Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #98: Stryker (1983)

Leather! Boobs! Bullets!
Unlikable characters
Road Warrior? No.

The holy trinity of my interest is this:

SWORD AND SORCERY/HEAVY METAL/THE POST-APOCALYPTIC

Stryker is of the third. And it pains me to report that it's not very good. But if you're hankering for some Road Warrior-esque post-apocalyptic atmosphere, Stryker  might do right by you. Provided that you can supply beer and comrades.

So in this one you've got lots of leather, chains, ridiculous looking cars augmented with various impractical weaponry, desert marauders, and bow-wielding amazon biker chicks. What you don't have is any character worth giving a shit about. Each one annoys, each one lacks. You have a movie here in which none of the characters are terribly likable. Not because they're bad people or anything, but because they don't say enough or do enough to endear you to them. Every scene in Stryker is so cut and paste, so laughably obvious that almost no part of you is engaged. They're not even characters. There's nothing like a character arc anywhere in this movie. It's wonderful to behold.

Plot-wise, water's the precious thing everyone's fighting over, not gasoline. Road Warrior, the 1981 flick that was totally rad and sparked this whole screen genre was all about gasoline. Gasoline addiction is something we all know well in our modern age. Just the other day I stepped off of my modified Vespa (it has a mustard gas cannon), pushed back my spiked football helmet and slew a man with my combo sawed-off shotgun/steel trident crossbow. Because prices were so high, you know? I didn't even buy gas, I just wanted a cash for life ticket. I didn't win.

Water's a big deal too though, I guess. We'll worry about that someday I reckon. In Stryker it's serious business, and when the bad guy learns that a good guy has a secret mountain spring somewhere, well, look out! You've got a movie on your hands! Desert marauding is thirsty work on both sides, and Stryker, our lone wandering hero caught between them, has canteens to fill. Stryker's pretty aloof. So aloof that his motivations are completely absent. Self-preservation and greed don't even seem to be his modus operandi. He doesn't seem to care about much, but for whatever reason he seems to like these Jawa-like desert people he gives a bit of water to one time after they attack him savagely. Their tiny, shrill, dubbed voices only able to twitter one word at a time over and over until they're understood is certainly one of the most ridiculous and demeaning depictions of little people I've seen in a movie. I should be pc, sorry: they're mutants.

Unlikable as Stryker is, by the time the third act rolls around all of the other non-characters suddenly care about the guy. Our main heroine makes out with him before he deserts them in their time of need, and everybody pats him on the back as he walks away. Okay, sure.


As you'd expect from an exploitation film (this one hails from the Phillipines) it gets a bit rapey. Lone females inevitably get their shirts torn off by grimy raiders and roughed up a bit before the hero steps in. When the amazon biker chicks show up, you'd expect some ass-kicking to commence, but of course, they have to be reduced to being just women. As soon as the menfolk arrive, the fierce amazons mostly just run around helplessly, look for their male interests and, calling out their names, get shot to death in the middle of a firefight.

Yes please.

The movie's soundtrack is noticeably annoying and hilarious for it. It's very, very overplayed. Essentially it's just one lackluster and inappropriate melody, either synthesized or played by soft piano for those really tear-jerky and sensitive moments. As crappy as the movie is, the ending actually caught me off-guard, and I'll have to give it kudos for that. It wasn't a particularly good ending, it just kind of comes out of nowhere, and is bewildering enough to be a point of enjoyment. Okay movie, you just do your thing. I'll watch you.

So: Mostly worth it if you like bad movies. Certainly if you like bad post-apocalyptic movies.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #97: The Raid: Redemption (2011)

Excuse me sir, my face does not need a machete.

Dirty apartments

Hardest points on the body?

Ouch, elbows and knees.

The Raid: Redemption. To be fair, even before going to see it, the movie had already won a point with me. I squeal inwardly when a movie gives me a sub-title. Especially ones like The Redemption. Stick an epic sub-title on your movie and I'll pay good money to see it. Money I earned by putting children to work in diamond mines. You know what I mean, good money. I'd go see Princess Diaries: Dark Reckoning, or A Heartland Christmas: Rain of Blood. These things just sell me.

So it's pretty good. I won't say The Raid is inspired, but I will say it's quite satisfying. It's Indonesian, and it's always a nice change of pace to see a foreign film in a cinema: it reminds you that there's other people on the planet, you know? In their own countries? Speaking in different languages, shooting each other, breaking each other's bones. Just like us.

The movie kind of plays through like a video game. It starts with a mere 5 minutes of exposition, throws some stylish opening credits your way, and gets with the action. Mission laid out: there's an apartment building full of baddies that need stomping, and you, rookie, are going to have to fight your way through them to get to the two mini-bosses you have to face before you get to the big boss. Mission accepted. Mission start.

The fights are well choreographed and don't rely on much shaky-cam, which is a definite plus. When someone gets kneed in the face, I don't want the camera flopping around like an epileptic duck. I want to see a knee hit a face. If you're using a shaky camera style it's probably because your stunt guys suck and you don't want us to notice.

There are some great deaths given to some (relatively) bad people, which always entertains. The gore's either not extreme or I'm too desensitized to judge properly. If it's not that extreme and I still have a healthy brain gauge, I'm glad for it. The gore walks a fair line without getting stupid or showy. Though get ready to see stabbings. Lots of them. The sort where you see the knife go in and out in the same shot. Several times. That doesn't happen in movies terribly often: I believe you can show a knife going into a body, but if you pull it back out it earns you a harsh rating from the ratings board. Ratings be damned, The Raid says, laughing bullets.

So: A dish of satisfyingly meaty and moist martial arts. Best enjoyed with friends.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #96: Shame (2011)

People quite naked,
Long take alienation,
Uncomfortable

Director Steve McQueen garnered deserved praise for Hunger back in 2008, a film in which Michael Fassbinder plays a jailed Irish republican who leads his entire prison into a hunger strike. A visceral drama of human politics and the human body, Hunger was an impressive debut for McQueen. When I learned both him and Fassbinder were teaming up for a movie about a cold sex-addict, I had some faith. Shame didn't betray, and I think I liked it, but the experience left me as listless and blank as its protagonist. Guess that's the point. Fun to mull over after having seen it, but the seeing part is less than arresting. What we have here is the kind of movie that serves as excellent essay fodder.

Now I love me a long take - the longer a shot is, the more you invest in it. There's more tension, a more natural and organic feel; that's some of what you get when you go the long take route, stylistically. You can also get bored, though.

It's tough for me not to like a long take, but in Shame I found myself in a couple of instances where I really didn't care about what I was seeing. Might be that's the desired effect: during a sequence where Fassbinder is struggling with some kind of human reaction, he goes for a sudden jog through the streets of New York. It's long, it's detached, it dislocates you from what came before. It's a bit tedious as well,  like in an earlier scene where Carey Mulligan is singing in a swanky lounge. We don't get to see very much of Fassbinder's reactions, though we do see his stony face shed a tear. We mostly get Mulligan's face, singing a pretty long tune from start to finish. Visually, you aren't given much to keep you going. There's another sequence where a really awkward waiter keeps interrupting a date between Fassbinder and a co-worker over and over. It was there that it suddenly started to make sense for me: as viewers we were being pushed away! McQueen you bastard! You cad! We were being denied any kind of easy connection with our sex-mad hero because he just can't bring himself to connect at all.

Seeing that in the movie I'd normally shout ZOMG BRILLIANT! and say the film was great, but there were quite a few moments in the latter half of the film where its points about alienation and the erosion of human empathy were so heavy-handed that I had to turn to the person next to me and chuckle a bit. It busts out a few cliches - running out onto a rainy peer and collapsing into a disparaging cry, some emo wrist-cutting, some serious overscoring, and at three points I thought the movie was gearing up to cut to black and end. But somehow there was more.

Alright, now the sexy sex bit of the review. As you'd expect from a film about a sex addict, there's a lot of sex. The sex is fairly explicit, but I think they show you less than you come away thinking you saw. There's full frontal, but it never shows the penetrational pomp that porno promises. There's much humping, much undulation, and much face in the throws of orgasm - enough of all that to make you feel embarrassed and as exposed sitting in a dark theatre as the naked actors are on screen. All part of McQueen's Brechtian alienation tactics, I suspect.

So: Not terrible. Solid acting, obvious with its theme, tedious at times. Stuck in my brain for awhile though, which could count for something.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #95: Tales of an Ancient Empire (2010)

 Hi there. I'm a drooling man. I was featured prominently on the DVD cover. I'm in the movie for 5 minutes.

 
Beyond confusing
Sword and Sorcery green screen
Irredeemable

Albert Pyun made a film in 1982 that was named after the genre it was exploiting. It was The Sword and the Sorcerer. It had swords, it had sorcery. It was a sword and sorcery film.

It was released the same year as Conan the Barbarian, the film that kickstarted an 80s SnS craze that would reach into the B-movie production pits of Argentina and Italy and beyond. It was one of the very first of the Conan copy-cats, if not the first. It was certainly one of the highest budgeted. Many have been made, but few have been chosen by fans as a worthwhile blip on the heart rate monitor of the genre. The Sword and the Sorcerer has been chosen, because one cannot say no to a three-bladed missile sword. It fires its blades.


20 years later we get Tales of an Ancient Empire, promised originally to be a sequel to Sword and Sorcerer, it quickly changed. The only link it has to the first film is a brief cameo by the Sorcerer's star, Lee Horsley, who is falsely credited on IMDB.com as Talon. He didn't cameo as Talon, his old character. He was some other adventurer. That doesn't bother me all that much.

I'm bothered by the fact that it is, without a doubt, one of the most unwatchable films I have ever seen. That's no small statement for me. It'd be a good bet that it's in the five worst films I've ever seen list, among the likes of Night Train to Mundo Fine and Zombie Nation, utterly baffling films that aren't even enjoyable for being terrible.

Tales of an Ancient Empire is expertly convoluted. Each scene seems so unrelated to the previous one, so poorly paced, so disjointed, that I could swear I was watching a bad TV series boiled down into an 85 minute movie. An entire season of awful acting, terrible green-screenery, and embarassing dialogue. So, the green-screening. Most of the film is shot, judging by the special features, in a garage studio in front of a green screen. Most of the film consists of shots of characters standing in one place with some silly backdrop filled in. Like in the opening prologue - a prologue that lasts a good 10-15 minutes. It's effectively a feature film unto itself, and is the only section of the entire movie that's coherent because an annoying narrator tells you what's happening. Well, what should be happening. What you actually see is some guys in painfully obvious wigs playing at being samurai and swinging swords over a scroll-like backdrop, attacking nothing. FOR TEN FUCKING MINUTES. That's the equivalent to a text prologue by Robert Jordan (heron-mark swords rest his soul).

This prologue drudgery will in fact be better than the rest of the movie.

Most of the action is implied, and not in a way that lets you use your imagination. In a way that looks stupid. Like a picture of Kevin Sorbo sliding against a picture of a vampire. Or having a sword strike out slowly at the camera, as though the actor was afraid to hit filming equipment. Oh right, I keep forgetting Kevin Sorbo is in this. Likely because he isn't the main character. There doesn't seem to be one really. I guess the Melissa Ordway character is supposed to be, but her story is obscure despite being cliché, and whatever revenge resolution she was aiming for gets lost when the movie derails into epilogue. The narrator (and if you read my Conan review, you know I hate narrators) turns out to be an evil vamp by the end, and we get filled in on what the ending of the movie was to be. Sorbo somehow killed the vampire sorcerer but she came back to life in a desert and the vamps have taken over everything.

Vampires kind of usurp the movie. So much of the movie really is, without exaggeration, the entrance of some vampire character we've never seen before picking someone else we've never seen before and draining their blood. Sometimes turning them into a vampire. Rinse, repeat. Green-screen it, onto the next shot. It's like there's a vampire movie fighting for control of the sword and sorcery movie fighting for control with a California garage studio. Can't wait for the fucking sequel.

So: It takes a lot for a movie to defeat me. I am vanquished.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #94: Conan The Barbarian (2011)

 That's right. We've got Morgan Freeman's voice. And we're not giving it back.

Chicks wearing little,

Swords, axes, and sorcery

Somehow made boring.

Here's a little tip: if you go to see a movie and it starts off with voice-over narration, even if it's Morgan Freeman, it's probably going to suck. Hard.

Guess what Conan does. Then guess the result.

Narration's bad because going that route typically breaks that always important 'show don't tell' rule. Fantasy films just love to feel like story books and open with a prologue that clearly establishes you're about to enter into a magic realm full of dancing wizards and burrowing unicorns. But it doesn't ever need to because when you go to see a fantasy film it's a pretty safe assumption that you're going to see some fucking fantasy. That's the point. And if informing you that you're in for a wizardy time isn't their mission, then the voice-over will be there to fill you in on some legend or similar crap that will be of importance to the characters and to the movie's overall aim to be cliché. This they don't have to do either, because all that backstory stuff can be revealed as you actually watch the movie. We can figure it out. All it would require is a bit of careful writing, which is, of course, unfair to the diseased monkeys the producers of Conan chained to a typewriter in a Swedish dungeon.

What was worthwhile in Conan? Not much. You'd think scantily clan woman and swords would be enough, but it really isn't. I'd say only the appearance of Ron Perlman is worth watching, but after he departs the film never manages to reach that dizzying height again. The 3d sucked. Not just because the pop-outs were cheap, but the effects mostly looked like paper cut-outs walking over paper cut-out backgrounds. It's way over-scored, meaning that the soundtrack plays way too much and is overly epic at points that don't call for it. There's a pointless sex scene with an even more pointless romance that just wastes time and patience. The female character involved is token at the best of times, which I guess I was expecting, but part of me hoped for more. I probably shouldn't have hoped for any kind of sophistication once I heard some of the dialogue. Some key lines were, and I quote, "Barbarian, I don't like you anymore" and "Barbarian! I'm going to kill you with your father's blade!" And Conan just shouting "Die!!" as he kicks someone. It was like a grade 7 writing exercise.

You know how movies that think they're being clever will often have a line uttered early on in the film by the bad guy and then later on the good guy will use the same line once the tables have turned? And you can twitch in your seat and pee in your pants and whimper something like 'omg thatz wut he said b4.' That line repetition is meant to be witty or ironic, but in Conan it felt like it was done just to strike that movie cliché off the list.

There was just a hell of a lot of shoddy thinking. More than could be excused. Like enemies that were clearly just Pict-esque human dudes in warpaints snarling like they were supposed to be orcs or werewolves or something. They actually used animal sound effects for them. And there's a scene where a ship is being boarded in the secret hours of the night, but within moments the intruders are discovered and a fight breaks out onto the deck – and it's broad daylight. The movie pays so little attention to itself that it fails even to get the most basic thing about Conan right – that he's a badass. Conan's not really supposed to be a good guy. He's actually a pretty huge dick. But this incarnation made him out to be a noble savage fighting the good fight, saving the girl, overthrowing the evil overlord etc. etc. The actions and motivations of the characters in general seemed arbitrary and stripped of import or gravity. Fairly early on in the film I came to the realisation that I didn't care about what was happening on the screen, and was far more interested in the backs of the heads of people I didn't know sitting in front of me. That one's balding. That person left her hat on. Isn't she overly warm? What does she do for a living? That was me hungry for character.

 

Just try and care about me. I dare you.

I was somewhat happy to see a two-bladed sword in the movie. Not a blade for each end of the stick mind you, a sword with two blades running parallel to each other. Hadn't seen anything that silly since Sword and the Sorceror's three-bladed canon-sword.

So: Has potentially destroyed an already shakey market for sword and sorcery films that aren't The Hobbit.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #93: Hugo (2011)

Looking at the screen
Is this really Scorsese?
Invigorating.


There aren't too many movies that actually feel like movies, and I think that's in part because movies try very hard to get you to forget that you're watching a movie. Many movies try to be disposable, forgettable, non-commital. They do very well at it.

For cinema to feel like cinema, for a film to give you some sense of movie-ness, some flavour you only taste when you participate in cinema, I'd say it has to do at least these two things:

1.
It has to remind you you're watching a movie, either by being meta enough to be about movie-making, or to be so steeped in movie tradition, like with a genre film, say, that you can't help but think about all the films that have lead up to this one.

2.
It has to use film language. It's not just talking heads delivering dialogue for the camera to catch. It uses visuals, it uses technique - a certain camera movement, a certain edit – to express something in a uniquely filmy way.

Hugo does all of those things, and there's nothing I love more than cinema that feels like cinema. The movie does a lot with its visuals, and when a time comes where more can be said with silence than talk, it does it with silence. That, my fine filmy friends, is a rare restraint. When the relationships between people in a busy train station are described perfectly and expressively to you by your eyes alone, you're reading with film language, and it's much more intimate than hearing someone say, if not in so many words, "Gee willickers, I'm awful lonely and I really like you but we just can't seem to get together!"

Now, I didn't see the film in ye olde 3D, which is all the rage with the kiddies nowadays (if marketing can be believed, and of course the last thing you can trust is what you see on tv and read in magazines), but from what I've heard from respectable mouths, the 3D usage in Hugo is tasteful and does more to lend magic and depth to the film than pop out shocks and cheesy spectacles would.
Would kids like this movie? I'm not so sure. They could dig it, but it moves slowly and with a building force that might not provide a young kid with the kind of payoff they might hope for. Some of the kids innocent and wistful dialogue struck me as a little out of a place at times, since the sheer gravitas Hugo generates makes you take things almost too seriously until the more magical side of the movie starts to assert itself.

If I hadn't known going into the film that the exalted Martin Scorsese had directed Hugo, I don't think I would have realised it in the watching. Well, assuming I'd have dropped my popcorn and drink all over myself or my significant other or insignificant other sitting close to me and missed the opening credits. It really doesn't feel like a Scorsese movie in any way that I could register. But it's clearly made, once some plot reveals hit you, by a director that knows and cares about cinema.

In Hugo Scorcese has made a kids film for adults, and, much to my delight, a little history lesson for anyone that might never have been exposed to early film history; a history that touches huge swathes of the cultural environment that they live their lives in. A movie, Hugo points out, is a waking dream. Our dreams projected before us. Our own brains thrown onto a screen for us to watch. It's a special and unique kind of magic central to how we receive our culture, and, more interestingly, ourselves. I salute any movie that tries and succeeds to remind us of that.

So: If you like your movies tasting like movies, have a cup.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #92: Bram Stoker's To Die For (1988)

At last, vampires I can understand and relate to.

This movie has a fair bit of charm. Also, it's awful. But it seems to believe in itself, which leads me to enjoyment. I wish Rifftrax would cover it.

This is a film that's from the 80s and doesn't let you forget that at any point during its runtime. Pluses include a decent amount of rubbery monster gore and unexpectedly violent murders. Minuses mostly being lukewarm sex scenes you wish would go somewhere, and characters you don't care about. And there's quite a few more characters than there really needs to be. You can't shake the feeling that you're watching a TV pilot. I couldn't get Forever Knight out of my head.

Character rundown is as follows: Vlad Tepes with a British accent, a real estate agent named Kate, her asshole friend who thinks she's his girlfriend, another friend, that friend's aloof boyfriend, and then a monster vampire with a mullet. Oh and two cops that come and go just so someone can say something like 'Wow, who could have done this?'

Kate's friend who thinks he's her boyfriend is especially entertaining for being so utterly unlikable and getting rewarded for it. He's a total dickhead of a shallow and controlling jerk who, sadly, pretty much becomes the hero of the film by figuring out who VLAD TEPES is once he finds a book on VLAD TEPES' shelf called VLAD TEPES, and it's about the history of VLAD FUCKING TEPES. He promptly reads Bram Stoker's Dracula to learn how to kill vampires, of course. This is why To Die For is Bram Stoker's To Die For.

Mullet vampire is pretty awesome. His curly mulleted hair, his superbly 80s outfit, his lame shades, and his penchant for smoking makes him so. My favourite moment comes when mullet vampire dramatically tosses away a cigarette to pursue a murder victim, and by the time he enters the room she's walked into maybe 20 seconds later, he's apparently lit up another one because he's just so cool. I guess if you're immortal, addiction can get pretty bad.

Have a sultry trailer!



As the film went on I realised that I wasn't at all interested in the main characters. I wanted more of the cops. Every time they came on, I hoped beyond hope that they'd stay on the screen. I don't care about British Vlad Tepes. I wanted the adventures of Grizzled Veteran Black Cop and White Trash Rocker Cop! Kicking ass. Taking names. Getting shit done. Lt. Williams and Detective Bocco, writing your tombstone.

It's sad that I fixated on the barest, most non-character characters in the film because it was more interesting than vampires.

So: Certainly one of the most 80s films I've ever seen. After seeing it, I had the weird, atavistic urge to write a screenplay around the two cops, who, having seen the darkness lurking in the black of the shadows in the night time, have pledged themselves to the solving of paranormal crimes.

Also, here's a music video someone made with clips from the movie. This is someone's favourite film. She ignored the cops:




Original post can be found on my blog hereabouts.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #91: Six-String Samurai (1998)

Post-apocalyptic wasteland U.S.A, taken over by the Russians! Vegas is one of the only cities left standing, and if you want to make it anywhere, it'll have to be there. But it's tough to get in. Tougher to survive the walk. Our stoic hero is a rockabilly guitar-picker who's decided to make for his fame and fortune.

Packing little beyond his guitar, a torn umbrella to shield himself from the hot desert sun, and a fucking samurai sword to defend himself against Russian raiders, he sets out across the arid land. Oh, and Death is literally after him. Death and a bunch of his evil henchmen. This is a winning concept, but the ultimate result is a little on the underwhelming side. I found myself bored more than once, which usually means that I need a gang to watch the movie with, and some sake.

If you can set up that kind of situation, also be prepared for wretched acting, camp dialogue, breakout gypsy-punk sequences, and sword duels that sometimes manage to be pretty stylish.

So: Could have been the best movie ever, but doesn't get too far along that track.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #90: Tron: Legacy

Called Legacy to force some kind of dignity onto the project, Disney honestly will not give up on this franchise until people accept it and acknowledge that Disney was right all along, and that Tron is actually really cool.

If I can be outrageously generalising for this one, critics almost unanimously write that Tron: Legacy is pointlessly thin. Thin on plot, thin on character, thin on cultural significance. And half of them end off their reviews by saying that they thought it was pretty cool.

That's pretty much what we've got on our hands with this one - a movie that doesn't go very far to inspire or engage or even give you any thrills you haven't seen before in some shape or form, but is pretty cool, dude. It has its moments of "that technology is absolutely impossible" ridiculousness, and dramatic scenes that try too hard and mostly fall flat, but the overwhelming buzzy neon electro-music-video vibe, when combined with the full might of Daft Punk's original soundtrack, cannot be stopped.

Olivia Wilde is good, and her character is certainly the most fun to root for and watch at work. And I don't mean to say that it's because of eye-candy; her costume is strangely modest, given the norm in this sort of flick. I was very surprised to find that her role was refreshingly unsexualised. There's a shade of sexual tension, but her tender fascination with the boring lead male is understandable, given that he's the son of the dude that created her people's universe, and indeed just arrived from beyond it.

They've made Jeff Bridges look 20 years younger for some scenes through the magic of our favourite strategy: CGI. While awkward at points, it can be overlooked once everybody's in the electro-world. In the digital environment, a slightly rubbery face kind of suits Jeff Bridges.

The 3d effects, surprisingly, don't try to slap you in the face with cheap pop-outs, but stays pretty low key and keeps to background atmosphere. The decision to keep most of 3d stuff for the 'in the computer' environment is a smart one, and works to make the 3d tech an aesthetic choice rather than just a barefaced gimmick.

So: One of the coolest Daft Punk videos I've seen.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #89: Forbidden World (1982)

Hello Space Marine. Care to have space sex?

The innuendo
drips like the slime from
black meta-mutants

Another Roger Corman alien-ripoff oh shit we're stuck in a space lab movie! When will it end? Hopefully never, because it's like a beautiful dream.

I was smitten with Forbidden World from the start because it gives you this trippy opening montage where a robot wakes a guy out of cryogenic stasis with some Beethoven. While the ship is being attacked by raiders. That's how I'd do it.

This one's actually pretty cool. I'm pleased to say that there's an attempt to keep the camera interesting throughout most of the movie, since we get a pretty wide variety of shots of things from places you wouldn't expect, but not so many that it starts to look like an overenthusiastic student film wank. You will get gratuitous ass shots of women walking in high heels, though. Quite a few. They're made to walk up and down the corridors in what must be standard space lab attire: skin-tight silvery jump suits with low cut chests and high heels. There are nighties too, and many situations where the female characters feel the need to be topless. Babes will literally bump into the protagonist and introduce themselves by batting their eyes. As one scientist puts it, the women there are apparently starved for new faces.

I absolutely love how often people will stop to have sex when there's a killer mutant loose in their science facility. It's got to be a space fetish of some kind. There's this ridiculous and great sequence where a security guard, who is watching for the goddamned deadly mutant, watches the blonde scientist get it on with the dopey space marine protagonist instead. It's an amazingly creepy violation of security camera protocol. As he watches, he pulls at some kind of light up space yo-yo and sweats profusely. This is the greatest form of space sex innuendo possible.

The scene is extra funny because the security guard looks exactly like Tim Roth. We get some fantastic space porno music evidently coming from a token black guy playing a screechy clear plastic space saxophone. This all goes on for a full two minutes, and the song actually gets pretty darn catchy by the time they hit orgasm. Forbidden Planet has a genuinely cool soundtrack by the way, a very Goblin one.

So while watching, the guard catches a glitch on a sensor and decides to investigate. That, of course, is serious trouble. What I love about his cautious search for the alien is that every 25 seconds or so we get a split second of the scientist and space marine having sex in their room. At first I was confused - is this guy afraid he's about to die and is reliving the happiest moment of his life? The one a minute ago when he was watching space marine fuck that girl he probably wants so badly? Then I thought: no, wait, the monster is using psychic projections of her getting it on to lure him in, because every time he hears something or looks over, it cuts to a few frames of sex. By the time the monster hits it's clear that they were going for a sex and murder montage that actually turns out to be fairly effective. An orgy of blood! An orgy of love! Everything the viewer might want in a scene! We get a shot of a different scientist smoking a cigarette afterwards, and I feel in my heart that it was Roger Corman in spirit.

The lab facility has a space sauna, and in the morning the space marine gets it on with girl number two there. The actor's attempt to look seductive just looks really weird - this doofy smirk and wide eyed "Heh heh, eh baby?" expression that makes the guy wholly unlikable. This look of course works within seconds on girl two, who's boyfriend was killed by the monster the previous day. Incredible. Space marine walks in and 'EEEK GET OUT! LEAVE NOW LEAVE NOW!' and after that pervy look, switches to (and this is a quote) "Fair's fair, get naked."

After the mutant attacks them both, some guy actually bulldozes over the fact that there's a killer creature on the loose by asking "Hey you know what I wanna know? I wanna know what you and Tracy were doing in there dressed like that." Just so girl number one can add a catty comment. Clearly, what they were doing in the sauna is much more important than the fact that they were nearly transformed into a digestible food tissue by a vicious mutant, and somebody better damn well take care of it. Nobody seems to give a shit about the mutant until it's attacking someone.

Hmm...maybe we should do something about this soon?

Now, you might have read my review of 1991's Dead Space. Turns out that Dead Space was in fact Roger Corman's remake of Forbidden World. Same plot. Same characters. Different names. At least three lines of dialogue that I noticed in Forbidden World found their way into Dead Space. The opening space battle in DS is lifted from the opening of FW, and I'm guessing that FW probably takes it from some even earlier Roger Corman film. Probably Battle Beyond the Stars, though it's been a while since I've seen that one.

So: You really have to watch any movie where characters hit computer keys with glowsticks. Standard, ordinary dollar-store glowsticks. Because fingers just aren't good enough.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #88: Valhalla Rising (2009)

I've been meaning to write a review for Valhalla Rising for quite some time. I've name-dropped it in other reviews, promising that I'd one day say a bit more about it. That day is upon you.

If you read any of the reviews I posted about The Pusher Trilogy, you probably noticed that I have nothing but high praise for Danish writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn. I haven't seen anything he's touched that I haven't liked. His images are stirring and organic, and he knows how to pull interesting performances out of his actors. He seems to be able to work special magic when he's working with Valhalla Rising lead Mads Mikkelson, a guy who could very easily turn into a misused Hollywood action chump (like in the awful Clash of the Titans remake). But he's chosen some very interesting, and in the case of Valhalla, daring films to be part of. In Valhalla Rising he doesn't say a single word.

Mads is 'One Eye', a completely silent one-eyed Viking slave/prize-fighter who eventually finds himself on a ship filled with Scotsman bound for the Crusades. There's really not too much more to say about the plot.

I'd wager that anyone passing by the DVD case would be immediately mislead. It's image of a grim Viking warrior standing alone with an axe in hand might make you expect a film filled with spectacle-driven violence. It isn't. There's in fact very little violence, but what violence there is some of the grittiest, ugliest violence I've seen on a screen. Mads' screen presence is great, and though silent (not to be confused with mute), manages to present you with a startling enigma you constantly struggle to decipher in terms of emotion and motive. This movie is minimalist in its strategy in almost every way and works essentially as a thought-provoking, poetic, and captivating existential mood piece. And it's about a fucking Viking. Who knew.

So: My pick for best movie of the year (it was released in North America only recently). Might not be your cup of tea, but if anything I said tickled your fancy, watch it.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #87: Dead Space (1991)

Think about your hungry children, Bryan.

Another Roger Corman Alien rip-off with people and monster trapped in an inescapable lab!

Beastmaster dude Marc Singer plays a han solo-ish space marine, and he's alright. His mildly sarcastic robot sidekick is pretty cool. That's about all of interest in this movie.

The lead actress is absolutely terrible, and every line she delivers falls completely to the floor and shatters into pieces of "Why the fuck am I watching this?" I'd guess that she got the lead role because she was the only one to agree to get topless during the space-sex scene. Any of the relatively much more talented actresses in the cast would have been a better choice, and would have made Dead Space an easier pill to swallow. Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston makes a solid appearance as one of the main scientists at the facility though, and while nearly as boring as the other characters, it's clear from the get go that as an actor he's doing his absolute best with the gig.

The fight scenes are hilariously bad. I know I usually use words like "hilarious" in my reviews of terrible films, but this time I really really mean it. I actually laughed out loud during a few sequences, and had to pause the movie so my brain could do a reality check and confirm that I was actually seeing what I was seeing. Dead Space probably has the worst fight sequences I have ever seen, and I've seen my fair share of shitty violence. Characters just run around, back and forth, aimlessly diving and rolling. From one side of the room and then back again. To clutch at someone they don't think can hold their own and then topple over in fear. And normally, when you have a monster in a movie, you don't just have your characters start shouting and shooting and then show the monster lurking by the fog machine, you give a hint that the creature is there by the fog machine, all misty and atmospheric-like, and then you can have the heroes react. But this movie is riddled with instances where the characters are reacting to a monster we haven't been shown yet - not because we don't know what it looks like, we do already. But solely as an editing choice. The monster shots come last, come separately, and in some cases, have been shot in totally different locations and then edited together. It's pretty clear that most of the special effects shots were done late in the game, and that's normally a relatively fine stratagem if the editing supports it. The movie seems not to care overly much though.

The carelessness of the movie manifests in other numerous, joyously funny ways. Characters will sometimes enter a fight scene as though they were already battling for hours and are ready to pass out, just to match the forced intensity of the movie's scuffles. A particularly lame and cowardly character enters a room with an enormous alien creature he's terrified of and actually takes noticeable time to just walk up to it (in perfectly sound mind) just to get close enough so he could get killed for us. All the while he's being shouted at: "What are you doing? Where are you going?? What are you doing!?" At points it almost seems like a character takes on the consciousness of the movie and expresses its confusion over why it's doing what it's doing. The aforementioned lame character filled that role earlier by asking questions like "Why is he going up there??" and "What is he doing? He's stupid." Those were valid meta-questions, though within the film he was just being a dick.

The space marine walks into a room and somehow doesn't see the same huge alien creature that couldn't have possibly been hiding anywhere. He doesn't notice it until a claw peeks into the frame and attacks. The best response of course is to push the person he's trying to protect, his new girlfriend, onto the floor in front of the creature. He then backs up and starts shooting bullets that have never once injured the creature during the course of the film. If a bear ever came at my girlfriend and I during a secluded camping trip, I know I'd toss her down in front of the bear and start hurling small stones. I guess there's not too much threat with the monster though, it kind of just stands around and waves it's arms.

Of final note, this movie has an awful synthesized orchestral soundtrack that sounds like the jaunty background music to some old medieval strategy game.

So: I barely got through it, but I'm eternally grateful that this movie exists.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #86: The Terror Within (1989)

I've been watching more Roger Corman ripoffs of Alien. Galaxy of Terror wasn't enough. Corman seems to be following a set up he likes for its relative simplicity: people are stuck in an isolated and inescapable lab facility with a monster that ripped out of someone's body. The monster picks everyone off one by one by working its way through the air vents.

The Terror Within takes that formula and places it within a post-apocalyptic setting where women give birth to mutants called Gargoyles. Where Galaxy of Terror had a maggot rape sequence, this time we get a Gargoyle rape sequence! Not nearly as graphic as its predecessor but just as ridiculous.

There's not much to say about this one, apart from the fact that it's deliciously terrible and manages to satisfy my craving for post-apocalyptic movies, for the odd moment anyway. You'll get awful acting, macho heroes and pseudo-feminist "I want to fight too!" heroines, a guy in a rubbery mutant suit, and an ending with an explosive final move that doesn't make sense because it isn't necessary. It also ruins chances of future survival in case their rescue doesn't actually pan out.

That isn't a spoiler because the heroes don't actually use it save their butts. They do it because they seem fixated on blowing up their lab for some reason, and so that the lead male could say "Adios motherfuckers" when some Gargoyles, on cue, start to crowd around their dilapidated shack/secret entrance. This is of course for the sake of having an explosion in a movie that up until that point had none, and been relatively ok for it. I kind of like how afterwards, however, the two survivors just sort of wander off into the Gargoyle-infested desert with their dog, supposedly making for some other lab in just as bad shape, and the credits roll to haunting music. Chances that they'll make it? SLIM.

So: Chances that you need to watch this? SLIMMER. Unless you've got bad taste like myself.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #85: Four Lions (2010)

Chris Morris, a notoriously shy, reclusive BBC comedian and so-called "media terrorist" has directed his first feature film. And fittingly, it's about terrorism. Yippee! He's directed for and starred in various BBC television projects in the past, and his stuff is typically hilarious and full of biting commentary. Seeing his name on the DVD case certainly grabbed my interest, since it promised something aggressively satirical.

Four Lions centres on four British jihadists trying to take their ideals to a violent end and blow themselves up in the name of the great struggle against MacDonald's and Jews and all that jazz. One of the characters is so comfortable with blowing up that his own family encourages him lovingly towards his goal as though he were simply going for a raise at his security job. He's the one with the most relative sense, and the other guys are mostly hapless, confused, and belligerent. Some of them aren't exactly sure they want to blow up, but the peer pressure is too great for them. One goes so far as to try to train cute, friendly crows strapped with bombs to fly into sex toy shops and jihad themselves up to heaven. It doesn't go too well.

While the characters are clearly huge idiots, they also seem very human. The stupidity that it takes to blow yourself up and kill people doesn't precisely come from a fanatically religious place in Four Lions. Rather, it seems to have more to do with human insecurities and vulnerabilities. This makes the characters mostly sympathetic idiots rather than easily dismissed and disliked religious lunatics. You get the constant impression that these people are missing something and getting in way over their heads. The key phrase at a pivotal moment in the narrative is "I'm sorry. I don't really know what I'm doing."

So: Some interesting and endearing satire. Worth a look.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #84: Galaxy of Terror (1981)

Hi kids. Captain Spaulding here, this time with CRYSTAL NINJA STARS.

This wonderful Gigeresque Alien ripoff is full of familiar faces. I was amazed to see Robert Englund, Ray Walston, someone from Happy Days but not who you're thinking, and Sid Haig, all milling about in a space ship together in a movie that looks and plays out like an issue of Heavy Metal. Here's why:

After a generic scene where a dude somewhere is running away from something scary and dies, the movie proper opens in a way I wasn't expecting. The movie decides to trip the hell out. We get a guy playing some kind of lasery table game with an old witch. He's called The Master, and he has a glowing plasma flame for a head. No face.

The Master, getting it done.

Him and The Oracle are apparently deciding the fate of the planet, and The Master orders a rescue mission, one that apparently needs to happen for reasons of Destiny, to a planet where something awful happened years ago. The dialogue in that scene is grandiose and striking, and I eat that crazy space opera/space fantasy stuff up like alphacentaurigetti.

Though it's mostly rushed thanks to its hour and twenty runtime, the movie works pretty hard to give each character some kind of bizarre distinctness, most fun of which, and most out of the blue, is Sid Haig's character Quuhod. He's an understanding and empathic warrior-type who "lives and dies by the crystal," meaning that as a master of these cool crystal throwing blades he can touch no other weapon. Sid Haig apparently, on reading the script, insisted that Quuhod be played entirely mute. He thought the lines were terrible and didn't suit the character at all, and given most of the dialogue in the film, was probably right. Famed producer Roger Corman heard his pleas and agreed. Quuhod's muteness, coupled with the movie's tendency to give you hints of back story and lore without actually telling you what any of it is, adds a wonderful mystique to the narrative that the movie really needed. I kind of want a movie just with Quuhod, hiking across the galaxy like the man with no name and dealing in blade wounds instead of gunshots. But this is a universe where dreams are shattered. This is a galaxy....of terror! Though it might be a Battle Beyond the Stars, since it uses enough stock footage from that previous Corman sci-fi.

I found myself liking this flick not just for its Corman-infused silliness, but its streaks of seriousness. As I mentioned before, much of the stuff you see seems like it could have come right off the pages of Heavy Metal Magazine. The movie possesses the same kind of weird, dark, and at times sexual space opera that I can't get enough of, though almost did when it came to the maggot rape sequence. Yep.

I wish I could say a maggot was raped when I write "maggot rape sequence," but I'm afraid an enormous maggot rapes a busty blonde in Galaxy of Terror, and that the scene was a big part of the movie's relative success. I'd forgotten up until that point that I was watching a Roger Corman flick. It will only make sense once you find out what an evil pyramid in the movie is all about, but not much sense.

Also, James Cameron was apparently second unit director and production designer. In the special features there's a handful of really interesting anecdotes about a smug and combative Cameron berating people for various silly reasons. The prosthetics department supposedly made a monster partially in the likeness of Cameron, though I couldn't see any similarities apart from the claws and slime. The special features on the disc are great, and Roger Corman's interviews always offer illuminating insight into the filmmaking business and its trends and turns.

So: Fair amounts of gore, a Heavy Metal magazine vibe, and a haunting ending I wasn't expecting. Cool stuff.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #83: The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)

Still insatiable
hungry for monster movies
I watch Black Lagoon

There are embarrassingly huge gaps in my cinema history, and The Creature From The Black Lagoon has been on my 'to watch' list for years and on my mind for the past few months. Finally saw it, and was surprised by how much I liked it. Great atmosphere, great monster, and an environmental subtext I hadn't been expecting. There's a shot where the leading lady tosses an unwanted cigarette into the creature's lagoon, and the camera moves below the surface to the face of the creature, who watches silently. Thanks to how it's shot the cigarette becomes invasive, and, more importantly, insulting. This is some of the earliest environmental awareness I've seen in a Hollywood film, sci-fi fear of toxic waste and nuclear war aside. There's a scene where poison is dumped into the lagoon to force the creature out of hiding, and the comatose fish that litter the water's surface highlights the disregard for the natural world that the scientists, behaving more like hunters, are exhibiting.

The creature itself looks awesome, and the amount of understanding and sympathy we find in him makes for great monster cinema.

So: A thoroughly satisfying classic.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #82: Pig Hunt (2008)

Fangoria Magazine's foray into horror film production is a welcome experiment. Of the handful of films they've produced so far, I've only managed to see Pig Hunt because I was drawn to the dark and epic boar on the cover.

I'd heard it said that with Pig Hunt, the filmmakers realised that having a giant boar as a nemesis makes for demanding special effects, so they decided to throw a bunch of other dangerous obstacles in their way. Rednecks. Dangerous hippies. Lesser boars. This is for the most part effective, but in the end I found myself wanting Moby Dick in the forest far too much to reach any full appreciation.

The soundtrack is pretty nifty thanks to it having been partially composed by slap-bass demi-god Les Claypool, of Primus fame. He's also in the movie, as a violent redneck priest. The only kind of redneck priest, I suppose.

The giant pig, once it hits, is puppetous and satisfying for it. In general, if you've got the choice between low-budge CGI or low-budge practical effects, you'd better pick the latter. At the very least, your actors have something physical to contend with. Who doesn't want to watch a giant and slimy pig puppet crunch into a human being?

So: Has its moments, but the characters are mostly boring. This one's a maybe.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #81: Blue Planet (2001)

This BBC series apparently five years in the making is narrated by none other than the nature doc legend himself, David Attenborough. His wisened voice has lent itself well to the nature documentary for some time, and does no disservice to the sea. If you haven't treated yourself to a lengthy and thoroughly entertaining series like this yet, you better get on that while there are still animals in the ocean to appreciate.

As you'd expect, you'll be given stunning footage of the intricacies of undersea life, running through the various kinds of sea environments that the world has to offer. You'll be given footage and information that might even turn off the squeamish - nature, children's stories tell us, isn't exactly nice, or unfalteringly pretty. Easy to forget, but the series will offer up some firm reminders that majesty is a thing of power, and power is very often a thing of violence. When you're not seeing amazing beauty, you might be seeing killer whales play tennis with a baby seal, or the eggy, undulating jangly bits of lobsters ready to give birth.

So: Awesome. An emotional roller coaster at times, but in the healthiest way.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #80: Until The Light Takes Us (2008)

I'd heard about a handful of documentaries that have popped up over the past two or three years tackling Norwegian black metal and its turbulent history as their subject. When one actually appeared in front of me after I drew a pentagram in ketchup on the floor and lit some scented candles, I decided to give it a watch. Being big on Norwegian black metal myself, I was wary of being sold a cheap hunk of fan-service meant to do little more than nod in my direction for an hour and 20.

Opening up the DVD package I found a pretentious little booklet with a glowing review, an essay by the directors telling you what theoretical approach to use while watching, and a Fredric Jameson quote. Huh. Unexpected. But I should have expected this - with black metal having become a satanic farce, there's been a real push among aficionados to re-contextualise the subgenre and understand it as a clear instance of youth culture. And, moreover, as punk did before it, be recognised as a viable movement with an ethos of its own.

I'm happy to report that Until The Light Takes Us doesn't hammer that notion down into your skull as fiercely as the booklet does. Instead it follows the daily lives of four or five key figures in black metal history - of special note, Fenriz of Darkthrone and Varg Vikernes of Burzum, the latter of which was, at the time of filming, still in jail for murder and the arson of historic church sites. Other figures from the metal scene of the period pop in and out of the film, but the most engrossing portraits are found in those main two. They are old friends and they haven't spoken to each other in years. They don't come together in the film, as there is a palpable sadness that forces them to leave it all to time. It culminates during a scene where Fenriz is shown footage, shown earlier, of Varg speaking well of him and his music, but Varg, as always, is possessed by a persecution complex, and you can hear the accusation of abandonment in his voice. Fenriz actually holds back tears and laments over the past with little word.

There's a lot of psychoses on display in the film. His obsession with persecution aside, Varg hints at anti-semitism, Hellhammer explicitly approves of the killing of homosexuals, Fenriz tries to figure out where it all went sour, and a younger black metaller takes part in an ultra grim performance art piece proposed by a local painter. All reflect on what the genre is supposed to be about, and their points slowly converge. When all is said and done, we've been given a look at the really interesting and sympathetic people that invented a new mode of metallic expression, and the really interesting and awful ones that are an inseparable part of it too.

For black metal fans, you'll get the bonus of seeing intimate interviews with people you've probably mostly read about, and rare rehearsal footage you might have never seen before.

So: Surprisingly good. Worth a watch for fans and non-fans alike.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #79: Mystery Science Theater 3000: Santa Claus (1959, MST3K Version in 1993)

Forever at war.

Not sure what MST3k is? Read this first!

Apparently Santa was not in high standing in Mexico in '59. El Santo certainly was, but Santa and Christmas were, it was felt, a distinctly American tradition that had little place in the imaginations of Mexican children. How best to sell the Santa meme to Mexico? Why, the only way to properly bridge the gap is to put Santa in the service of god! You know, make him lock horns with satan and his minions! Kid movie stuff. The MST crew have a field day.

Santa lives in a cloud fortress made of crystal and filled with surreal anthropomorphic contraptions that monitor Earth. These contraptions were made by none other than fucking Merlin. Merlin lives in the fortress with Santa. Oh, and an army of 6 year old toy-making workers from every nation on the planet. These must be the purest child-souls to be found on Earth, to be working for god's newest general in a magic cloud city. The elves are nowhere to be found, and this will be a strange movie indeed. I can only assume that they, like the angels before them, grew jealous and rebelled and were cast down amidst the fire.

Soon enough we get a bizarre sequence with Santa playing organ and singing along with each nation's representatives in turn, and let me tell you, it is a badly dubbed buffet of racial stereotyping.

I'd have to say this episode possesses one of my favourite MST3K moments to date, a moment where the clockwork reindeer, having just been awakened from their year-long slumber, begin to laugh along with a merry Santa. Now, the reindeer's jaws open and shut in a jerking, string-pulled fashion and they can never blink. Their laugh grows into what I'm sure is an unintentionally disturbing cackle, a cackle the guys of course are compelled, in the evil spirit of Christmas, to join in on. It then becomes an unholy chorus of laughter akin to the scene in Evil Dead where Ash has his first true mental breakdown.

It's possibly the most offensive MST I've seen, and certainly one of the darkest. Given the subject matter of the film in front of them, the boys aren't afraid to make fun of every national culture they can think of in the name of fairness and in step with the flick, and poke fun at the rammed down your throat religiosity and fear of hell that this film tries to install into children.

So: Pretty damn awesome. Still with a bit a Hallowe'en in the brain yet ready for Christmas, this might be perfect for you sinners.