Tag: movie review

The Cabin in the Woods Movie Review

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Grade B- – The movie The Cabin in the Woods got a lot of positive buzz when it was released earlier this year. People who saw the movie said that it was different, that it played with the typical slasher movie conventions, turned these conventions around and created something new and unique. Being written by Joss Whedon (Firefly, The Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) was a huge plus as if anyone has experience with convention-busting it would be Whedon who helped reshape the vampire mythos in Buffy and later Angel.

The Cabin in the WoodsWhile I’d say The Cabin in the Woods is a good movie and there is a certain amount of convention-busting going on here, I’d also say that what keeps Cabin from being a better film is that it still relies heavily on those same slasher movie conventions to deliver the scares.

In Cabin, a group of teens visit said cabin in the woods where things aren’t quite what they seem. There, the teens accidentally let lose and ancient evil that begins murdering the teens one by one. But, the twist here is that something is controlling the teens and the evil for their own purposes. And telling anymore would spoil the movie.

What works well in Cabin is everything NOT to do with the teens and their horror situation. The teen part of the story is just like every slasher movie that’s come along in the last 30 years and is dull, dry and boring. However, everything outside of the teens and the situation they’re in, the spoiler territory, is quite interesting and unique.

However interesting it might have been, that and the fact that the ending that seemed to be a version of the ending of Cloverfield (2008), made The Cabin in the Woods a good film rather than a great one.

Prometheus Movie Review

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Grade B+: I’ve been a big fan of the Alien franchise of films for a long while now, and when the movie Prometheus was announced with it being rumored to be an Alien prequel film my interest was piqued. But Prometheus got enough bad press when it was released that I skipped seeing it in theaters and only recently caught up with it on DVD. What a mistake that was!

While Prometheus isn’t a film that’s going to win a lot of awards come Oscar season, it’s a really fun sci-fi flick that’s also nice to look at.

In Prometheus, the crew of the ship of the same name set down on a far off planet that might contain the remnants of an alien species that had a hand in seeding life on the Earth. But what this crew instead uncovers on this planet are unimaginable horrors that if released would threaten all life everywhere.

Honestly, Prometheus reminded me a lot, fairly or unfairly, of the Alien “inspired” flicks of the 1980s like Creature (1985) or Galaxy of Terror (1981). Essentially, those “inspired” movies all told slightly different versions of the Alien story — namely the crew of some spaceship fending off some sort of primitive force/creatures on some far off part of the galaxy — and that’s essentially what Prometheus does too, riff on that theme. But I’d argue that Prometheus is the BEST riff on Alien since Alien which is good enough for me!

If Prometheus has any weak points it’s that the movie seems oddly edited, like lots of exposition and story elements that might better explain what’s happening on screen were seemingly cut out in order to make the running time shorter and the writers of Prometheus seemed bound and determined to insert as many references to Alien as they could in the film no matter what.

A few of these references are cool, too many and they lose their impact.

Starship Troopers: Invasion Movie Review

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Grade C- : I am a fan of the Starship Troopers universe. I love the book, the early 2000’s TV series and especially the 1997 film. But while I dig those pieces, the sequels that followed the first film have been bad at best and terrible at worst. That’s why I was so excited about the animated Starship Troopers: Invasion (trailer) movie that was released on-demand a while back and is due out on DVD and Blu-ray August 28. It seemed like that film could take all of the best bits of Starship Troopers; interesting story, giant bugs, lots of action and discard all the negative bits; namely the limitations of a live-action and low-budget.

Unfortunately, Invasion plays out like an extended scene from a video game that’s heavy on action but light on logic.

In Invasion, the starship “Alesia” is missing and it’s up to a team of troopers to take it back from the bugs. There are a few twists and turns along the way and a few new bugs to boot, but that’s about it. Once the troopers land on the Alesia they shoot bugs, and bugs kill troopers. And since the troopers all wear the same suits of armor I was never sure if those being killed were characters I was supposed to care about or the nameless “red shirt” masses seemingly there only to meet a gruesome end at the maws of the bugs.

Worst of all, since Invasion is rated “R” there was lots of cursing and even nudity and sex that felt totally out of place in a 3D animated film. I felt “icky” after watching Invasion and it wasn’t because of all the blood in the movie.

Still, while Invasion isn’t a great movie by any means, it’s still much better than the Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004) and Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008) sequels.

The Raid: Redemption Movie Review

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Grade C+: In The Raid: Redemption (trailer), a SWAT team in an unnamed country raids a residential building that’s been taken over by criminals. Their aim is simple; to remove crime lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy) and his minions from from the building and return it to the people. But things don’t go as planned and when the SWAT team with rookie officer Rama (Iko Uwais) finds out that their raid is unauthorized with no one knowing where they are, it’s too late. They’re already inside and team find themselves with the unenviable task of fighting their way back out of the building through hundreds of killers all out for their blood.

The Raid reminded me a great deal of the John Carpenter classic Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), except here instead of the bad guys trying to break into the building housing the cops they’re instead trying to keep the cops from breaking out. However, I’d say the big difference between The Raid and Assault on Precinct 13 is that whereas Assault had an interesting story, The Raid was mostly martial arts fight scenes only interrupted by little strings of story.

I’m usually a sucker for movies with extended fight scenes – see my review of Haywire. But in Haywire, where the fight scenes seem like tightly focused beams of hurt, the many, many fight scenes of The Raid seem akin to fireworks. At first they’re awesome but after a while it becomes background noise.

Don’t get me wrong; the fights in The Raid were all well choreographed, extremely violent and exciting – in fact some of them were the best scenes of that type I’ve ever seen committed to film. But, by the end of The Raid I was suffering from some serious “fight fatigue” and was ready for all the punching to be over.

Disaster Du Jour #2: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

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There are some disaster movies that are obviously disaster movies like Earthquake and The Day After Tomorrow, but there are also some disaster movies that don’t seem like disaster movies but actually are like the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).

A sort of a sort of reboot to/origin of the 1960s-70s Planet of the Apes films, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rise) chronicles the beginning of the end of the dominance of mankind the the start of the dominance of the “apekind” over the Earth.

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