The Boy (2016) – Review

Creepy dolls in the horror genre is nothing new; from The Twilight Zone’s “Living Doll” episode to The Conjuring’s lame spin-off Annabelle we’ve been subjected to countless iteration of the scary doll motif. In the film The Boy takes the sub-genre to an even deeper level lame than we got with Annabelle or that terrible Poltergeist remake. Director William Brent Bell knows how to create an atmosphere of fear and dread, but then he tosses that all aside for cheap jumps scares. Worse is that two of those jumps scares are of the “It was just a dream” variety. I haven’t been so annoyed with dream sequences since Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Though to be fair The Boy came out before the BvS movie, but this film could have been improved vastly if one of the dreams had The Flash traveling back in time to warn us to not watch this movie.

 

*Spoilers ahead*

The movie begins with young American Greta Evans (Lauren Cohan) arriving at an imposing English mansion where she has accepted a babysitting job. The job is to take care of eight year old Brahms while his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Heelshire (Jim Norton/Diana Hardcastle), take off for a much deserved holiday. There is only one small problem; Brahms is not a real boy but a life sized porcelain doll. It’s at this point a rational person would be trying see how fast they can get that cab back but not our Greta, she just rolls with it as Mrs. Heelshire informs Greta of all her responsibilities in caring for Brahms; read to him, dress and feed him, and play loud Gregorian music. So right off the bat writer Stacey Meaner hands us a premise that is incredibly hard to swallow, and as the movie continues it just gets harder and harder. Who in their right mind would stay and do this job? Let’s check off the red flags shall we?

 

1) Creepy gothic manor in the middle of nowhere.

 

2) Disturbing family portrait.

 

3) No cell service.

 

4) This fucking doll.

Consider the suspension of disbelief broken. Sure we get a backstory that Greta has fled Montana to escape an abusive ex-boyfriend, but is this the only job on the planet? I don’t care how much they are paying her for this gig because even if there isn’t anything supernatural going on it still means your employers are little bit crazy. Who needs that shit on top of a stalking ex-boyfriend? The movie does establish quickly how Greta is not the most level headed thinker; when the Heelshires depart for their holiday, after Mrs. Heelshire creepily whispers into Greta’s ear, “I’m sorry.” She once again fails to take the hint and call a cab. During a stormy night she discovers that someone has cut a lock out of her hair, stolen her necklace while she was showering, and thenshe hears what sounds like a child’s laugh and footsteps in the hall she goes to investigate.  And when she finds the ladder to the attic mysteriously down what does she do?

 

She investigates the dark attic while wearing a towel.

It just gets worse from here. Local grocery delivery man Malcom (Rupert Evans), tells Greta that the Heelshire’s lost their son on his eighth birthday in a tragic fire, and that the doll appeared shortly afterwards. She is also told that Brahms was an “odd” boy and it is rumored he could have been responsible for the murder of local girl. It’s also noted that the fire happened the same day as the murder, just before authorities had a chance to question Brahms. Does Greta now ask Malcom to help her pack and drive her to the airport? No, she hangs around this spooky ass house as objects continue to apparently move on their own, and a child’s voice on the telephone asking her to, “Come play, pretty Greta” and “Why won’t you follow the rules?” Brahms even leaves her favorite sandwich outside her door. It’s at this point that Greta comes to the realization that somehow the ghost of the dead child inhabits the doll, and it’s because he is shy that no one sees him when he moves. Yeah, that makes sense. So Greta decides to take the job seriously and begins to treat the doll like real child, and she follows the list given to her by the Heelshires, a list which mysteriously appeared next to the doll.

Rules:

1. No Guests
2. Never Leave Brahms Alone
3. Save Meals in Freezer
4. Never Cover Brahms’ Face
5. Read a Bedtime Story
6. Play Music Loud
7. Clean the Traps
8. Only Malcolm Brings Deliveries
9. Brahms is Never to Leave
10. Kiss Goodnight

But they completely forgot:

11. No Bright Lights
12. Don’t get Him Wet
13. Never Feed Him After Midnight

It’s at this point I suspected that Greta had actually gone nuts from shock, but soon she enlists Malcolm in her insanity, even getting Brahms’ help proving that the he is in fact alive. Greta treats this all with a giddy sense of fun, kind of like the way the mom in the original Poltergeist reacted to the furniture moving on it's own, but in that case a dead kid and voices on the phone weren’t a factor. Malcolm even tries to float the idea that they don’t know for sure if this spirit isn’t malevolent, and that odd little Brahms could have been a murderer. Greta pooh-poohs this as her sweet porcelain Brahms would never hurt her.

 

Cue idiot ex-boyfriend.

How did this jerk track her to England all the way from Montana you ask? Well turns out he banged on her family’s door, telling them he was sorry and wanted to send her a letter apologizing for the whole abuse and miscarriage that resulted. Do her parents offer to mail the letter for him? No, they give him her address in England so that he can continue to stalk her and violate the restraining order. Either her parents are dumber than she is or they want her dead for some reason. Regardless Cole (Ben Robson), her psychotic ex-boyfriend, shows up unannounced and tells her that he has plane tickets for the both of them to return to Montana the very next day. Brahms is not cool with that.

 

*Massive Twist Spoiler Ahead*

Despite Malcolm showing up, giving her an easy out, Greta doesn’t ask for his help, doesn't call the local authorities or do much of anything aside from offering Cole a pillow and a blanket. During the night Cole is woken by dripping blood as someone has used dead rats to write "Get Out" in blood on the wall above him. Cole rightfully freaks out and accuses Greta of writing the message; while Greta tries to explain to Cole that it is the doll’s doing Malcolm arrives, (he was waiting outside in his car like a useless twit), and the two try and convince Cole that the doll is alive. Cole does the next sensible thing, he smashes the porcelain dolls head to smithereens. The room erupts with weird rumblings as the walls begin to shake, and just as Cole presses his ear against a large mirror and says, “Shhh, there’s something…” the mirror explodes in the asshats face.

 

Enter the real Brahms.

Yeah, turns out that Brahms (James Russell) didn’t die in the fire all those years ago but has been living in the walls for the entire time, and he just sneaks out to move the doll around to vicariously live through his porcelain avatar. **sigh** Up to this point the film had been a fairly ridiculous horror film, one that at times managed to give a person goosebumps, that is when it wasn’t going for cheap jumps scares, but this twist reveal is just plain terrible and not even all that original. Back in 2009 there was an episode of Supernatural where a supposed haunted house turned out not to actually be haunted, but that there was a crazy person living in the walls. So not only is this script full of unbelievable stupid characters it’s not even all that original. The film then tries to turn itself into a chapter of Friday the 13th as the masked killer stalks Greta and Malcolm through the house.

 

Well he’s got the mask, but he’s missing the machete.

The problem here is that Brahms isn’t some unstoppable supernatural force like Jason Voorhees was, he’s just some dude that’s been living in the walls for twenty years. Malcom and Greta repeatedly knock the guy down but they constantly run off instead of just hitting him a couple more times. The film then has the audacity to rip-off the scene from Friday the 13th Part 2 where the Final Girl disguises herself as Jason’s mom to get close enough to deal a fatal blow. In this film Greta just tells Brahms that she is willing to be his babysitter and then she stabs him during the goodnight kiss. She, and the surprisingly not dead Malcolm who we last saw being pummeled by Brahms, drive off into the sunset while the camera tracks through the house to reveal Brahms is alive and is restoring the doll.

 

It’s cute that they thought this could be a franchise.

This is a well shot movie, and the director does manage to give us some genuine scares, but the script is so unbelievably stupid that whatever goodwill the actors and director managed to earn is completely blown during the last act. It’s no surprise that this film was released during the January dumping grounds along with The Forest.

Tarzan the Invincible: Edgar Rice Burroughs – Book Review

It’s Tarzan of the apes versus the Red Menace! Originally released under the title Tarzan, Guard of the Jungle, in the pages of The Blue Book Magazine between from 1930 to 1931, this is a book that may have today’s young readers asking, “Mom, what’s a communist?” With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War such stories have become a bit dated, but when Edgar Rice Burroughs was writing these stories the threat of communism was something many feared. In several of his books Burroughs managed to slip anti-communist sentiments into his fantasy or sci-fi stories, and in the case of The Moon Men we got a blatant and scathing attack on communism using science fiction tropes as analogs to the current threat, much as Gene Rodenberry did with the original Star Trek.  Then there are books like Tarzan the Invincible where the story is contemporary and our heroes must work against Communist agents who want to see the “evils” of Capitalism fall.

Tarzan himself is not much of a political animal, though his birth family is British he considers himself more of the ape society than that of man’s, but if a threat to the peace and stability of his beloved Africa rears its ugly head he will put an end to it, viciously and violently. When a small group of white men, leading a larger force consisting of many African natives and Arabic fighters, cross over into the part of Africa that Tarzan considers his home the Ape Man decides to find out just what these people are doing in His Africa.

The party consists of two Russians, the beautiful Zora Drinov and the crafty Comrade Zveri, an East Indian named Raghunath Jafar, and Miguel Romero from Mexico, all have come to Africa to foment unrest between the French and the Italians, hoping this will cause a war between two of Communisms greater foes. The native and Arab contingent have joined on the promises that this will drive the whites out of Africa, but they wouldn’t have been so quick to join if they knew that Comrade Zveri actually plans to become Emperor of Africa and that his claims to be a leader of the communist revolution is just a sham to further his goal of wealth and power. Zora herself seems to be a true believer in the cause, so much so that she at first isn’t too fond of Wayne Colt, an America who is working against his own country. Even though he is on her side in the fight against the bourgeois, the fact that he is betraying his own country is something she cannot abide. That Colt is portrayed as noble, courageous, self-serving and good looking will have most readers of Edgar Rice Burroughs deducing that he may not be the “Traitorous American” Zora is led to believe he is.

Zveri has crossed into Tarzan’s territory because he wants to loot the treasure vaults of the fabled city of Opar. It’s at this point in the series that we must consider that “Opar, the lost outpost of Atlantis” isn’t all that lost. So many people have come and gone into this place that the priests of the Flaming God should think about putting up a tourist kiosk. Zveri only dares to trek into the domain of the Ape Man because he believes Tarzan to be away on some dirigible adventure (see Tarzan at the Earth’s Core). Though even with Tarzan “assumed out of the way” raiding the City of Opar is no easy task, especially when 90% of your party are a superstitious and cowardly lot, and who flee at the first eerie cries from the lost valley.

Of course things aren’t all that great in Opar itself, when Tarzan slips past the communists to warn the High Priestess of the coming intruders he finds that La herself has been overthrown. Tarzan is seized by the new regime, but he quickly escapes with the beautiful La, who is still madly in love with Tarzan. Unfortunately once again Tarzan goes off to hunt for food without telling his charge where he went or if he is ever coming back. This results in a despondent La wandering off into the jungle, but what is truly terrible is that the dangerous animals of the jungle are the least of her worries.

Tarzan the Invincible has once again two damsels in distress; Zora is constantly in the brink of being raped or sold into slavery, and when La staggers into the camp she quickly finds herself in the same boat as Zora. Now Zora does manages to survive most her encounters with the vile Arab raiders that wish her harm, but mostly it comes down to her being either rescued by Wayne Colt or Tarzan.  What is great in this book is how badass La has become, she is not your typical damsel that we find in many of the Tarzan stories. She kills several of the bastards who dare lay hands on the High Priestess of the Flaming God, gutting them with her sacrificial knife, and later she teams up with Jad-bal-ja the Golden Lion to kick even more ass, and that this is her last appearance in the series greatly saddens me. When natives flee in terror at seeing this golden goddess striding through the jungle, with her fingers enmeshed in the mane of a massive golden lion, I kind of wish that she would have eventually hook up with Tarzan. Sorry Jane, you're sweet and all, but you just don’t quite measure up to the High Priestess of the Flaming God.

This book also has some of the greatest Tarzan moments of series; we get Tarzan using his brains to mess with the superstitious natives, the ever loyal Tantor stamping Tarzan’s enemies into pulp, there’s Jad-bal-ja eating anyone who would dare lay a finger on Tarzan or his friends, Nkima is his brilliant and hilariously cowardly self throughout, and once again the brave Waziri warriors (who are really Tarzan’s personal jungle SWAT team) show up at the end to help kick butt.

Note: Tarzan does get shot in the head…again. He must have the thickest skull on the planet for the amount of times he’s fallen out of a tree on his head, or had a bullet crease it, and yet never suffer from no brain damage.

This one hell of a fun book, it perfectly encapsulates what makes Tarzan such a great character; he is heroic but also unpredictable, he could rush off to save the day or instead spend days lolling in the sun on the back of Tantor the elephant, and when he does arrive it’s often in the form of an avenging jungle god who meets out justice in the only way he knows how, violently and finally. All the supporting characters in this book work to keep the story moving at a fast clip, the villains will fail, love will triumph, and Tarzan will prove he is the one and only true king of the jungle.

The Conjuring 2 (2016) – Review

"If there's somethin' strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?" Well apparently if you’re the Catholic Church you don’t call the Ghostbusters, you call Ed and Loraine Warren instead. In 2010 director James Wan terrified audience with his horror film Insidious and then in 2013 he doubled down and broke box office records for a horror film with The Conjuring, and it looks like he is on the way to doing it again with The Conjuring 2.

The first Conjuring movie opened with the Warrens explaining the case of the evil doll Annabelle to a lecture hall full of people, and now in The Conjuring 2 the film opens with the Warrens investigating the notorious Amityville Horror house. These are basically like the James Bond cold opens where we come in as Bond is finishing off a mission only in this series it's the Warrens busting some ghost or demon, but sadly we don't get any cool Saul Bass credit sequences between the opening and the movie proper.

Basing a film franchise on the paranormal investigations of the Warrens is pure genius; you can slap “Based on a true story” and then make up any crazy shit you want because that’s basically what the Warrens did in real life. This movie even deals with Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Loraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) being accused of perpetrating hoaxes by local skeptics, but then the movie will show us terrifying images that are clearly not something you could fake.

 

“Demonic nuns, bullshit or not?”

Five minutes of googling will reveal to you that the Amityville case was simply about home owners teaming up with the lawyer of a convicted murderer, Butch deFeo who has since admitted to murdering his abusive parents while high on heroine, and to fabricate a hoax so as to make shitloads of money for one party and a possible retrial for the other on the grounds of demonic possession (Side Note: The Lutzes made tons of bank from book and movie deals while deFeo is still in jail, so the plan only half worked). The Warrens were just one of many paranormal investigators who jumped on the Amityville bandwagon to get some free publicity. So we can all agree that the Amityville horror was bullshit, but what about the Haunting of Enfield House that is the center of The Conjuring 2.

 

“Can we all agree this is bullshit as well?”

Yes, the haunting of Enfield House was another hoax, this time perpetrated by two teen-age girls who have since admitted as such. But Mike, you say, who gives a shit if it was real or not, is Conjuring 2 a good movie? Well you can all relax, it most certainly is. James Wan knows exactly what will scare an audience, and though his film still has its fair share of “jump scares” it’s the overall creeping dread and horrifying imagery that gets under your skin. When the ghost of Bill Wilkins (Bob Adrian) starts harassing the family’s youngest daughter Janet (Madison Wolfe) we become immediately invested. Here is a sweet innocent girl being terrorized by an evil spirit, and by god do we ever want the Warrens to show up and start kicking his spectral ass.

Note: The kids own a musical zoetrope that plays “He was a Crooked Man” and it joins the long list of creepy toys that you DO NOT BUY FOR YOUR CHILD!” The thing unleashes a horrific visage of the “Crooked Man” that gives the demonic nun a run for her money in the scare department.

The movie does try and play around with “Is this a hoax?” idea, but as we the audience have seen things that clearly cannot be faked by teenage girls; such as Janet teleporting around the house, it makes that element of the plot the weakest. Sure it makes us want to scream “Ed, Lorraine, don’t give up on that family, they need you!” but overall that didn’t quite work for me because we know in our hearts that the Warrens are this film’s heroes and they will not abandon an innocent in danger, even if visions of a demonic nun keeping harbinging Ed’s death.  It's because of these visions that Loraine wants to hang up the ghost busting business, but when the Church asks them to investigate this family in need they can't turn it down.
Question: Does the Catholic Church have like a "Red Phone" to contact the Warrens with?  Maybe they should invest in a "Ghost Signal" that they can put on the roof of the Vatican.  Regardless of the dangers the Warrens fly to England to investigate on behalf of the Catholic Church which is apparently afraid of embarrassing themselves by getting mixed up with a potential hoax.

 

When the kid went all Linda Blair that kind of ruled out the hoax aspect.

Quibbles aside this is an excellent horror film, though not quite as good as the original it was still damn frightening at times, and certainly better than the prequel/spin-off Annabelle. Once again Patrick Wilson is the standout as the paranormal expert with a heart of gold; and Vera Farmiga is certainly no slouch as the demonically beleaguered wife, but basically the whole cast does terrific work here with no one hitting a wrong note.  With all the crappy horror films I’ve seen so far this year this was a nice breath of fresh, and chilling, air.

London Has Fallen (2016) – Review

Everyone knows that Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen was an over-the-top Die Hard rip-off that had more explosions than plot, and only managed to hit 48% on the Rotten Tomatoes, but it did pull in $161,000,000 million in worldwide box office receipts, thus the sequel London Has Fallen was greenlit. Now being helmed by relative newcomer Babak Najafi the producers of this sequel decided that if they’d only had more explosions than in the previous film it would fare better that the original. This was not the case.

The film begins with the G8 (Group of Eight) targeting Pakistani arms dealer and terrorist leader Aamir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul) at his daughter’s wedding with a drone strike. Later we are told the government leaders didn’t know that civilians were in the area but one has to call bullshit on that defense, and since when does the G8 get together decide on which terrorists to blow up? The current G8 has a hard enough time deciding on what to order for lunch during their annual meetings let alone agreeing on which random terrorist to hunt down and kill. Regardless of the stupidity of this Barkawi does survive the attack and he and his sons now want revenge for their dead daughter and sister.

 

In my opinion they should have cast Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin again.

The movie jumps ahead two years where we are re-introduced to our hero Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), Secret Service agent for President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart). He’s expecting his first child with wife Leah Banning (Rhada Mitchell), and we get the prerequisite new dad jokes. Banning has decided to retire from Presidential detail so that he can spend more time with his family, and presumably less time being shot at, but before he can print off his resignation letter the Prime Minister of Britain dies.  So Banning must put everything on hold so he organize the security detail for the President’s trip to England. He hates the whole idea of this trip, and even Secret Service Director Lynne Jacobs (Angela Bassett) is unhappy and asks if the President could possibly skip this event. Asher of course immediately pooh poohs the idea of cancelling the trip, informing Banning and Jacobs that, “It’s a State Funeral. It’s our oldest strongest ally.” Letting slide the fact that Britain is not America’s oldest ally, that would be France, who seriously would even consider floating up the idea of The President skipping the funeral of the Prime Minister of Britain?

 

Our leads have a “Fuck the rest of the world” attitude for most the film’s running time.

Of course it turns out that paranoid Banning was right and the whole funeral was a trap. The Prime Minister had been murder so as to lure forty heads of state into the crosshairs of the terrorist’s revenge plot. The film spends an inordinate amount of screen time showing all the world leaders arriving in London; the United States President by Airforce One, the President of France by boat, while Canada and Japan simply drive in. Then the hammer falls and shit gets real. Turns out that in the intervening two years Barkawi had managed to infiltrate every level of police, government and military personnel in Britain. Checkpoint security guards place car bombs under the State Visitor’s cars, ambulances are loaded with explosives to blow up bridges, and even the Queen's Guardsmen at Buckingham Palace had been infiltrated as we see them gun down the German Chancellor.

 

You’d think Buckingham Palace would have a better vetting process.

What follows is your standard Right Wing Republican wet dream. Terrorist seize control of the capital of one of the world’s most powerful nations as if that is something that is even remotely possible. Almost every famous landmark in London is destroyed in such explosive glory one almost forgets we're watching a terrorist attack and not an alien invasion or a meteor menace movie.

Note: This film would have completely won me over if at some point Aaron Eckhart explained the terrorist threat by burning a peach.

But apparently Eckhart is all out of peaches and all he has is a ham, and by that I of course mean Gerard “This is Sparta!” Butler. Mike Banning is not only a Super-Agent that cracks jingoistic one liners at the drop of a hat, but he's almost completely immune to gunfire. He can stand against hundreds of machine gun toting terrorists and not one bullet will find him.

 

These terrorist make Stormtroopers look like crack shots.

Banning needs this skill because aside from his incredibly ability to “not die” he is really terrible at his job. When the terrorists attack we are treated to a very nice action sequence of Banning trying to get The President back to Airforce One; motorcycle terrorists and mobs of fake policemen try and stop them, but at no point does he think of just hiding. Banning tells The President that even though the terrorist know that the United States Embassy is the first placed go they still have try for the Embassy, because it’s the only option. I’m not sure that’s true.  Are they assuming MI6, MI5 or even Scotland Yard wouldn't let them hang out? How about just popping into one of the many apartments or houses you pass by? Surely not every resident in London is a terrorist and somebody would offer The President of the United States a safe hiding spot until the city is retaken.

 But you know, explosions and stuff.

London Has Fallen is just a collection of action movie clichés that are trotted out one at a time to fillthe movie’s 90 minute running time. I will say this, the film does not fuck around. The plot is completely ludicrous and unbelievable, if one to give it a second thought, but the film rockets along at such breakneck speeds that it hopes the audience hasn’t the time to question how stupid the whole thing is. The action is well choreographed, and if you like to see wholesale destruction of famous landmarks this could be the film for you, but if you thought Olympus Has Fallen was silly and ridiculous you may want to give this one a miss.

Note: A can’t wait for the sequel when President Eckhart finally steps down and Vice President Morgan Freeman must battle terrorists armed with meteors.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016) – Review

With Marvel and DC trying to outdo each other in their cinematic ventures one can easily forget that two years ago Michael Bay tried his hand at a comic franchise of his own. The Teenage Mutant Turtles may not have the same bankability of say Superman or Captain America but many of today’s audience members grew up watching the 80s cartoon series and nostalgia is a powerful tool. Sadly the real tool here is Bay himself as his 2016 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie was a disastrous adaptation; Bay clearly doesn’t care for the subject matter and it showed in every silly character moment and design. Now we have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows,  a sequel helmed by generic director number two, and not much has improved.

Not much has changed for the Turtles either; they are still eating pizza and zipping through the sewers like extreme sports assholes, but they are a little disgruntled with the fact that they have to “live in the shadows” while cameraman Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) got all the credit for taking out the Shredder. Why April O’Neil (Megan Fox) didn’t take any of the credit is never explained, even though the last film was all about her wanting to escape doing silly puff pieces for her station. Of course the real question here is how long Michael Bay can last before having April dress like a hooker.

 

Answer: About ten minutes.

The previous film had a ridiculous plot about the Shredder planning to release a virus on the residents of New York City, which somehow would have allowed him to take over. What the rest of the United States would be doing while a super villain took over the economic center of the country is never explained, Shredder is not big on the details.  That kind of thinking is your basic low rent Bond villain shtick and something you can expect from a guy who cosplays the Silver Samurai.  Yet this time out Shredder (Brian Tee) is teamed up with mad scientist Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry) and Kang the Conqueror (Brad Garrett) to take over the ENTIRE world. Oh, and also kill the Turtles.

 

Shredder at least ditched the robot Ginsu knife costume this time out.

But who are Baxter Stockman and Kang you ask? Well you obviously never watched the cartoon or you wouldn’t have asked such a silly question, and don’t expect Michael Bay to answer it. This movie is not big on explaining character motivations or plot, but maybe a movie about teenage mutant turtles doesn't require things to make sense.  I can roll with that.

The film opens with the Turtles watching a Knicks game when they learn from April that Baxter Stockman is working to break Shredder out of jail. In the comics Baxter was a mad scientist who committed crimes because it was fun, money and power were not really his thing, but here he is just a "named dropped" flunky of the Shredder.

 

"It was take this role or dress up as a woman again."

The same can be said of Kang. When Baxter uses a teleport device to aid Shredder’s escape from a prison transfer convoy the teleportation is hijacked by Kang the Conqueror, and Shredder finds himself in Dimension X facing a tentacled brain residing in a giant robot body. It seems Kang needs Shredder's help in collecting three artifact/devices that are located on Earth which will enable him to bring his massive Technodrome though to our dimension so he can conqueror the world. Shredder agrees as long as Kang promises to help rid him of the Turtles. Does that seem like a bit of a lopsided deal to anyone else? Kang gets the planet Earth and Shredder gets four dead Turtles.  Yeah, that seems fair.

 

Apparently Kang is a brilliant negotiator.

In the last film there was one character glaringly missing, and that character would be streetwise vigilante Casey Jones, but this Casey Jones (Stephen Amell) isn't the wisecracking vigilante fans of the comic or cartoon fell in love with, no this one Casey Jones is a police officer who fails to stop Shredder from escaping, and when he tries to explain it to his boss (Laura Linney) that it was ninjas on motorbikes and a manhole-cover-shooting-van that was responsible for his failure, he is suspended from duty. Refusing to be sidelined he actually tells his boss that they need him, because he’s from New York and, “I know this city better than anyone.”

Question: Aren’t most New York City policemen from New York? And the only people who could possibly know the streets better than your average beat cop would be a cab driver.  This movie would have been better off if they’d made him a cabbie.

So not only is this version of Casey Jones not a vigilante but he's just a suspended cop with delusions of grandeur. There is even an idiotic scene where when he first meets April she can’t understand him because his hockey mask muffles his voice too much. I’ve worn a hockey mask before and people had no problem understanding me, so is his mask modified for intelligibility for some reason?

 

“Sorry, I left my proper voice modulator with my Green Arrow costume.”

The surprising highlight of this movie is in the form of Rocksteady (Stephen Farrelly) and Bebop (Gary Anthony Williams), the two henchmen that Shredder has mutated into rhino and warthog forms to take on the Turtles. Both actors seemed to be really having fun with these two nincompoops, they and the CGI artists perfectly capture the cartoon personas. I could have done without the fart jokes but in a Michael Bay film that may be asking too much. The stupidity comes when this film version of Bebop and Rocksteady’s mutation is explained by the ooze apparently expanding and mutating their latent genes. So is this movie is trying to tell us that some humans have warthog DNA while others have rhino DNA? In the cartoon the two henchmen had come in contact with these animals when Shredder had stolen them from a zoo, and that’s what caused the animalistic mutation. Now if this movie didn’t have time to explain why Shredder was stealing zoo animals then why not just say that Kang’s ooze changes you into an animal that most matches your personality?  How hard would that be?

 

Origin stupidity aside they are the best part of this movie.

About the Turtles themselves; in the last film the camaraderie and banter between the Turtles was that movie’s only saving grace, but this time out they’ve amped the discord between Leonardo’s leadership and Raphael’s pigheadedness. Now those two Turtles pushing each other’s buttons has been a standard part of their characters from almost the beginning, but here Leonardo becomes just a huge dick, and for no real reason…well other than to hammer the “A team must work together” message over our heads. They looked to have had that whole team thing nailed in the last film so what happened since then to make Leonardo into such a control freak asshat? Michelangelo is still the most entertaining of the Turtles while Donatello is given all the science mumbo-jumbo expository dialog that even your average four year old's bullshit detector would have detected.  Though Donatello does provide one nice nostalgic moment in the reveal of the Turtles Battle Van.

 

It's a great, but the toy I owned didn't have giant robot arms.

This movie was completely ludicrous, and not in a good way. The comedy for the most part falls thuddingly flat, while the CGI actionfest is just repeats from the last film. Previously they fought down a snowy mountainside against Shredder’s goons, so this time out they will fight down raging rapids…against Shredder’s goons. The film ends with a final showdown atop Kang’s Technodrome opposed to last film’s showdown being atop Shredder’s hi-tech high-rise. Who said originality in Hollywood was dead?

Aside from the aforementioned Bebop and Rocksteady there isn’t much to recommend here, but still I found myself a little more entertained this time out. The editing isn't as choppy, and if the Krang’s plan was unclear it still made more sense Shredder’s previous idiotic one. If “Better than the last one” is enough for you, then by all means rush out to the theaters and see it, but I suggest that the simply curious film goer just stay home and wait for the Bluray.

 

"Rock and roll baby, rock and roll!"

Final Thoughts:

• The movie is subtitled “Out of the Shadows” but the film ends with them still living in the shadows.
• Is April O’Neil a reporter? We see her investigating Stockman but are never told why, and we never see her at the station.
• The Turtles’ battle van shooting manhole covers did bring a smile to my face.
• Like Magneto in X-Men: Age of Apocalypse Shredder becomes another villain’s flunky.  This is wrong.
• I’m sorry, but you can’t make rollerblades out of duct tape and office chair wheels.
• With Michael Bay’s permanent hard-on for the military I couldn’t help but wonder where they were during this film’s climax. When a giant Death Star is being constructed over New York City one would think the United States Armed Forces would show up.

 

Or at least have someone call Luke Skywalker.

The Forest (2016) – Review

If a ghost goes boo in a forest does anybody care? Hollywood has made several remakes of various Japanese horror films over the years, but surprisingly enough this movie, though it takes place in Japan, is not an American remake of Japanese movie.  The Forest is bad all on its own. After watching this film I think the people involved should go back to ripping off the Japanese as this thing contains little originality and even less scares.

The story deals with American Sara Price (Natalie Dormer) who gets a call from the Japanese police telling her that they think her sister has committed suicide. She was last seen entering Aokigahara Forest, which also known as Suicide Forest, and so beyond filing a missing person’s report the authorities plan on doing nothing. Sara is sure her sister is alive because they are identical twins and so she would know if she was dead. Dropping everything Sara flies to Japan to begin her search, leaving behind concerned and instantly forgettable boyfriend, and while visiting a nearby bar she encounters travel writer Aiden (Taylor Kinney) who is intrigued with her story and offers to let her tag along with his forest ranger guide the next day.

 

“It says, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” so this must be the place.”

Director Jason Zada and writers Ben Ketai, Nick Antosca, and Sarah Cornwell fail on almost every level with this film, and that it took three people to write this thing is the true horror here.  The writing is clunky and unbelievable; Sara repeatedly explains to people that her and her identical twin look alike as if people might not understand what the word "identical" means.  The film also almost relies completely on jump scares; they trot out the “scare that turns out to be a dream” cliché as well as the “fake out scare” where something that is thought to be a threat turns out to be just the cat or in this case a harmless elderly Japanese woman wandering the halls at night. When Sara, Aiden and their guide Michi (Yukiyoshi Ozawa) eventually do go into “The Forest” it’s mostly a lot of walking around through the trees, making one think of The Blair Witch Project, but while the documentary feel for that movie brought a sense of realism to the film and increased the scare quotient, The Forest was just boring.

 

Even the ghosts are ignoring us.

Sara is warned by Michi that the forest will try and deceive her, that if she sees something distressing it is probably not real. This tidbit of advice she completely ignores and thus spends the remainder of the movie fleeing from one fake scare to another. When they find her sisters campsite, but no sign of the girl, Michi wants to leave and he suggest they leave a note and come back the next day to continue the search. Sara refuses to leave and the noble Aiden stays with her. Later that night, after another one of those “It was only a dream scares” Sara wanders off into the dark woods and encounters a Japanese schoolgirl who warns her not to trust Aiden.

 

And who would doubt a strange Japanese schoolgirl at night in the middle of the woods?

Is Aiden responsible for the disappearance of Sara’s sister, or are the evil spirts screwing with her? Are there actually evil spirits in the Aokigahara Forest, or are these vision caused by the hallucinatory properties of the flora and fauna? Does Sara even have a twin? Is she actually hunting her own split personality? Okay, the last one isn’t really a thing, but if that had turned out to be the case it would have been more interesting than what we got. Simply put The Forest is tedious story with characters we couldn’t give to shits for. Natalie Dormer is doing her best with what she is given but there is only so much one can do with the drivel put into this script. She was certainly trying harder than her co-star Taylor Kinney who looked about as bored as I felt. And someone needs to inform director Jason Zada that just putting creepy figures in the frame does not equal scary. You actually have to build suspense first.

 

A guy with a lunch bag over his head is not intrinsically scary.

This film was released in January, which is the notorious dumping grounds for bad horror movie, and though sometimes a movie can be so bad that is entertainingly so, that is not the case here. The Forest is about as exciting as camping in your own backyard. If you come across this movie one night while flipping channels just keep flipping.

Tarzan and the Lost Empire: Edgar Rice Burroughs – Book Review

Released through 1928 and 1929 in the pages of Blue Book Magazine Tarzan and the Lost Empire continues Tarzan’s exploits in the darkest jungle of Africa where everyone’s favorite jungle lord spends his time either basking in the sun atop a wandering elephant or finding a lost civilization. Now if you remember waaaaaay back in the last book Tarzan encountered a valley that had been settled by group of Templar knights that got sidetracked on their way to the Holy Land, now in this installment Tarzan will stumble across a lost remnant of the Roman Empire. I’d say “What are the odds of that happening?” but then I’d remember I’m reading a Tarzan novel and realize the odds are actually quite good.

The one element that stands out in this book is the introduction of Nkima, Tarzan’s monkey pal. I simply adore Nkima, he’s just this little monkey who believes the whole world is out to get him, and he completely adores Tarzan. Part of this adoration is based on the fact that while riding upon Tarzan’s shoulder Nkima feels free to cast insults to all his supposed enemies, knowing full well that he is safe in the presence of the Ape Man. Nkima basically lives in a perpetually state of fear, hunger and loneliness when Tarzan isn’t around and his running commentary, often while he is running for his life, are some of my favorite parts of this book. At one point Nkima is fleeing for his life from an enraged ape, we learn shortly that the ape was rudely awakened by a thrown stick by a bored Nkima, and the little monkey simply couldn’t fathom the ape’s reaction or his complete lack of a sense of humor. This is why Nkima is one of my favorite supporting characters, even though he often gets Tarzan into trouble he also often helps get him out of it.

The book begins with Tarzan and an agitated Nkima encounter a safari led by Doctor von Harben, a missionary friend of Tarzan’s, who is looking for his missing son, Erich von Harven. Erich was apparently searching for The Lost Tribe of the Wiramwazi Mountains, who the local natives believe to be spirits of the dead, but Erich hopes to find archeological proof an ancient civilization. Of course Erich will not find broken pottery shards or ruins of an old temple but a fully realized Roman city.  When Tarzan and Nkima set out to find Erich the Ape Man runs into a little trouble while climbing down into the canyon, the one that supposedly holds the Lost Tribe, he briefly loses his footing and when a panicked Nkima leaps from Tarzan’s shoulder it causes the Ape Man to completely lose his balance and he plummets down the mountain. He is of course knocked unconscious by the fall and captured by his enemies. Let’s stop here and compare this book and its predecessor…

Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle                                                    
Tarzan knocked unconscious by freak accident.                         
Is hunting for lost photojournalist James Blake.                    
They independently find lost medieval city.                            
James Blake falls in love with a princess.                               
There is a jealous suitor for the girl’s hand.                                
Waziri warriors show up to save the day.                               

 Tarzan and the Lost Empire
 Tarzan knocked unconscious by freak accident.
 Is hunting for lost explorer Erich van Harven.
 They independently find lost Roman city.
 There is a jealous suitor for the girl’s hand.
 Erich falls in love with Roman equivalent.
 Waziri warriors show up to save the day.

Yeah, Burroughs clearly not worrying about similar plot structures here.

One can tell that with Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle that Burroughs really wanted another shot at writing a medieval story after his Outlaw of Torn failed to catch on, and now with Tarzan and the Lost Empire Burroughs returns to the Roman Empire which he dabbled with in his book I am a Barbarian, but where the Tarzan stuff in Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle seemed kind of shoehorned into the story about James Blake and his adventures with the Templar Knights in Tarzan and the Lost Empire the Ape Man is front and center the hero of this story. James Blake used modern sword fighting techniques and his superior horsemanship in Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle to impress the Templars while in Tarzan and the Lost Empire Erich van Harven gets a job in a Roman library chronicling Caesar’s life story. Which sounds more exciting to you?

Now in this lost canyon there are two Roman cities, just are there were two Templar cities in the last book, but in Tarzan and the Lost Empire we kind of get two princesses, and each of them has an evil suitor all their own. Erich will eventually win the hand of his but Tarzan is married so he just saves the second one so that she can marry a centurion who she has loved for years. The love story in this one isn’t quite up to snuff when compared to Blake’s in Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, but then again this book has Tarzan turn into bloody Spartacus which is a definite plus. This leads to some of the best Tarzan action moments in the series as our titular hero is sentenced to die in the Coliseum and as we know Tarzan isn’t all that good at dying. If you think Tarzan leading an army that consists of gladiators, convicted murders, and a group of Great Apes is appealing then this is a book you will enjoy immensely.

Tarzan and the Lost City allows our hero to briefly sit on the throne of the Emperor of Rome, and that’s kind of cool, and though the love story is fairly underutilized the action more than makes up for it. My chief complaint is something that pops up in many of Burroughs story, the wrap up is often damn abrupt. Often with either the Waziri warriors or Jad-bal-ja the golden lion (often both) showing up as a deus ex machina to save the day. This may be part of the curse of the serialized format they were originally written for but it is a tad off-putting. Still this is an immensely fun book and I’d love to see a Ridley Scott directed movie of it.