Can Somebody Install A Machine Gun On My Car?

Another weekend, another trip to the movies. This time, my dad and I headed out and caught Death Race, Paul W.S. Anderson's remake of the Roger Corman-produced 1975 cult classic Death Race 2000. As someone who enjoyed the utter silliness of Death Race 2000, I have to say I entered the remake with a minor bit of trepidation. They'd made some serious alterations to the original movie's plot and Paul W.S. Anderson is the director, so that's two strikes against it. But in spite of that, I thought it was a relatively entertaining movie.

Death Race is exactly what you'd expect from a movie directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. It's loud, badly filmed and edited, and ultimately hollow. But I can't bring myself to hate Death Race. Call me crazy, but sometimes I just like to watch a movie that's nothing but car chases and explosions. Seriously, that's all there is to Death Race. No deeper meaning, nothing to say about society or anything like that (despite the incredibly overused plot point that Death Race is being broadcast as an online pay-per-view event). The whole movie is just a bunch of cars with machine guns and rocket launchers strapped to their hoods. Sometimes, that's all a person like me could really ask for in a movie.

If you're a complicated moviegoer with complicated tastes, then Death Race isn't going to be up your alley. And even if it is your type of movie, it may be hard to overlook the shaky camerawork, the choppy editing, and the thorough lack of substance. But if you can get past all of those flaws, you'll find that Death Race never once tries to be more than what it is: an excuse to watch cars with machine guns shoot at each other for nearly two hours. And if that sounds like a fun way to spend an afternoon to you, then Death Race is a solid choice. I'm going to give it three and a half stars on my world famous Five-Star Sutton Scale, and a thumbs up. Heck, I'd have given it a thumbs up anyway, just because they gave David Carradine a cameo as the character he portrayed in Death Race 2000. Now if only they could have given Sylvester Stallone a cameo too...

Get It In Gear, DC!

So I was looking around YouTube, as I am prone to do, and I stumbled upon the teaser for the animated Wonder Woman movie that Warner Brothers is releasing straight to video next February. And all I have to say is, "huh?" Warner Brothers and DC can do a feature-length Wonder Woman cartoon, but can't get their act together long enough to do that live-action movie that's been rumored for a few years now?

I'm actually disappointed with the output of Warner Brothers and DC's superhero movies. Yeah, they've adapted comics like A History of Violence, Hellblazer, and Road to Perdition (plus the yet-to-be-released movies based on Watchmen and The Spirit). But when it comes to mainstream characters like Batman, Superman, and the like, they're lacking. Since the genre really took off at the beginning of the decade, there's been two Batman movies, Superman Returns, and Catwoman. And that's it! Compare that to the twenty Marvel movies between 1998 and right now, with the twenty-first coming out in December. While DC is taking their sweet time putting their movies out, Marvel's getting a lot of their major (and some of their minor) characters out there for consumption. And that's not to mention the Wolverine movie coming out next summer, the Thor, Captain America, Ant-Man, and Avengers movies that are in development, and the inevitable Iron Man sequel. It's crazy!

Now I'm not saying that Warner Brothers should start cranking these things out all willy nilly or anything like that. But two a year could work. Warner Brothers owns New Line Cinema now too, so they could always pawn off a few of DC's properties over to New Line. I'd also enjoy seeing them start building towards a shared universe akin to Marvel's preparations for the Avengers movie. I know they got really close to doing a Justice League movie before the Writers Guild went on strike, but I don't think they need to do it right away. Why not do solo movies first, instead of taking the X-Men route (group movies first, solo spinoffs later)?

I've heard rumors of a possible reboot of the Superman movie franchise, so maybe they could start the shared universe idea there. Maybe they could have Superman explain his brightly-colored costume and more personable demeanor by saying he wants to be different from Batman? Or at the very least, they could have Christian Bale do a cameo where he gets interviewed by Lois Lane at some charity function. You know, just something a little more than referencing Gotham City in some throwaway line in a throwaway scene, like in Superman Returns. (Or if you'd count it, something bigger than the quickie Metropolis reference in Batman Forever). I'm no big-shot Hollywood writer or anything, so if some bigwig out in Hollywood is reading this, you can have those ideas for free.

I guess it's because I grew up being more of a DC fan than a Marvel fan is what makes me want to see DC's movies become as prevalent as Marvel's. But it really seems like outside of Christopher Nolan's very awesome Batman franchise, Warner Brothers and DC have no clue what they're doing. I mean, even the worst of Marvel's movies end up being better than Catwoman. (Seriously, what idiot approved Catwoman for a theatrical release?) Maybe someone should take a cue from Marvel and create DC Studios, so the dots between the movies could be connected. Or maybe they could just talk Chris Nolan and David Goyer into doing all of DC's superhero movies?

Then again, with The Dark Knight being the number-one movie in America for a month straight and making more money than anybody would know what to do with, maybe they've got the right idea after all.

Enough With The Asian Remakes!

I just got back from seeing Mirrors, the newest remake of an Asian horror movie. Thanks to the combination of Alexandre Aja in the director's chair and Kiefer Sutherland in the starring role, it actually had potential. But to tell you the truth, they need to just cut it out with these movies. Seriously, Mirrors is one big letdown.

I can't say that the movie totally sucked. Aja did a good job, the music is great, and there are some genuinely spooky parts. But outside of that, Mirrors wasn't all that impressive. There was at least one gaping plot hole, silly acting, bad CGI, and the general feeling that there was nothing positive being added to a genre that just seems to be getting dumber with every new movie. Long story short, I'm going to give it three out of five on the Sutton Scale. That sounds about right, considering I liked about half of it.

But seriously, it seems to me like every one of these remakes of Asian horror movies are starting to become the same thing. Just take some random, harmless inanimate object and turn it into a malevolent force of evil, and you've got yourself a remake of an Asian horror movie. There's been VHS tapes, water, cameras, cell phones, the Internet, mirrors, and even the human eye. The Grudge is, as far as I can tell, the only exception. Sure, not all of them are bad, but the good ones seem like they're few and far between. Somebody just needs to put a moratorium on the genre until they can come up with something really awesome.

Please, Hollywood, do it for my sanity.

Writing For The Sake Of It

You know, I must have missed the memo, but I would have been happy if Blogger had let me know they were going to be tinkering around with the layouts of some of the blogs. I noticed the other day that the very blog you're reading right now had been reduced to just a simple white page with the text in Times New Roman, with with no fancy formatting or anything like that. I had to go in, hit the reset button, and re-add all the links and revolving taglines in order to straighten it out. It looks like I've got it taken care of, but it was still a bit of an inconvenience. And me and inconveniences just don't jive.

Anyway, there's other things I'm here to talk about. For example, I've finally started getting back into writing. I finished up two new reviews earlier in the week, which is nice, because I felt like I've been working on them for forever in a day. But alas, it'll be a while before I have them posted, as they're part of my "Super Saturday 2" project. And I'm actually thinking of putting a temporary hold on that project so I can do a few extra reviews to tide you, my faithful readers, over until I can get "Super Saturday 2" finished. I watched The Lost Boys for the first time in forever a couple of days ago, which really put me in the mood to review that and its recently-released sequel sometime in the future. So maybe you should keep an eye out for them in the next few months?

I've also been wanting to write about a lot of the movies I've been downloading over the last eight months. Movies like George Romero's Diary of the Dead and Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd have been crying out for me to finally watch them, while Juno is totally waiting for my repeat viewing. Plus I have a bunch of other movies I'd like to get around to reviewing, but as I'm wont to say, we'll just have to see how it goes.

But I plan on having something worth reading posted sometime in the near future... maybe. Of course, I could just work on improving my regular posts instead of doing this "here's what I'm trying to write" style of thing, but I've kinda gotten into a routine here. Know what I mean? Yeah, I'm sure you do.

So that's about it for this one. I'm sure you'll here more from me later.

Getting Caught Up

I've been downloading a bunch of movies lately, but I've been putting off watching them because I've been getting caught up doing other things instead. (Mainly downloading more movies while trying to put in the occasional bit of work on that "Super Saturday 2" project that I've spoken of in the past). But I finally got around to watching two of my illegally-acquired movies last night, so I figure I might as well talk about them. I don't have anything else to talk about, so why not that?

First was a movie with the most appropriate title ever, Zombie Strippers. Yes, I actually acquired and watched a movie named Zombie Strippers, no joke. The movie stars Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund and prolific porn star Jenna Jameson, and the movie is basically about exotic dancers who become undead flesh-eating ghouls. That's pretty much the entire plot, actually. Girls get naked and dance, turn into zombies, get naked and dance some more, then eat people. Repeat ad nauseum for ninety minutes, and you have Zombie Strippers.

But the truth is that the movie is a lot of fun. If there was any way I could go back in time and make it the second half of Grindhouse instead of Death Proof, I'd titally do it. I say that because Zombie Strippers is definitely a modern version of what a classic grindhouse movie would be. It's nonsensical, so full of cheese that I'm surprised it wasn't sponsored by Kraft Foods, and is wholly based around the three B's of grindhouse movies: blood, boobs, and bullets. It's pretty much the greatest Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie ever made. And for all it's worth, Zombie Strippers is more entertaining than it should be. So I'm going to give it three and a half stars on my Five-Star Sutton Scale.

Up next was The Condemned, the third venture from WWE Films. I missed the movie during its theatrical run last year, mainly because it was such a tremendous failure that all the theaters in my neck of the woods only carried it for two weeks. But I finally got the chance to watch it, and I actually thought it was pretty good. It definitely the best of the three movies produced by WWE Films so far. (Though that isn't really saying much, considering See No Evil and The Marine were no great shakes.) Steve Austin makes a credible action movie star, and the always-entertaining Vinnie Jones is fun as one of the movie's villains.

While the plot is pretty much a modified version of Battle Royale's, the movie does make a very thin attempt at social commentary. Unfortunately, it isn't a fully developed as it could have been, leaving us with good parts but no great wholes. (Couldn't The Condemned have pretended it was May for a second and stitched those parts together to make a while?) But other than that, I really didn't have a problem with The Condemned. It's a solid action movie that, though flawed, it isn't as bad as the box office returns may let on. Like with Zombie Strippers, I'll give The Condemned three and a half stars and a big thumbs up. It's totally worth at least one viewing.

So that pretty much sums things up. I'm hoping to get around to watching all the other movies I've acquired lately. Plus I really need to start putting more work into my aforementioned "S@TM" project. I'm really slacking off on it. Perhaps I've put too much on my plate with it? I mean, my reviews nowadays are few and far between as it is, but do I really want to sit down and write thirteen consecutive ones? It's not like I'm getting paid for it or anything. (But if any of you readers want to send me a big fat check with my name on it, I wouldn't say no!) I don't even feel like really watching some of the movies I had lined up, let alone write about them, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

I'll just have to play it by ear and see how it goes. I know my readership isn't very high, but I don't want to disappoint those of you who are regular readers by not delivering on something I've been trying to hype. It's not like I'm George Lucas or anything.

Sibling Rivalry... Sort Of

Howdy, folks, and welcome to the month of August here at the MSX. And as I am wont to do, I made my usual weekend trip to the movie theater. This particular trip was to check out Step Brothers, the new comedy starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. And while the reviews for the movie have been mixed at best, I didn't think it was too bad of a movie. Matter of fact, I thought it was pretty darn funny.

I'll admit that the movie does have a few flaws. Like the story, for example, is complete nonsense from start to finish. But the movie redeems itself by being as silly as possible. But not a minute or two goes by without something that's at least a little funny. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly should probably go ahead and have themselves surgically attached to Judd Apatow, just to make sure that their future comedies don't suck. (Just sayin', is all...)

So yeah, Step Brothers isn't all that bad. It's definitely good for some laughs, that's for sure. (And it's weird that the characters are pretty much exactly like me, except I'm not forty and my parents are still married.) I guess that on my still patent-pending Five-Star Sutton Scale, I'd say Step Brothers is worth about three and a half stars. And that sounds about right.