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Dungeons & Dragons
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Dungeons & Dragons (Review)

October 21, 2005By

Dungeons & Dragons


2000
Starring
Jeremy Irons as Profion
Bruce Payne as Damodar
Justin Whalin as Ridley Freeborn
Marlon Wayans as Snails
Zoe McLellan as Marina Pretensa
Thora Birch as Empress Savina

A group of high schoolers sit around a table drinking copious amounts of Mt. Dew, all while pretending to be orcs or sorcerers and rolling handfuls of dice with more sides than golf balls have dimples in this thrilling true to life adaptation of the classic game. No, wait, instead we get a live-action adventure that puts the “Dung” in Dungeons & Dragons. Ignoring the shelves of existing literature set in the D&D universe littering bookstores and comic book shops, and also ignoring the fairly decent cartoon of the late 1980’s, the director instead chose to give us an all-new adventure, which breaks new ground in the amount of source material ignored in order to produce a terrible Hollywood movie of an existing property. Director Courtney Solomon had the rights for the film for ten years, and this is his best effort. The culmination of all his dreams. His shining star in a dark void. Ten years…..wasted! Drunken monkeys banging away on keyboards with bananas produced better scripts in that time. The lone bright spot of the movie is Jeremy Irons seemed to realize what junk he was in, and had a grand ol’ time hamming up, over acting, and becoming the best performance in the film.
His sorcerer gone mad in his lust for power and dragon control is fun to watch, hilarious at times. Fellow villain Bruce Payne plays his Damodar character with a permanent scowl and low voiced threat voice that he seemed to either be loving his role, or he was awakened each morning at 4 am by construction and the scowl lasted all day. Either way, it’s a boon for us, as fun with acting is always preferable to being bored to tears. Grab your +3 Mace and come with me on a grand adventure, a quest to parts unknown to retrieve an ancient device, the magical “Eject” button of the DVD player!


C U At 9
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

C U at 9 (Review)

October 5, 2005By

C U at 9


2005
Starring
Shweta Konnur as Kim/Juliet
Isiah as Romeo
Kanksha as Sue
Written and Directed by Marlon Rodrigues (aka Marlon Hoden)

Bollywood produces the most movies each year, many of which never are seen outside the country. Most wouldn’t work outside of India, Bollywood films are famous for having musical numbers scattered throughout, even advancing the plot. Most other cultures would balk at a serious crime drama suddenly turning into a choreographed song fest, but to each their own. Bollywood films are starting to become more mainstream, in that some are being imported over to America. Films that are well done from Bollywood still have an audience here, and it is rapidly growing. Some films to come out of Bollywood are deservedly not even fit for Bollywood itself. You can probably figure out from the title that this is one of them. C U at 9 goes down in history as one of the worst titles ever, joining such luminaries as .com for Murder. The title alone isn’t enough to have C U at 9 go down in flames, the movie itself is a cheeseball horror movie which borrows heavily from some recent popular Asian movies. Very heavily. Add to that the director substituted three music videos in place of choreographed singing. The editing from the music videos was unfortunately used in 100% of the film, giving C U at 9 a feel of scene jerking so bad you’ll get whiplash if you aren’t careful. The jumpcuts fly so fast I’m currently wearing a neck brace.

Devilman
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Devilman (Review)

October 1, 2005By

Devilman

aka Debiruman

2004
Starring
Hisato Izaki as Akira Fudou/Devilman
Yusuke Izaki as Ryo Asuka
Ayana Sakai as Miki Makimura
Asuka Shibuya as Miko
Ai Tominaga as Silene
Bob Sapp as World Newscaster

Take a Japanese Manga with a storyline that spanned years, throw in a big budget, a bunch of J-Pop stars and models, remove any element of a plot, but it all in a blender, then bake the results at 450 for two hours and you get Devilman, a mess of Biblical proportions. What’s left of the plot involves demons invading the world and taking over people’s bodies, as a kid named Akira becomes the Devilman, who is a demon with a human heart, who must fight them to save all of humanity. This movie is just plain awful. I am in no way a fan of the Manga (by Go Nagai, creator of Cutie Honey, a Manga film done right) nor had even heard of it until I watched this, but the film is reported to ignore huge chunks of it to try to contain a long, sweeping story into two hours of running time. Just imagine the entire first season of 24 in just two hours, where they keep odd sideplots but ignore big things like introducing Senator Palmer, and Jack Bauer is now played by Justin Timberlake. People would riot in the streets. Devilman is on the same par, there are probably still people looting sections of Tokyo in response to seeing this travesty.


Friday the 13th part 8
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (Review)

September 22, 2005By

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan


1989
Starring
Todd Shaffer as Jim Miller
Tiffany Paulsen as Suzi Donaldson
Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees
Jensen Daggett as Rennie Wickham
Kelly Hu as Eva Watanabe

Jason Voorhees is an icon of horror movies, one of the most recognizable movie monsters in history. His popularity has adversely affected the quality of the sequels, as fans have seen Jason kill and kill again hundreds of times, why would they pay to see the same thing over and over again? The solution seems to be to provide a gimmick for each film. In a previous review (but later release), Jason took to the stars for Jason X. Here, Jason’s gimmick is a trip to New York. However, the gimmick is short-lived, as most of the movie takes place just getting to New York. It’s Jason on a boat! A boat full of high school punks just aching to die. Only one homicidal madman can put them in their place! Sadly, Jason on a boat just isn’t gimmicky enough. Most of the movie is “Been there, done that,” with little new to add, even when Jason gets to New York, most of the time is spent not killing New Yorkers but chasing after the teenagers. This movie should have been set up like The Warriors, except in addition to the freaky gangs chasing the Warriors, Jason is chasing them as well. That is the masterpiece that is yet to be created. One day, a visionary will rise from the ranks and produce that opus. Until then, horror films will continue to feed sites like mine with cannon fodder by the truckload.


Wheels of Fire
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Wheels of Fire (Review)

September 18, 2005By

Wheels of Fire


1985
Starring
Gary Watkins as Trace
Laura Banks as Stinger
Lynda Wiesmeier as Arlie
Linda Grovenor as Spike
Joseph Anderson as Scourge
Jack S. Daniels as Scag
Directed by Cirio H. Santiago

Mad Max and it’s sequels were a big influence on post-apocalyptic action films. They spawned a long string of imitators, mostly created from low-budget film grinding countries like Italy and the Philippines. Hey, amazingly enough, this very film is a knock-off of Mad Max, and it was made in the Philippines! It’s almost as if I prepared the opening sentences for some sort of reason… Not only is this film a low budget rip-off that is nowhere near as good as the film it is aping, the film has a bonus feature not found in the Mad Max series: It hates women. Brutally. This movie takes women and knocks them around like they were Nazis or something. There is more misogyny in this movie than tea in China. More misogyny than bad films made in the Philippines. Hey, directed by Cirio H. Santiago of The Destroyers and T.N.T. Jackson fame, so it’s got to be….just as sub-par.

It’s the future, all cities are destroyed, and everyone drives around in the desert. What country is this? Maybe it’s Australia, which explained the deserts in Mad Max, but everyone is American, except for the non-main characters, who are all Filipino. So not only did all the cities die off, but the world has become a desert wasteland. This would lead one to wonder where food is coming from, except one is instead distracted from wondering where they get all the gasoline they use for their massive fleets of automobiles. Our hero is a man named Trace, the manliest name in the universe. Mad Trace. I can see it! Wait…I just lost it. Trace doesn’t have the screen presence of Mel Gibson, or even Gary Coleman. Mad Max had the Last of the V-8 Interceptors, while Trace has a late ’70s four-door with some painted plywood on the bumper and a fake Batmobile-style rocket engine on the end.


Frankenfish
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Frankenfish (Review)

September 13, 2005By


Frankenfish


2004
Starring
Tory Kittles as Sam Rivers
K.D. Aubert as Eliza
China Chow as Mary Callahan
Matthew Rauch as Dan

Two Sci-Fi channel movies in 2004 explored the dangers of Snakehead fish becoming gigantic and devouring people en masse. The first reviewed here was Snakehead Terror, and now we move on the the second entry on the Snakehead Double Feature, Frankenfish. Instead of being normal Snakeheads, these snakeheads are big because of Genetic Engineering, thus giving the Franken- part of the title a double meaning. (Frankenfish is a common nickname for Snakeheads, as they can walk on land for a limited time.) The traditional Sci-Fi channel elements are proudly displayed here as well, though in different amounts as the literal deluge of movies forces them to rotate in and out a few of the elements to make the films less cookie cutter, the results being similar to adding different colored frosting to identical cakes. The better cake is the cake with the prettier outward design. Frankenfish holds up better than the competition, though it is a tight race. At the end, there will be a chart for easy comparisons.

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