PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 1016

Upgrade 2018 Written and directed by Leigh Whannell.

Grey is a car restorer takes his wife Asha along to meet a client called Eron who lives in a massive hole in the ground by the sea. Eron reveals his new chip to the couple. On the way home the couple's car fails and they are attacked by criminals. Asha is killed and Grey has his spinal cord cut. Months later Grey is approached by Eron who wants to install the STEM implant. Eron claims Grey will walk again.

The chip does work and it talks to Grey. It  helps him get revenge on the men who murdered his wife. The chip can take over his body and make him a super fighter. He starts killing the people responsible. The police are on his trail but they have no idea how he could be killing anyone what with being a paraplegic. Eventually the whole story is revealed and it's all bad AI. Most everyone dies.

It's a fairly good action revenge film with a downbeat ending. Not something I would want to watch again.

Assassin Of The Tsar 1991 Written by Aleksandr Borodyansky and Karen Shakhnazarov, directed by Karen Shakhnazarov.

Malcolm McDowell is an inmate in a Russian mental asylum called Timofeyev. It's 1991 and a new doctor arrives to take over. He meets Timofeyev who claims to have killed both Tsar Alexander in 1881 and his grandson Tsar Nicolas II in 1917. In reality the assassins were two different groups of Russians. Timofeyev also tells the new doctor he died, twice. The new asylum doctor talks to the retiring doctor. Big parts of the movie are flashbacks of the assassinations.

It's vaguely interesting but I don't know much about the death of the Tsars. I was struggling to stay awake in the middle act but it's soporific quality knocked Joe out for nearly half an hour. Malcolm did a great job with the character, that was the highlight of the movie for me. It's not enough for me to sit through the movie again.

Friday Night Movies 1013

The Gentlemen 2019 Story by Guy Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, screenplay and direction by Guy Ritchie.

Matthew McConaughey plays a big time pot grower and dealer in the UK. He's an American who won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. He started selling weed in college and dropped out of Oxford to concentrate on his business. He rents space for his grow operations from cash strapped posh people.

Charlie Hunnam is Matthew's right hand man. Charlie gets a visit from Hugh Grant who has a script detailing some recent activity concerning Matthew's business. He' been spying on Micheal and he's got a suitcase filled with evidence, in a novel bit of blackmail Hugh wants $20,000,000 for the script and the suitcase. In another subplot a hostile take over by another gang has interrupt Micheal's day to day. Then there's the Russian mobster who's upset his son fell out of a window during an altercation with Micheal's people. The Russian's out for revenge.

There's plenty of Ritchie style activity and dialog preformed by a gaggle of interesting characters. It's entertaining and a movie I'd pick up sometime. I'd want to watch it again.

Hidden Strike 2023 Written by Arash Amel and directed by Scott Waugh.

Jackie Chan heads a private security company that's been tasked with picking up the workers of a oil refinery in Irag and driving them to safety in the Green Zone. They have to take the most dangerous road in the world to get there. Hindering his plan is the plan of an oil worker called Owen, he's bent on stealing millions of gallons of oil. When the refinery staff leave they shut down the operation. The oil isn't flowing to the coast.

John Cena helps take care of orphans in the desert and his brother Henry is a mercenary for hire. Henry is working for Owen, he wants John to come with him to extract the head of the refinery. Jackie's estranged daughter is working in the refinery. Too much family drama for me and that's my only complaint with the movie. I'm personally tired of that plot element.

There's plenty of fights and oddles of slaughter. Lucky Jackie and company the baddies are pretty poor shots. The CGI is OK but nothing new or novel. It's mostly entertaining and a movie I'd want to pick up. There doesn't appear to be a US release on Blu-ray but there is one from China available through eBay.

Science Fiction Sunday 802

Terminator Dark Fate 2019 Story by James Cameron, Charles H Eglee, Josh Friedman, David S Goyer and James Rhodes, screenplay by David S Goyer, Justin Rhodes and Billy Ray, directed by Tim Miller. The 6th in the Terminator series and a sequel to the first two films but not the three that followed.

Rev-9, a new style terminator, comes from a well changed future to kill a woman called Dani who's going to be a problem for the future robots. Instead of the rise of Skynet there's been a AI revolution called Legion. The machines want to kill off the humans. The resistance to Legion sends an augmented soldier called Grace to destroy the terminator and save Dani.

Linda Hamilton plays Sarah Connors 25 years on. She saves Dani and Grace and they escape for a bit. Rev-9 keeps on coming and there's a seemingly endless series of flights and fights with plenty of explosions and collateral damage. At some point Arnold Schwarzenegger turns up, he's a T-800 and he's been alerting Sarah to the arrival of the Legion terminators. That's how she arrived to save Dani and Grace. Near the end of the film they finally destroy the Rev-9 and hope to stop the rise of Legion.

Mostly it was entertaining but I got tired of the constant battle by the end of the second act. At least it was only 128 mins, so many of these action films are over long. I'd still watch it again at some point.

Attack Of The Giant Teacher 2019 Written by Nobuhiko Ishii and Yoshikazu Ishii, directed by Yoshikazu Ishii. A Japanese low budget kaiju musical movie.

A teacher is informed his school will close at the end of the school year. He gets his class to put on a musical and they do. In space an alien plans an attack on the Earth. The teacher grows large to fight the alien.

Sadly the musical isn't interesting to me but I liked a few of the characters. I'm sure the budget meant the giant alien action only happens in the last act. Most of the effects were CGI and the low budget didn't help there either. Doubtful I'll get back to this one, thankfully someone passed a copy to me and I didn't buy a copy. You can see it for free on YouTube, link in the usual place.

Faster 2010

Faster 2010 Written by Tony Gayton and Joe Gayton, directed by George Tillman Jr. Dwayne Johnson on a revenge fueled murder spree.

Dwayne leaves prison and murders a man in an office. Next he kills a guy who makes snuff films. Dwayne then get attacked by the guy who's been hired to kill him. The cops are after him too. They found out he'd been double crossed during a robbery. Thieves, huh.

By the end of the movie Dwayne has killed most everyone he set out to finish off. By then I didn't care that much. It's got a good bit of action and plenty of bodies but I didn't connect much with Dwayne or the other sympathetic characters. I doubt I'd rewatch the DVD I have. Oh Well.

Let The Corpses Tan 2017

Let The Corpses Tan 2017 Based on Laissez bronzer les cadavres by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid, screenplay and direction by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. A French and Belgium production mostly filmed in Corsica.

A gang of thieves steal 250KG of gold. The police give chase. There's a big gun battle and plenty of running about. Some odd ball characters stir the pot and cause some trouble.

It's very stylish with a complicated story that isn't well told. Corsica was nice. I didn't think it was anything much more than average. I gave it a 5 against it's 6.2 on the IMDb.

Kite 2014

Kite 2014 Based on the novel Kite by Yasuomu Umetsu, screenplay by Brian Cox, directed by Ralph Ziman. A South African action film with Samuel L Jackson as the draw for most markets.

It's slightly in the future, the economy has crashed, kidnapping children is a lucrative job in what maybe South Africa. India Eisley plays Sawa and she's got revenge on her mind. She wants to kill cartel leader Emir, and his men, because he killed her parents. Samuel is a cop called Aker, he's also after Emir and his gang. Aker uses Sawa's desire for revenge to kill cartel members. He also supplies her a drug that wipes the memory of recent events.

It's all gritty and murderous with plenty of bad sound to make it hard to hear the actors mumble. The look is fairly good but the story is rather unoriginal. Below average and worth a miss.

Science Fiction Sunday 787

Ares 11 2016 Written and directed by Robert Goodrich. This is his first feature and it looks like his last feature.

It's a story about an orbiting spacecraft observing the Earth. The guy in charge of the observing is spending too much time talking to his pretty co-worker and doesn't notice the approaching missile until it's too close to get out of the way. The ship is damaged and there's only enough oxygen to get 2 of the 4 people on board back to Earth. They'll have to draw lots to see who takes the poison pill.

The unobservant guy looses the draw. He puts up such a fuss they have to choke him to death. He was a real POS, making me wonder about the state of their space program. Things get a bit worse and the movie was over. Glad to see the back of that story. Not planning to watch that one again. I wouldn't even bother to download it and I save all sorts of garbage. You can see it on YouTube, link above.

Lightning Strikes 2009 Written by and uncredited Rafael Jordan and directed by Gary Jones. Gary directed 3 episodes of Xena and 1 of Hercules. His first film was Mosquito in 1994. I saw that and it's a barely average, his 2000 film Spiders was a bit worse and most everything he's directed since barely gets up over a 4 on the IMDb. It's a film that was made in Bulgaria for $2,000,000. The sets are cheap looking and there aren't enough extras to make a town festival believable.

Kevin Sorbo is the sheriff of a town that's about to have it's annual pumpkin festival when strange lightning storms start killing people. A car is attacked by lightning, it cuts the car in two, the mother and son survive only to have the lightning chase them into the woods. The son is killed and the mother stunned.

The Sheriff gets out there, no one can explain how the car was cut in two. They find the woman and her son and take them back to the town. A trio of climatologists show up investigating high intensity lightning. They think the storm is going to be so severe that they tell the mayor that they should postpone the festival. He's not having any of that and there are dire consequences.

David Schofield shows up, he's playing a guy who's been tracking intense lightning storms since lightning killed his son. He thinks there's evil in the lightning, despite no one believing him it turns out to be true. They even put the creature on the poster. Things go bad for the townies and the scientists as the battle ramps up.

It wasn't great or anything, a mere copy of other, better films, but it held together most of the way to the end. It's just so unoriginal. I got to the end and gave it a generous 4 on the IMDb. I wouldn't bother watching it again.

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Mutant Blast 2018 Written by Fernando Alle, Adrián Cardona and Alex Duda, directed by Fernando Alle. A postapoc movie from Portugal. Released in the US by Troma.

A hungover guy wakes up from a party to find someone has drawn a mustache on his lips and a penis on his chin. If that wasn't annoying enough, a secret government organization has accidentally released some of it's failed experiments from their super soldier program. The failed experiments are infectious and eat human flesh but they aren't zombies. No matter.

Our guy goes out for a look around and runs into a lady soldier and one of the more successful super soldiers. The lady soldier accidentally shots the super soldier in the head. She blames our guy for it but it's her gun in her hand. While our guy and the lady soldier are heading for a rendezvous the secret organization blows off some nukes. Instant mutants appear and our guy isn't immune to the mutating power of the bombs.

Still our guy's better off than a lot of the blast victims, the lucky people die, the unlucky ones mutate. Our guy's left hand falls off and a rat grows out of the stump. Then things get crazy.

I thought it was a good laugh and several of them were out loud. Very much the sort of movie Troma is famous for, plenty of gore, jokes and weird characters, just funnier and better made than a lot of their product. I'd recommend it to the sort of movie fan that likes those kind of movies. You can see a nice 1080p version on YouTube in the link above. According to the director the Troma Blu-ray is a few seconds off when playing the subtitles. That would be annoying, the YouTube video is fine and looks great.

Last Sentinel 2023 Written by Malachi Smyth and directed by Tanel Toom. Found on Amazon Prime. I was disappointed to find Amazon is going to start inserting commercials in their free with membership movies. It doesn't surprise me one bit. I'm already down on the service because it doesn't offer variable speed playback. It's hard to watch crappy movies at normal speed.

The movie is a boring bottle story about 4 people on a outpost way out at sea. They shot the tower scenes in one of the Redsand Towers Sea Forts in the ocean off of Kent in the UK. It's 2063 and the world has become submerged in water. There are only two small continents poking out of the ocean. Of course they are fighting with each other.

Most of the movie is the 4 people falling apart. They aren't clever and they've been having issues dealing with their situation. There's a twist at the end that you can see coming. Dull and uninteresting. Don't bother with it.

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Island Zero 2018 Written by Tess Gerritsen and directed by Josh Gerritsen. A below average predator from the deep film that barely has an SF element. This is Josh's first film. His second film Magnificent Beast, released in 2022, is a documentary about pigs, it's got no ratings on the IMDb and I'm not planning to watch it.

Back at Island Zero. Some people live on an island off the coast of Maine. Strange deaths start happening, fishermen disappear from their boats. The ferry doesn't come one day and everyone is on their own. Food and fuel are quickly running out. A scientist has been studying the area. He has a bit of data but it turns out the novelist on the island is way ahead of him. The novelist is really working for a terribly boring and incredibly overused plot point.

Novel guy is part of a secret organization that's been studying some deep sea creatures for several years. The creatures are invisible to the naked eye. The secret organization want to weaponize the creatures. Personally I'm way tired of the secret evil organization with it's own agenda and total entitlement. Much over used. If you watch this sort of film in quantity then you've seen it all before. There's nothing new here. Move along.

Occupation 2018 Written and directed by Luke Sparke, additional dialogue by Felix Williamson. An Aussie alien invasion film that falls well below average.

Aliens come and invade, plenty of fighting in the woods. Boring beyond belief. Crappy CGI.

I found both on Amazon Prime for free with membership. At least I didn't have to pay any extra. That would be insulting. Another thing that's insulting is the 62% of the votes are a 7 or up. Someone has flush pockets.

Friday Night Movies 971

Ashfall 2019 Written by Lee Hae-jun, Byung-seo Kim, Tae-Yoon Kim, Jeong-deok Kwak and Joon-hyung Lim, directed by Lee Hae-jun and Kim Byung-seo. A South Korea disaster movie.

An active super volcano on the North Korea and China border is causing earthquakes. Scientists estimate it will blow repeatedly over the next 4 days, the final eruption will destroy most of Korea. Scientists and government officials have taken up a plan to nuke the volcano using mining tunnels, they are hoping to relieve the pressure in the magma pools and dampen the seismic activity.

A military bomb expert called In-Chang is due to retire that day, his retirement is put on hold and he's assigned a mission to extract the uranium from some old North Korean ICBMs hidden away in a bunker. He needs a guy to lead him to the site and that guy is in prison in North Korea.

In-Chang is really the technician on the job, there's a special ops team of soldiers who are supposed to get them to the ICBMs and to the mine. That team's plane goes down right away and In-Chang's team now has to survive and get the mission done. Of course there are plenty of obstacles in their way.

The action scenes are fast paced, noisy and filled with dirt. It's a wonder their cars would work the air is so dusty. There's plenty of near impossible escapes and stuff on fire. It's pretty predictable and filled with cliches. I gave it a 6 for the effects but I couldn't rate the script that high. I don't feel the need to buy a copy, I doubt I'd get back to it. You can see it on Amazon Prime, free with ads.

Lifechanger 2018  Written and directed by Justin McConnell. A Canadian movie shot in and around Toronto.

A story told from the POV of a shapeshifter that murders people when it takes over their identities and personality. I don't want to be sharing a monster's life choices. I want to see a monster get destroyed. It's another well made film with a poor script. This is so disappointing I can't be bothered to go on. Don't watch it.