Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

I like both Underworld and Underworld: Evolution. They feel like the movies Paul W Anderson could have made if he (or the movie company) wasnt so obsessed with getting that fucking PG13 rating. Slick and violent, and it also featured the pleasant eyecandy that is Kate Beckinsale in a tight leather outfit. Yum. So, the franchise has to continue but as often is with sequels, the movie company want a large profit but it has to cost less and for some reason the directing duties go to the original movies cameraman or some special effects guy. In this case Patrick Tatopoulos, the creature designer from the previous movies. This usually ends in catastrophe.

But on the other hand, Underworld: Rise of the lycans actually manages to keep the original cast. Since it is a prequel you can bring back the dead, which means that Bill Nighy, Michael Sheen, Kevin Grevioux and Steven Mackintosh reprise their earlier roles in the series and just by doing that, it gets extra credit. The script doesnt really give them much to do other than to snarl at each other whicle wearing contact lenses that in some cases doesnt really seem to fit the wearer properly. Rhona Mitra plays Michael Sheens character's loved one Sonja, and although they dont really have that much of a chemistry together, Mitra is still great to look at in her warrior outfit. Tatopoulos does an ok job directing the whole piece and Ross Emerys bluetinted photography is gorgeous, with only the cgiblood not really working. The colour of it is too bright and stands out way too much, but it's so fake looking that I'm starting to wonder if its an aesthetic choice. We do get quite a lot of it and friends of comicbook violence will gorge themselves. So, it is an entertaining movie which is fairly entertaining, I will admit to that. the only problem is that the story isnt particulary interesting. It was good as a flashback in the first movie but stretched out into a full length movie, no. The plight of the enslaved lycans doesnt really engage, especially since they all look like extras in a Xena the warrior princess episode. Still, if you liked the first two movies there is a chance you just might like this one too. It contains decent amounts of violence, which is a good thing.

Running zombies?

So, I just read a couple of years old interview with Dan O'Bannon where one of the subjects was the running zombie. Zack Snyder, the director of the remake of Dawn of the dead, supposedly claimed in an interview that he invented the running zombie, and O'Bannon was slightly peeved with that (only slightly though, when he is really pissed, it's usually pretty obvious) since he felt that his Return of the living dead was the first with that.

Now, the horrorfans out there might remember a fun little flick called La invasión de los zombies atómicos aka Incubo sulla città contaminata aka City of the walking dead aka Nightmare city by Umberto Lenzi. Yes, I am fully aware of the fact that the creatures arent supposed to be zombies, but the movie is generally placed in the italian zombie canon and a couple of the alternative titles suggests that it is, in fact, a zombiemovie.

So, did Umberto Lenzi invent the running zombie, or are there earlier examples? I seem to recall an american 70s movie called The Child which had pretty lively undead but it's been a while since I saw it. Any other examples?

The Nest aka Nid de guêpes (2002)

Here is another piece of solid entertainment for lovers of thrillers. The story is a bit similar to Assault on Precinct 13, but has that certain french mentality which keeps it slightly above its peers and stands entirely on its own merits. This is my kind of friday night entertainment, unless its full of rubbermonsters of course.

An albanian mobboss has been captured by the German police and is being transported to France to stand trial. On route to prison from the airport the convoy is attacked and the survivors are forced to take refuge in a large warehouse in the middle of nowhere. In the meantime, a group of robbers are just about to have the worst day in their lives, as they try to steal two containers full of laptops, only to be caught in the struggle between the special forces policemen and the mobs hitmen. Yes, lots of bullets will be fired tonight.

The only thing that is remotely negative with this movie is that the characters arent especially developed. You dont really get to know them at all, other than the fact than a couple of the policemen have children and that the robbers come from poor backgrounds. And thats it. Fortunately they are all played by good actors and for once you actually believe that the police officers are special forces, behaving like you think special forces would behave in a situation like this. The script is nothing new, but plays out well from start and maintains a good tension throughout. Florent Emilio Siri, whose next directing gig was the intromovie for the cideogame Splinter Cell, knows how to keep everything running smoothly and there is never a dull moment, even in the buildup before the shooting stars. Ok, so the scene where the robbers do their own karaoke version of an Ennio Morricone piece is a bit... hokey.. but hey, who cares? Stick with it and you will be rewarded with lots of glorious violence. A good actionthriller without all the hollywood cliches, very well recommended.

Credo (2008)

So, this movie only claim to fame is that it features a member of the british band Boyzone. I dont know who he is or what character he played but he's the one who died in real life a few months back. He might've been one of the people in the movies intro, I dont really know. That's how interested I was. It's not a worthless movie though, it has a few nice scenes, but on the other hand it has one of the crappiest end twists in a long, long time.

It starts well. A group of students gather in the attic of a school to form a pentagram and try to summon Beelzebub, but one of them chickens out and breaks the circle. The others continue with the ritual and are all found dead the next day, in what seems to be suicides. Flash forward some time to an apartment in London where a female student is trying to study for a crucial test, all while her flatmates are having a pretty wild party which results in them being evicted. This all leads to them breaking into the school we saw in the beginning, now abandoned. Our heroine tries to continue with her studies but when the power goes out she finds her friends indugling themselves with an Ouijaboard, and what do you know? Strange things start to happen, a bum who just might be the survivor of the prologue roams the place and everyone starts to die, one by one.

We've seen this all before, lots of times. Credo has nothing new to offer but handles its suspense well, relying more on sounds and atmosphere. The movie leans more towards good than bad and everything is fairly professional. The acting is decent, the direction capable and there is nothing really bad about the whole thing. Until the end. I'm gonna end this now by saying that Credo is an ok, bloodless timewaster which has a bunch of good scenes. You can do worse. But you will most likely hate the end, which I am about to spoil now. If you absolutely have to see this movie, skip the rest of the text:

SPOILER


It is revealed, after everyone has died but our heroine, that it is all in her mind. We see the rest of the gang messing with the Ouijaboard where they come in contact with some entity which reveals itself to be our stressed out student who has hung herself in the attic. Thanks to our resident perv who has placed cameras all over the place we see her walking around talking to people who arent there until she walks up to the attic. More than half of the movie never happened. The End. Wtf? Is that supposed to be some sort of clever twist? It is not.

Across 110th street (1972)

There are five types of movies that I especially enjoy:

1. Giant monster movies. Preferably japanese. Nuff said.

2. Conspiracy thrillers. Three days of the condor, stuff like that.

3. Spanish 70s horror. There's nothing like Paul Naschy pounding all females he can get his hands on and Maria Kosti or Helga Line showing their birthday suits to liven up your day.

4. Alien clones. Anything with an alien and a spaceship will do it for me. Should be produced by Roger Corman.

5. Gritty violent 70s thrillers. French connection is the best example of that and the movie I am about to review now falls into that category perfectly.

When the movie starts a bunch of Italian mobs are counting the weeks income from selling drugs in a rundown apartment in Harlem. Two men dressed as policeofficers rush in but when the mobs realize they arent real policemen, everything turns into a massacre. The mobs are gunned down and a couple of real policemen are killed when the robbers try to flee. Ok, so I can understand that being poor and living in Harlem during the seventies wasnt exactly the best life, but robbing the mafia and killing policemen? This isnt going to end well. Throughout the rest of the movie we follow the robbers as they expose themselves one by one and the police trying to find them before the mafia does. Lots of bloodshed, yes.

It's a violent world our characters live in. One of the cops, played by Anthony Quinn, has worked in Harlem for most of his career, hitting and bullying suspects however he pleases. He has already given up and is on the take and when a younger Captain takes over the case, he gets even more violent. The younger captain, played by Yaphet Koto, is a more by the book policeman, but doesnt take crap from anyone. Combine this with a mobcontrolled Harlem and an aging mobhitman who is desperate to prove that he isnt just the guy who married the mobleaders daughter and we have a pretty explosive concoction. When one of the robbers starts flashing money around, there will be hell to pay.

Oh yes, this is good stuff. Bleak and violent, you realize pretty quick that there wont be many survivors when this conflict is over. As you can tell from the synopsis above, there is only a matter of time before one of the robbers fucks everything up and it sure as hell wont be pretty. When you got a good group of actors such as Anthony quinn, Yaphet Kotto and Anthony Franciosa in the lead roles, its hard to fail. The locationwork is authentic, the camerawork has that roughness that makes it feel more real and it moves with a decent enough pace to dread the inevitable doom thats coming. There are a few Superfly characters but even though they might come close to parody, they still feel like they belong in the movie. This is an excellent little flick which belongs in the category of movies that makes violence feel more harrowing than entertaining. And then there is that funky themesong by Bobby Womack that is just so friggin awesome... Good stuff, well recommended if you want a hardcore thriller.

2012 (2009)

Yes, 2012 is exactly so full of used cliches as you would expect. Just look at the trailer and you know exactly what to expect. Yes, the movie is full of improbable scenes that would have left the main characters stone dead if it was based on reality but what the hell, it is a disaster movie. We require, and get, tons of cool scenes of massdestruction that only a giant mutated reptile or turtle could improve. You see, the mayans were right - when their calendar ends so will the earth. There will be giant solar eruptions which will send lots of mu or nu-somethings towards earth, heating up the earths core and it will end within the total destruction of all life within the end of 2012. Why they didnt send some sort of vechicle into the core and dumped tons of freezebombs to cool it down I do not understand, but thats a movie for Asylum to make. Anyway, John Cusack finds out about this from wack Woody Harrelson and manages to find out that the government has plans to save parts of humanity, or at least the ones who has lots of dough to pay for their salvation. He would like to save his own family and gets the chance when her exwifes husband happens to be a pilot. Why does broken up marriages always have to be mended in American movies? I couldn't care less if John Cusack gets back with Amanda Peet, to the cost of her new husbands life, they will still break up again in a few years and the kids will most likely blame their dad for it. Oops, I guess that was a spoiler but it's not like you didnt see it coming. Stuff like that has to happen, even if it means that the rather nice new husband has to be horribly crushed to death. But the dog has to survive. You cant kill the dog. Well, unless its the sixty million dogs you dont see die.

Yes, there is nothing new here but when did a disastermovie have to be a breath of fresh air. We just want the destruction to be bigger than before and 2012 does just that right. There are tons of cool scenes of that to enjoy and the special effects are excellent. To narrow it down, if you liked the trailer you will most likely like the movie. Just be aware of the fact that this is a Roland Emmerich movie, more cliched than that is hard to find, but in this context it works just fine. For lovers of disaster and mayhem.

Left hand of the law aka La polizia interviene: ordine di uccidere (1975)

Gritty Italian policethrillers are always fun, and I must admit that The Left hand of the law is one of the better I've seen. It has a good story, great acting and dialogue that the normal dubbing process doesnt manage to destroy, which doesnt happen that often when it comes to dubbed Eurocrime/eurohorror/eurowhatever. The hunky Leonard Mann plays Murri, the captain in charge of a special squad within the policeforce in an Italian town. When the boss of a large company is kidnapped, two of the squadmembers are gunned down in cold blood and Murri swears revenge. When he starts to dig in the matter he realizes that there are traces of a conspiracy pointing high up in the senate. Someone is trying to kill him and when both his mistress and his wife become targets, Murri gets angry.

There isnt a boring minute in this movie. There are fistfights, bloody shootouts, nudity, carchases and even a cameo from Janet Ågren. The script is wellwritten although it's pretty obvious who the culprits are, but Leonard Mann is such a likable hero, even though he cheats on his wife, that he carries the entire movie well on his shoulder. Although you recognize most of the dubbing voices from other Italian movies, for some reason they seem to have given it a little extra since most of the dialogue works alot better than usual. There is also a pretty funny role for James Mason as a gay senator, not exactly the kind of stuff you are used to see him in. Director Giuseppe Rosati, who also directed Fear in the city, aquits himself well with a few fun carchases and some general fun along the way. All in all, a fun movie for fans of the genre.