Our first movie was the new Nick Cage SF film, The Humanity Bureau. It's Canadian and came it earlier this year. Joe brought a copy from Netflix DVD, oddly enough I received the same movie from Netflix but didn't bring it. I was going to watch it for Science Fiction Sunday. No matter, there's too many more where that came from, I have two from Netflix sitting on the table to watch and there's endless misery on Amazon Prime. The Humanity Bureau is beaten with the misery stick and after a while I was sad I wasn't watching it at 1.5 speed.
Nick is a guy who's a "rising star" in the Humanity Bureau. He visits clients and evaluates their usefulness to the current regime. If they don't produce more than they consume they get packed off to New Eden. It's a resettlement location, people are sent there but no one hears from them again. So far they've sent 7 million people there. Nick learns on the current job that there's something going on with New Eden and there's truth be told. You can already see where this is going. He learns the truth and runs away with a woman and his son. The trio's backstory is a tedious bit of business. The Humanity Bureau sends men to chase Nick down and return him to the fold or kill him. There's lots of chasing in the desert. Then they chase him into Canada where it's nice. Sadly, even the nice bits didn't make the movie that entertaining. There were dull points between the chase and fight bits and I didn't like the characters much. The whole future world wasn't thought out too well. Since there was time to think between the more exciting bits there was time to complain about some of those ideas. I wouldn't recommend the movie. I'm certainly not going to bother with a copy for me, I don't need to see it again.
We had watched our next movie back in 2006 and I saw it again a couple years ago. Tonight we watched the new Code Red Blu-ray. It looks so much better than the Mill Creek copy we watched back 2006. I blogged about the movie on Friday Night Movies 51 March 21 2006. Here's that post with bad links removed and spelling corrected.
Messiah of Evil delivered more than 40 cents worth of entertainment. It was in color. And it was Technicolor, not the crappy lack-o-color Metrocolor like the previous movie. Willard Huyck, directed and wrote the screenplay. He also wrote both American Graffiti films, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Howard The Duck. So, you can see he's rather hit and miss, but I'm guessin' his royalty checks are whackin' huge. While no bullseye, it's certainly no miss either. There are some fun moments and some near creepy scenes. Most of the actors are veteran TV performers with a mixed level of talent. Elisha Cook Jr. and Royal Dano are the big names with tiny parts. Director Walter Hill has an unnamed part. If I ever watch it again I'll try to remember to keep an eye out.
A young woman comes to the town of Point Dune looking for her father. He's not home. He's left a journal that tells a Lovecraftian type story of supernatural beings and their strange powers. The townspeople are flesh eaters that like a nice stare down on the beach. It's where they go every night, waiting, staring out to sea, waiting for the stranger to emerge from it's watery depths. I'd rather have a lay in. In bed. Where it's dry. The daughter meets up with a Euroguy and his two gal pals. There's a lot of beds involved but sadly no nudity. Euroguy is looking for the father too. They all stay at the father's beach house mixing a dash of soap opera with violent death. There is a fun scene in the movie house. Most of the horror scenes are fun, much more so than the drama or soap scenes. Most everyone dies and it has a Lovecraft type end that reveals the daughter to be in a mental hospital. She sits and paints now. Nice. Stay out of towns that have that much evil in them. You'd think you'd be able to smell evil like that. It would put a stank on the town.
Needless to say I didn't keep an eye out for Walter Hill. Nothing to worry about. I probably didn't care for the movie as much as I did before but I still gave it a 6 on the IMDb. It gets a 6.6 but I didn't think I could give it a 7. It's not that good.
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