Sonja (Rhona Mitra), the daughter of the ruler of the vampires, Viktor (Bill Nighy). Their unity brought with it the rise of the enslaved lycans, leading to the war that we've all become well acquainted with in the present story.

Going back and telling this story is a little confusing to me. From a marketing standpoint, I find it odd that they would make an Underworld film without Kate Beckinsale. From a storytelling perspective, I don't see the point in it existing at all. We already saw this story in flashbacks and it was impactful at the time. Drawing it out and telling every little detail gets kind of boring as it goes on. It takes a lot of emotion out of a story like this when we already know exactly how it ends. It's also a pretty generic story they went with, hitting beat-for-beat everything you're expecting.

That being said, the emotion does work when you think of the film as its own thing. It's a tragic love story in somewhat of the vain of Romeo and Juliet, only it's with vampires and werewolves and that makes it so much more awesome. The chemistry between Lucian and Sonja works, but the chemistry between the two of them and Viktor is even better. I love seeing Nighy get a bigger role in one of these films because he seems to love making them. Viktor is way over the top in the best way possible, yelling and screaming and being a generally fierce antagonist. If you loved him in the first movie like I did then you'll really love seeing him throughout this whole film.

I wish I could say the action was as good as in the first two films. While it is, from a gore perspective, it's all shot way too close and it's hard to tell what's going on half the time. There's even a fight near the end of the film that takes place during a lightning storm and the flashing lights mixed with the close up shots make it pretty much impossible to see anything. They also use some effects more than once and that sort of cheapens them a bit. It's all still on a much lower budget than it wants to be but it does an okay job making up for it. They just could have done a better job staging everything and getting the camera in the right place.

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Sploich Reviews The Devil Inside (2012)

Posted by Sploich on Tuesday, 15 May 2012 in Film Review

Twenty years after her mother murdered several members of the cloth during her own exorcism, Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) decides to bring a film crew (namely one camera man, Michael (Ionut Grama)) to Italy and see if she can perform another exorcism on her mother. She inducts the help of Fathers Rawlings (Simon Quarterman) and Keane (Evan Helmuth) who work outside the Catholic church's endorsement.

I don't really understand this film. It sells itself as being legitimate, even going as far as to give a website right before the credits for "more information." But then it goes on to show all the people who worked on the film, including the actors. I understand trying to engage the audience through the illusion of realism but even if I do take it as a real thing, I still don't understand the point of it. The filmmakers seem to have a very negative view of the Catholic church, but considering the subject matter I don't really understand their motivation. If this were actual footage then it would make sense but I know it's a screenplay they're working from so there motives don't really work.

Two or three exorcisms are performed, but they are relatively brief and really show off how low the budget was for the film. I wouldn't say the rest of the film is boring exactly, but it's definitely forgettable. I like the twist the film takes after they perform the exorcism on Isabella's mother Maria (Suzan Crowley), but then the movie stops early and doesn't give us much reason to care about what happened. If they had spent less time preparing us for the mediocre exorcism of the mother and focused more on what happens after, this could have been a very interesting and possibly even memorable film. As is though, it's just a standard, dull horror flick that's only worth checking out if you literally have nothing better to do.

Final Verdict:

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Sploich Reviews Zombieland (2009)

Posted by Sploich on Monday, 14 May 2012 in Film Review

It's a zombie apocalypse and while some are, well, dead, the rest are surviving the only way they know how: Taking in the pure joy of slaughtering the walking dead. Known only by their native cities, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) are on a journey across California on their way to anywhere that isn't full of zombies.

I feel like I've made this point plenty of times before but I am not a fan of zombies. I feel like the exist solely for the purpose of making gory horror films. Apparently the makers of Zombieland feel that way too and have fully embraced the concept. And I guess in a way that works but it's still not enough to get me to care. There are some elements to the film that I really like but that feel like they would have worked better in something that took itself a little more seriously. Columbus has a set of rules for survival and one of the main ones is to "enjoy the little things." That's a good rule to have that situation, but when they're having just as much fun fighting off zombies as they are doing anything else, the rule sort of becomes pointless.

Most of the fun of the movie comes from the killing of zombies, which again I just don't care for myself. To me, zombies are no better than storm troopers. They're just mindless, soulless, nameless targets and I have no investment in their killing. That being said, when you can at least make the kills entertaining in a way other than just slaughtering them, it can work. And in the third act of this movie it does work. It takes place in an amusement park and they're killing the zombies while riding the rides. That works. I just wish it hadn't taken until the end to have it work. For the rest of the movie it's just not all that funny or exciting to me.

And on that note, there is a major difference, especially in a film like this, between killing off zombies and murdering living people. If somebody gets eaten by a zombie that's fine, but when a living person is killed in some way by another living person, and it's played up for laughs, I just find that to be mean-spirited. This is done only a couple times in the film and it feels really awkward, like we're supposed to be laughing at a human being being scraped across the pavement. The second time it happens it could have worked much better if there was some sort of emotion put into the scene, but it's just like "Oh, you killed a living person. That kinda sucks." It's not funny just because it happened, you have to back it up and keep the scene going too.

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Sploich Reviews Scary Movie (2000)

Posted by Sploich on Sunday, 13 May 2012 in Film Review

Scary Movie has to be the single greatest idea in the history of cinema. Let's take a movie that was a self-aware comedy and make a self-aware comedy referencing it! Genius! Yeah, I don't know what brought this film to fruition but it sort of hurts my "there are no bad ideas" philosophy.

The movie is a parody of Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Matrix for some reason and a bunch of other movies from the year or two before it came out. Anna Faris plays Cindy Campbell, a teenager whose friends start getting killed off by the Ghost Face killer from Scream. It's basically the exact plot of Scream, beat for beat, with a few jokes thrown in here and there.

I do find it kind of funny that Faris' performance in this is actually more entertaining than Neve Campbell's (gah, I just got the reference in Faris' character's name) in the Scream series. She's the highlight of the film because her comedy is the most subtle, with her constant screaming at every little plot twist and how she runs like a complete idiot. She's the only strong comedian among a bunch of generally annoying people acting out a very lazy and mostly unfunny screenplay. It's bad enough that the movie feels like they took the script from Scream and just altered it a little bit, but they even go as far as to flat-out say that it's the same dialogue as in Scream at one point. It's a terrifying look into the future of the franchise, with two of the writers going off to do Date Movie and the ungodly Meet the Spartans (they even sold Date Movie as being "from two of the writers of Scary Movie").

Most of the humor is forced and extremely juvenile. One character's entire gag is that he just gets high throughout the whole movie and another's is that he may or may not be gay. Some of the jokes work well at first but by the fifth time they shove them in your face it just gets old. If you thought it was odd that I said Faris' part as being "the most subtle" of the film when I described it earlier, trust me, I was being serious. There's nobody in the movie that stands out to me as just being completely and utterly annoying like, say, Matthew Lillard was in Scream, but there's just this overall feeling that the movie was scrictly made for the fun of it. And I'm okay with that but I'm a film critic and I have to say that what they came up with is only fun for them.

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Top 5 Movies from 10 Years Ago That Need Reboots

Posted by Sploich on Sunday, 13 May 2012 in Top # Lists

I've heard a lot of people complaining about remakes these days, and this year especially with the reboot of Spider-Man. Personally, The Amazing Spider-Man is one of my most anticipated movies of this summer. My philosophy is that there's no such thing as a bad idea, only a bad movie. And maybe it will be a bad movie, but that's no reason to bash it for existing. Just don't give it money!

But I digress. With the new Spider-Man movie coming out, and having just watched and reviewed Scream 4, I've started to wonder what other recent movies could actually work with a slight update. So here's a list of the top five movies from around ten years ago that could use remakes, reboots or at least some resurfacing.

5. Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Fun Fact: This was a Joss Whedon project. Maybe that's why I don't like it, but I see the potential. With Disney trying bigger action movies like John Carter (okay, bad example), it'd be interesting to see them do a live-action remake of this film. But this time around maybe the villain's goal could be a little more understandable and less generic and mindless. You could still have some of the same characters in there, but it'd be nice to see what else they could come up with. Just make it a really cool family-friendly action-adventure with big special effects and a little bit more heart behind it.

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Sploich Reviews Scream 4 (2011)

Posted by Sploich on Saturday, 12 May 2012 in Film Review

Years after the Woodsboro murders have finally ceased, Sidney (Neve Campbell) has decided to come home for a book signing. But her return also brings the return of the Ghost Face killer, and it's up to Sidney, Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) and now-Sheriff Dewey (David Arquette) to protect Sidney's family.

So we're back with a fourth installment to the Scream "trilogy," and it doesn't seem to know what to call itself. Sequel? Reboot? Remake? It can't keep its story straight. Whatever the case, we're back to constant name-dropping and references to other horror franchises. I get that it's the point of the movies, but just referencing movies doesn't make you witty or insightful. It makes you look like a pretentious film snob. Luckily the movie makes up for it by adapting to the new decade rather well, with plenty more blood, a higher body count and a story that's actually really disturbing.

Of course I hate spoilers, so it's going to be hard for me to explain exactly why, but the ending of this film is far darker than the first three films. It's the first in the series where the psychotic killer actually seems legitimately psychotic and not like an actor overdoing it. But that also feeds into the biggest problem of the film where it doesn't know if it wants to be overly campy or realistic.There's a scene where a character gets a kill that would immediately kill a real person, but they drag it out for laughs. The joke actually works really well, but then they follow it up shortly after with somebody being stabbed and somebody explaining how "it's not fast like in the movies." Well, you clearly pointed out that this is a movie. So which is it? Make up your mind!

Really, if it wasn't for the ending this movie would feel almost identical to the originals. The kills are just a bunch of stabs like in the first two and I'm never given a reason to care about most of the deaths. But the ending pulls out some big guns and brings out a lot of bizarre psychological drama that was missing in the first films due to bad acting and shoddy writing. Not that this is lacking in both of those qualities, but it works better than it used to. I'd suggest Scream 4 to anybody who saw the original films. If you didn't like the originals, then this is a movie that you might enjoy or you might not, but either way it's interesting to see it. If you did like the originals then of course you're going to like this one because it's the same exact thing, just newer.

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Sploich Reviews Scream 3 (2000)

Posted by Sploich on Saturday, 12 May 2012 in Film Review

While working on Stab 3, the Ghost Face killer rises again, seeking out Sidney (Neve Campbell) once again. With the help of Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) and Officer Dewey (David Arquette), she has to stop the murders again and solve the true mystery of her mother's death.

This is still the same basic crap from the first two, but there is a bit of a twist to it. Being the third in the series, and possibly the last when it was made, they seemed to have a better sense of humor about themselves this time around. Instead of constantly reminding you of better movies you could be watching, it actually makes fun of its own franchise. It's more apparent than ever that We Anderson isn't out to make a good movie as much as he is out to make a fun movie. This time we get a lot more than just stabbing. There are several kills that at the very least mix things up a bit, so by that account alone it's better than the first two.

But while it is funnier than the previous films and a little bit more interesting with its kills, it's also got a lot of drawn-out and boring moments to it. Where the first movie has some pretty classic moments in it and the second has at least some artistic stuff that I did appreciate, this is more of a film that I enjoy while watching it but completely forget about after having done so. Even right now I'm just grasping at memories of the film I just watched, trying to string together a coherent opinion on it.

The story is a lot more involved and a bit deeper than the previous films, but the way things end up in the end is pointless and stupid. It sort of feels like they came up with the rules for a horror film (which they again feel the need to spell out for the audience) and just lazily put together a story to meet the demands. It's not that it's not interesting to follow but it certainly isn't shocking or even memorable. I ultimately doesn't mean anything and doesn't really change much of anything about the series, other than a motive or two.

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Sploich Reviews Scream 2 (1997)

Posted by Sploich on Saturday, 12 May 2012 in Film Review

I really don't have a lot to say about this one so I'm going to be very brief. I guess I need to explain the plot, of which there is none. After the release of a movie based on the events that took place in the first Scream, Sidney (Neve Campbell) is having to deal with a copycat murderer on her college campus. She also has to deal with Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) getting in her way and the newly released from death row Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber).

This movie is beyond lazy. It straight up tells you that it's going to be a worse movie than the first, and as far as quality goes that's definitely true. This movie pulls the number one thing you cannot pull in a horror film which is to be utterly boring and slow-paced. There are very few kills and they are spaced out quite a bit. The people who get killed have even less emotion behind them than in the first movie so I never really care when any of them get it. Some people are only on screen long enough to explain why they exist in the movie before being killed and not fulfilling that existence.

And again, my biggest problem with the first was that these movies do not know whether they want to be legitimate horror films or if they want to just make fun of horror films. At least in this one you have a lot less talk about movies, especially in the third act. There is a little bit more subtlety in some of the referencing and there's actually one scene that I genuinely liked, but mostly it's just a boring guy stabbing a couple people just like the first.

That's really the biggest problem. I feel like the main point of the Scream movies is actually to take those clichés and tropes that it's mentioning and make a better movie. It's smug and it's pretentious, and what's worse is that it fails on every level. It feeds into its own clichés and becomes what it is making fun of. If that's the purpose then it's not something I want to see and if it's not the purpose then they are failing. It's basically a series of movies that tell you to go watch better movies.

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