PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 633

The Fare 2018 Written by Brinna Kelly and directed by DC Hamilton. I'd seen DC's first film The Midnight Man and enjoyed that well enough to check this out when I saw it listed on Amazon Prime. Brinna c0-wrote TMM with DC. On this movie she's the star, the producer, caterer and driver. The movie is mostly set in a Yellow Cab and entire film was shot in 6 days.

Harris Caron is a cab driver, he's on a dark lonely road, he's got to pick up a fare. He's listening to the radio talk about time travelling aliens when he finds her by the roadside. Brinna plays Penny. Harris drives off, heading to her destination,  Elm and River Drive. They chat to pass the time. There's an electrical storm in the air, lightening in the distance. Penny disappears out of the backseat when his eyes are distracted by the storm. Harris calls dispatch and tells him his fare disappeared, the dispatched tells him to head back to town and not to forget to reset the meter. Harris does and he's back on the road listening to the same radio broadcast from earlier in the film. He picks up Penny all over again.

Some might be tempted to say it's a dark Groundhog Day but it's not. It's much more complex and interesting than that. The script is good and there's some nice camera work and direction. I'm normally one to get bored with a couple of characters bottled up together, especially once there's not much going on. The Fare kept my interest, I'd want to see it again sometime. There doesn't seem to be a DVD or I'd order one.

Exit Humanity 2011 Written and directed by John Geddes. A zombie film set at the end of the Civil War. It was also on AP. It's Canadian with a minuscule budget of $300,000 Canadian. Geddes does a good job capturing the past for no money.

A young man narrates his survival during the resurrection of the dead. Mark Gibson plays Edward, the young man, on screen, Brian Cox narrates his story as an older man. Edward's family is turned and he has to kill them. He's disturbed and sets off wondering, killing any zombie he runs across. I found the first act of the film fairly engrossing, once Edward encounters other living it becomes more like a lot of films with a loner and a local war lord.

Bill Moseley plays General Williams, he's organized some men, dug in and taken control of an area. They fight the zombies, capturing some for experimentation on by a doctor played by Stephen McHattie. Edward meets up with a man called Isaac who talks Edward into helping him rescue his sister from Williams. When Edward gets caught by Williams, Isaac is hiding in the woods, later he manages to rescue Edward and his sister from the underground compound. They come across Dee Wallace and learn a whole lot of backstory.

The rest of the movie is the big tussle with Williams. It's all fairly well done and I was entertained more than I often am with these low budget zombie films. I might not need the DVD but I might watch it again someday.

Friday Night Movies 833

A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop 2009 Screenplay by Shi Jianquan and Xue Jianchao, directed by Zhang Yimou. It's a remake of the Coen Brother's film Blood Simple.

Everything centers around the noodle shop in the middle of nowhere. The desert is beautiful, with rows of brilliant pastel colored hills. The people in the noodle house aren't quite so beautiful. The old man is the owner, his wife buys a gun, her lover is worried. The lover works at the noodle shop, the owner pays a soldier to kill the lovers. Of course, it all goes wrong, quite nicely, and it was fun getting there.

It's a nice adaptation and I liked the more humorous take. Glad I took a chance and bought the DVD, I'll hopefully get to watch it again someday.

Dog Eat Dog 2016 Based on the Edward Bunker novel of the same name, screenplay by Matthew Wilder, directed by Paul Schrader.

Nicolas Cage is a crook out of jail, he hooks up with William Defoe and Christopher Matthew Cook. They are absolute scum. They get hired to kidnap a kid, they screw it all up and everyone dies. Since it's a Paul Schrader film there's some onscreen jiggery pokery. The last several minutes are annoying. What am I supposed to make of that. Paul's inner brain and I don't get along.

It looked pretty good for a fairly low budget film. It was shot in Cleveland over 25 days with a crew of recently graduated film students. It didn't do well at the BO. Critics were mixed and it has yet to break 5 on the IMDb. I kind of feel 5ish, if it had been more original, I might have liked it a bit more but these aren't interesting individuals and I've seen their story over and over. I'll still keep the DVD, I might want to watch Nicolas and William chew some scenery.

Immortal Demon Slayer 2017 Director Derek Kwok co-wrote the screenplay with Hai Huang, Hezai Jin, Fan Wenwen and Henri Wong, they adapted Jin's book Wukong Biography. The movie is called The Tales Of Wu Kong in China and it's another Monkey King movie. It's supposedly set 500 years before Sun Wu Kong goes to war with the Heavenly Kingdom.

There's a long complicated plot involving a lot of people, some of them have powers of one sort or another, hardly any of them are on the same page. There's plenty of action, romance and murder. Good reminder, humans and gods don't mix, someone always winds up dead, and it isn't that immortal guy.

I enjoyed it for the most part and would watch it again. I suppose I could have a Monkey King marathon. That would take a while, I know I've got six Monkey King films, I think there's at least another. Oh, well, some other day. 

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Cowboys Vs Dinosaurs 2015 Anthony Fankhauser and Rafeal Jordan wrote the poor screenplay and Ari Noval did a so-so job directing. Together they manage to make a pot boiler with little nourishment. Looks like the movie appeared on SyFy at some point. It's kind of typical of what they feature.

Rob Hills returns home after failing at the rodeo circuit, he's got some past history with the Sheriff, who's now living with Rob's old girlfriend. Eric Robert's plays Rob's father, they are reunited in a jail cell, one they should have stayed in. Vernon Wells plays the head of a mining company that has a mine in the area. The miners have opened a chamber and released some gas fueled dinosaurs. They get to chompin' the locals and rampaging about the town. Just about everyone dies but I didn't care, most of them were jerks. It's a film that brings little joy, other than rooting for the dinos.

Dispiser 20o3 Written and directed by Philip J Cook. Typical of Amazon Prime, they've listed this as being made in 2018 when it's a film from 2003. It's a low budget green screen movie with amateur actors and a so-so script.

The guy with the machine gun is an artist, he gets fired from his job and dumped by his girlfriend the same day he dies in a car wreck. He wakes up in Purgatory where he meets up with some demon fighters. That's them in the background. They battle monsters and try to keep the faith.

It's a bit more interesting than the previous movie but still below average. Cook's a little more imaginative than the writers on the first movie tonight. Not something I needed to see or would bother with again.

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Crystalstone 1987 Written and Directed by Antonio Peláez. Pablo is a little boy who's mother dies as we meet them. His mother's sister if going to keep Pablo's sister and send Pablo to work with her relatives in a town far away. Pablo hears her telling the cook and he runs off with his sister Maria in tow. They run through town and wind up on a train. In another city they witness a murder and help rescue the man who was wrongly accused of the crime.

Pablo's mother gave Pablo a cross before she died, it turns out to be one of three that are fairly easy to find, even if they have to do a bit of grave robbing. It leads them to a giant diamond and their long lost father. It was OK but nothing too special. It's part of a two pack with the movie below.

The Boy And The Pirates 1960 Story and direction by Bert I Gordon, screenplay by Lillie Hayward and Jerry Sackheim. Jimmy and his friend Kathy are playing by the beach. Jimmy's really into pirates. He finds a fancy bottle, rubs it and a genie pops out. The genie takes him back to the pirate days and he has an adventure with them until he returns home. It's pretty entertaining, though meant for kids, it's a slaughter fest once they get involved with pirates and buried treasure. It's not overly gory, it's light hearted and there's plenty of yelling and grog. I'd seen it before and I enjoyed it again.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom 2018 Written by Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, directed by J A Bayona. A greedy prick wants dino DNA off of Isla Nublar. There's also debate in Washington what to do about the dinosaurs on the island, the volcano is due to erupt anytime. No one wants to save them in the government but that doesn't matter. Remember that greedy prick? He's got a plan to rescue some dinos and sell them to creeps from other governments. He's even got a guy who's made him a nasty ass new dinosaur that likes killing and can be directed. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard get called in to be on the rescue expedition to the island. They are nearly left behind while the volcano erupts and the dinos rampage. It's noisy movie that alternates the exciting times on the island with scenes of that greedy prick setting up his big score. It all goes to hell when the dinosaurs arrive at the lab and the bidding begins. It was alright for the most part. Someone gave me a DVD of it and I'd watch it again. I should have a marathon some day. It's been a while since I watched the first movie.

Friday Night Movies 801

The Zombie King 2013 Directed by Aidan Belizaire, written by Rebecca-Clare Evans, Jennifer Jones, George McCluskey and Lisa Strobl. All the writers but Lisa have fairly substantial roles in the film.

As the movie opens we meet a milkman, a mailman and a parking meter man trying to get away from some zombies. The movie cuts away from the guys trying to survive to Edward Furlong and his dying wife. The group of survives grows in number, dwindles, then falls into a church. None of them can understand what's happening, until the run into the local priest, drunk off his tits.

Turns out after Edward's wife died, he'd made a pact with a voodoo god called Kalfu to resurrect her. Corey Feldman plays Kalfu, he's fairly entertaining. The zombies are the result of the pact with Kalfu. The priest has a way to stop the pact from happening and that will end the zombies. The group of living go into battle to stop Edward and Kalfu.

I found it to be entertaining enough, the DVD cost a buck, though I wouldn't say it's above average. I might watch it again but who knows.

The Gaelic King 2017 Directed by Phillip Todd, written by Matthew Todd, Phillip Todd, Nathan Todd and John Walkinshaw. A mostly crowdfunded movie.

It's a fantasy version of the story of King Kenneth Alpin of Gael, circa 800 AD. Alpin's father is betrayed and killed by the King of the Picts while supposedly meeting for a peace treaty. Alpin escapes with his infant brother, ten year later he returns. He finds a village under siege by an evil in the woods that steals their children.

Turns out the monster is a demon witch that was freed from her tomb by the King of the Picts. He really is a dick. When Alpin's brother is taken Alpin and the local chatty druid are off on an adventure. They hook up with the daughter of the King Of The Picts, she's sorry all the murdering happened but her men still hate the Gaels. It's a shitty time, in the fictional or the real version.

Lucky for Alpin he's developed some magical powers and he's now powerful enough to kick that demon witch's ass. I wound up enjoying it more than I expected. It's another that I got for a dollar at the Dollar tree. I might watch it again.

Creature Features 4 Feature Films

Another 4 film package with big monsters munching people and causing havoc. Three are water based and one lava based. Hardly anyone in them I had heard of, and the production values aren't always so great. All four movies are crammed on a single disc.

Dead Sea 2014 Brandon Slagle is the writer and director. He's written a story about a lake dwelling monster that appears every 30 years to snack on the locals before getting back to sleepy bye-bye land. The locals are miserable creeps who force people into the lake as sacrifices so they can stay there. I've seen this plot over and over and it doesn't have anything new to add to the convo. The production is particularly weak on this one. Not worth the watch.

Robocroc 2013 Berkeley Anderson wrote the script and Arthur Sinclair directed. This time the monster is a crocodile that's been taken over by military nanobots that are quickly turning the croc into a robot fighting beast. Dee Wallace plays the hard ass bitch that runs the project. Corin Nemec plays the hero, a zoo keeper who takes care of the crocodile. I remember him fondly from Parker Lewis Can't Lose. He's done a few of these made for TV monster movies of one sort or another. Him and Dee are both OK here, I'm happy when he saves the day and I'm happy when she gets some payback for being such a murderous POS. Occasionally it's amusing but not enough to make me like it more than I did. The CGI is fair to poor, the general production values are low, the acting is average or below, nothing much new here. It's better than the first movie but it's doubtful that I would watch it again.

Supertanker 2011 Another TV movie, director Jeffrey Scott Lando wrote the script with Nate Atkins. Some moron has developed an anti-matter liquid from a meteor. It's unstable and the only safe place for it is in a containment field in a cold underground bunker in Alaska. When someone tries to move a tiny bit of it they find out unstable it is, a whole town in Canada is wiped out. Now there's a new plan to drop it into the Marianas Trench.

Velizar Binev is the captain of the supertanker that's been specially pimped out to carry the world's most deadly substance. If it was let lose it would destroy the whole earth in a short while. Everything about this project is really stupid. Callum Blue plays a containment expert, he and his team are called in to ride along with the substance on a supertanker. Ben Cross plays the evil company man. They're all characters you've seen.

The movie hasn't anything new but I got through to the end, carried along by Callum and Velizar, they stand out as the better than average actors on the shoot. Not enough to make me want to watch it again.

Dracano 2013 Keith Shaw, writing as Lindsay James, wrote the script and Kevin O'Neill directed. Corin Nemec gets to fight dragons in this tale. It's a bit better than the other films on the disc, it has a bit of sense of humor and I liked that. Troy Evans plays the General that heads the secret military operation that deals with the dragons that live in volcanoes. They are cocooned in eggs that only hatch when they are exposed to the air. In the network of underground lava flows the dragons float around the world. Occasionally an eruption creates a problem. Remember Mt St Helen's? Nuked to cover up the dragons. Who knew?

This time the cover up doesn't go so well. Corin is a park ranger on his day off, he encounters some people on his hike into the desert, they are all surprised there are dragons. There's plenty of running about and yelling. The CGI dragons aren't too bad in the back ground, up close they lack a bit. I enjoyed it more than the other three films and probably would watch it again sometime.

Science Fiction Sunday 598

Up first is The Final Programme, it's British, it came out in 1973, and it's the only film adapted from a Michael Moorcock novel. The movie was called Last Days Of Man On Earth in the US and a few other places. Robert Fuest is the writer and director. His previous two films were the Dr Phibes series and they were much more entertaining.

I first saw it back in 2001 and rated it "fairish" on my Watched Movie List. After watching it again I'm not thinking it's much better than that and that ain't even barely average. I got more enjoyment out of the cinematography than the story. It's very stylish and colorful. The locations are quite interesting. It's the characters that are annoying. What a load of jerks and assholes.

It's somewhat in the future and there's been an incident or two, Amsterdam is ash, the Vatican is gone, it might be the end of civilization. Jerry Cornelius's father has died and he's left a programme to develop a hybrid human that's immortal and self replicating. The programme is on microfilm and it's in dad's safe at home. Some scientists, headed by Graham Crowden, want it.

Jerry leads a raid on the house and his brother defends the place. In the struggle Jerry accidentally kills his sister but the evil Miss Brunner gets the microfilm. Miss Brunner somehow consumes people. Jerry's brother shoots Jerry but he doesn't die. There's a good bit of chasing about by these two knobs. Again, the locations were more interesting than most of the action.

Eventually the microfilm, the scientists, Miss Brunner and Jerry are all in one place. The experiment goes on with a nice laughable ending. It's supposed to be a comedy but I'm often laughing at stuff that isn't jokes. I'll probably never get back to the DVD, lucky for me it was used and fairly cheap.

Victor Frankenstein is a 2017 re-imagining of Frankenstein. There's little of the novel in the movie and the whole thing is now being told by a completely new character. He's one of a legion of new characters. It crapped out at the box office and I can see why. Those characters suck.

Total Film compared the movie to the Guy Richie Sherlock Holmes films, loud, flashy, busy, but I find it's lacking the interesting characters that come with Guy's films. The screenplay was written by Max Landis and the director was Paul McGuigan. His previous film was Push in 2009 and I didn't think too much of that, before that he directed the 2006 gangster film Lucky Number Slevin. That was a bit more entertaining.

Daniel Radcliffe plays Igor, he's the narrator and he's got a hunchback. Victor, played by James McAvoy, finds Igor in a circus, acting a sad clown, but he's really knowledgeable about human anatomy. He's all self taught. Victor rescues him and the owner calls the coppers. A man was killed during the escape by a scummy circus guy and that's blamed on Victor and Igor. A completely insane Scotland Yard detective takes the case and when he finds out more about what Victor is up to, he goes full on religious zealot. He throws away his career in his drive to get Victor.

It goes on and on, though only 91 mins, it seems much longer, I was getting tired of spending time with Victor. It's nicely produced, the sets and locations look really good but all the flashy crashy stuff can't make up for a weak story. There are better Frankenstein films out there. I'd watch those again before I would watch this once more.

Friday Night Movies 797

Frankenstein Vs The Mummy is a 2015 horror movie, it's written and directed in Damien Leone.

Victor Frankenstein is paying the janitor for a fresh brain. The janitor kills a hobo and tries to bargain up the $5K he's supposed to get from Victor. They have a fight and the janitor's brain winds up in the creature Victor's is making in a dirty old basement.

By day Victor is a professor at the university where Professor Walton has just returned from a dig in Egypt with the mummy of a pharaoh. Best not ask yourself any of those embarrassing questions you might be having. There are no answers here. Victor's creature comes alive and so does the mummy. In the end they will battle it out.

It's endlessly talky, there's a bit of action, and a good bit of gore. Nothing exceptional, nothing to bring it to average and it's way too long at 114 mins. Just another Frankenstein movie, same as the next movie, neither as good as the original.

The Frankenstein Theory came out in 2013 and director Andrew Weiner wrote the screenplay with Vlady Pildysh.

What if Mary Shelley's book was really a fictional account of a real event, what if the creature really existed? That's the theory that Professor Jonathan Venkenheim believes. He takes a film crew to the Yukon in northern Canada. They meet a guy who has supposedly survived an encounter with the creature. They hire a guide and with very little stuff they head into the wilderness.

They camp in a yurt left by some trappers. At night 1 of the 3 snowmobiles is wrecked and another stolen. One of the guys goes for help and doesn't come back. They find him dead, others follow quickly, pretty standard picked off by the monster stuff. After the guide is killed, it's only the professor and the lady director. We don't know what happened to the professor, there's just some noise off camera, then the monster runs off into the woods carrying the lady director.

Good reminder not to go after the Frankenstein monster without a gang with guns, only the guide had a rifle. In the end he was useless and he'd killed 12 polar bears. Well below average story wise, nice Alaska scenery for a while. Not much to make me want to return to either of these again.

Science Fiction Sunday 595

The Dustwalker is a 2019 Australian SF movie about an alien something that thuds into the ground in the outback. It's like a lot of these sorts of movies, plenty of running about and yelling, with occasional monsters. The alien critter came inside a mysterious silver football. Something releases a virus that turns people into angry beasts with skin problems. The local policewoman leads a small group that tries to stay alive. A big critter burrows under the ground, it harvests the infected and burns them at the end of the movie. We don't know why. There's no real ending, the monster is still loose. It's just not that interesting, probably why it's score is 3.9 on the IMDb. It looks nice, if you like the desert. I wouldn't want to watch it again.

Jurassic Thunder is another 2019 SF movie, both it and the first movie came from Amazon Prime. I've been hitting that as a place for unseen SF and Horror titles. Might as well get something for the yearly fee since I'm ordering less items from them. This one also scores low on the IMDb, a 2.0 from 127 voters, 55% of them ranked it a one. There aren't as many different dinosaurs in the movie as the poster would lie about. The T Rex they use has a machine gun and a laser on his head but you don't see that in this poster, you do see it other posters. The story isn't worth mentioning. It's embarrassing to watch. So is most of the acting and the CGI. The unintentional laughs were more out of pity. There's nothing good here at all. Someone should have taken the movie out behind the barn and put it out of it's misery. That might be cruel but it's what they deserve.

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The Girl In The Photos turned out to be a crappy 2015 slasher film with little of interest other than it was the last film Wes Craven produced and it's got Kal Penn in it. He plays a jerky photographer who leads his entourage to their doom in a small town. Claudia Lee plays a woman working in a store in the town. One day she comes into find a picture of a tortured woman on the store bulletin board. The police put it down to a prank but it's some scumbag who likes killing and making  statements with bodies. It's not much fun and I wouldn't need to see it again.

Pyewacket is a 2017 horror film about a stupid young high school student who pals around with people who preform rituals for their own selfish gain. She gets pissed at her mother for moving them to a house in the country. Mom is depressed from the loss of her husband and she can't stand being in the old house anymore. I can understand that but the daughter, a selfish cunt, can't. She preforms a ritual to wish death on her mom. Of course it releases Pyewacket, a demon spirit who comes creeping around. Regretting her choice the daughter tries to reverse the curse but that goes south and Pyewacket tricks her into burning her mom alive. The police just don't seem to believe her demon story. What a useless person. Glad she's off the streets. Not a good thing to watch, kind of below average and hardly anyone is likeable. Never going to see that one again.