"Let's Have Movie Activities Together!"

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Big Fish
starring Ewan McGregor, Helena Bonham Carter, directed by Tim Burton, Color, , 2003
Distributed by Columbia Tristar
Video Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

Big Fish might be my favorite movie of last year. It’s been reviewed to death since opening nationally so I don’t want to ramble on and on about it. I just want to let everyone out there know that this is one very special film, from one of my personal heroes, and maybe one of the greatest directors to ever grace the artform.

Tim Burton more than makes up for that abyssal Planet of the Apes remake. Or whatever they called it. He made a ton of money off it, and thank God, because then he was able to go and make this superlative, abundantly rewarding film.

A cynical son (Billy Crudup) returns home to see his dying father (Albert Finney), who he’s been estranged for years due to growing tired of listening to his father’s ubiquitous tall tales. He returns home to reconcile and perhaps finally hear the truth from his father’s mouth; to perhaps finally learn who his father really is.

What unfolds is on of the most imaginative, moving films in a long. Needless to say, since it’s a Tim Burton film, we are treated to visualizations of all of Finney’s tall tales, and they are constantly engaging, never trite or overly sentimental.

I don’t know … I love Tim Burton (except for Planet of the Apes, and I totally like the second Batman better than the first). So I’m biased. Even though Return of the King more than deserved the Oscar this year, I think Big Fish deserved a nomination, if not several. And while I won’t go as far as saying this is Burton’s best film ever (that title easily goes to Ed Wood) I will say it is ONE of his very best.

This was originally reviewed when it was in theatres. So you can imagine that the DVD has all sorts of cool extras (as one would hope).

So catch it now. Buy or rent it on DVD. Don’t miss out. You’ll love the two hours you spent in Burton’s world.

(Ryan Lies is a staffwriter for No-Fi "Magazine" and gets lost in whimsy.)

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Kill Bill Vol. 2
starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine, directed by Quentin Tarantino, Color, , 2004
Distributed by Legasy
Video Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

I could go on and on about this movie. My friends have heard me do it. But by the time you read what I’m writing here, you’ll no doubt have read a hundred or so other reviews by more prominent critics, praising this film.

Bottom line: Kill Bill, Vol. 2 is pure genius. From frame one, to the end credits roll, this is one of the best films … well, hell, I could break it down and say BEST FILM (so far) OF 2004 … or ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE PAST TEN YEARS … or ONE OF THE BEST FILMS EVER. What difference does it make? This movie rocks. And it rocks because Vol. 1 also rocks. As one long film, Kill Bill is a masterpiece.

So far this year, I’ve been blown away by three very different flicks: The Passion Of The Christ, Dawn Of The Dead and now this one. They could just not release any other movies at all this year and I would be satiated. But I’m weird like that. For all know, Van Helsing will blow the rest of ‘em outta the cinematic water. Sure.

Anyway, Vol. 2 picks up with The Bride (Uma) telling us about the carnage she has wrought in the last film, about the damage she has planned for Bill (Carradine) in this film. Then we flash back to the wedding only intimated in the first volume. We meet her groom to be, we meet Bill for the first time … and then we see the slaughter that brought about the entire saga to begin with.

From there on, it doesn’t let up. I don’t want to confuse you, though. Vol. 2 is NOT the same kinda movie Vol. 1 was. Vol. 2 is more character driven, more dialogue heavy … and it’s all the richer a film for it. Some may find the pacing this time around a little languid; after all, how can you top the House of the Blue Leaves massacre? But just go with it. Enjoy the richness of the plot, the intricacies of the dialogue. Relish the intensity of the Bride’s relationship to Bill. In fact, my favorite moments in the film come towards the end (and I’m not really giving away anything here) when The Bride is reunited with Bill and the daughter she thought was dead. It begins as one of Tarantino’s most innocuous, yet heartfelt sequences, and culminates with one of the most satisfying, and strangely romantic sequences I have ever seen.

Trust me … this film may be quieter than its predecessor in terms of action and bloodletting, but emotionally it SCREAMS. Tarantino proves he can pretty much write anything he sets his mind to and actually pull it off on screen. All hyperbole aside, the dude’s a genius. He really is. He’s the geek all geeks should aspire too.

Highlights include an extremely nerve-jangling buried-alive sequence that would make Lucio Fulci proud, a wonderfully campy send up of kung-fu films featuring Gordon Liu in what should be an Oscar nominated performance (even though Tarantino dubs his voice), THE cat-fight to end all cat-fights (squishy!), Michael Madsen’s boss at the strip club and Michael Parks as Esteban (maybe the BEST supporting character performance since Dean Stockwell in Blue Velvet), and not to mention some absolute knock-out acting from Thurman and Carradine (this might be the best work either of them has done – I know, I know I love Death Race 2000, too, but just wait until you see this!)

Either way, I don’t want to spoil everything. See it for yourself. Watch ‘em back to back. This is a four-hour long exploitation, grindhouse flick, folks, and we’ll probably never seen anything like it again. I don’t WANT to see anything like it again. This needs to stand alone. So far, this may be Tarantino’s masterwork.

Rumor has it that eventually a four and a HALF hour “grindhouse” cut will be surfacing on DVD. Praise the Lord and bring it!

Perhaps there were two signs that the world was about to end on September 11th, 2001. First was that tragedy we've all come to know as simply "September 11th" or even the shorter catchier nickname "9-11", but another disaster was dropped on the world that day... Yes, that was the unfortunate release date of the straight to video epic known as "Black Spring Break 2 The Sequel". Sure you may come up with fancy arguements as to why one event was somewhat more tragic than the other with all the lives lost and all or say things like "dear god, are you really equating the loss of thousands of lives, the fear it caused in the world, the loss of personal freedoms, the escuse for the uprising of religion in politics, the eventual forced wrong turn known as Iraq...with the release of a crappy straight to video sequel to a film barely anyone has heard of?" To that I say Yes Yes Yes... What a minute... NO! That would be a horrible thing to say. What was I thinking? I apologize to anyone out there I may have offended. Seriously.

But while fundimental religious terrorists were starting their own war with the U.S., Black Spring Break 2 The Sequel was waging its OWN kind of Terrorism on the people of America and not at all connected to the Terror attacks of September 11th. The kind or terror it was waging was not in the form of bombs or tax breaks for the wealthy. No, this was deep psychological terror sent through our audio/visual senses straight to the hearts and minds of anyone who was the unwitting victim of Black Spring Break 2 The Sequel. It's damage has been wider than anyone could have imagined having penetrated video, dvd, cable, an sattelite markets across the country.

Black Spring Break 2 The Sequel follows the adventures of football star "Southboy" and his goofy friend Greg who return to college and want to pledge (for some reason) at some hyper-militant fraternaty whose members tell them that they must go to Daytona Beach to have themselves "a Spring Break...a BLACK Spring Break". Now being a Tim Burton and David Lynch fan, I figured, ok, this is going to venture into some dark twisted tale of senseles intrigue. But, no, I guess what the film is trying to tell us is that the African-American Spring Break experience is much different than that of your average Caucasion or Asian Spring Break experience. To be honest, I have no idea either way. I spent my Spring Breaks trying to find, or hanging out with girlfriends. In any case, that's about as deep as it gets with the race issue. So I guess the "plot" of the film involves Southboy having to prove his manhood or his friend's manhood to the fraternity by midnight or something. I don't know since most of the dialogue is hidden under layers and layers of background noise

So a bunch of stuff happens, the guys get robbed by some lady who seduced them, Southboy falls for some gal who hates fancy football players so Southboy has to pretend he's a normal guy or something or other. The dialogue is usually lost due to what I'm guessing was a microphone which was covered in old chewing gum and then kept in a bowl of water while shooting. Oh and there are some ladies who are out to get into Southboy's pants or whatever.

So, yeah, this film is not good. I kind of knew that as I tivoed it, but I gave it a chance. In writing this review I was able to find a fuzzy picture of the director. He also directed Voodoo Mardi Gras. Whatta guy! Anyway, I do worry sometimes that films like this do more to harm race relations than help them, but in the end the film itself is just harmless fun and shouldn't be taken seriously. Harmless, but a bad bad bad bad film (I don't even know how they got Snoop on the soundtrack). Still I'd rather watch this than a political ad where George Bush uses 9-11 to try to get re-elected anyday.

Well, folks … here it goes.

I was extremely cynical and, at times, horrified by the thought of a Dawn of the Dead remake. Last year’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake left such a bad taste in my mouth, that I was ready to go to the theater the night Dawn opened and pay people NOT to go see this film. I saw stills from it in magazines, I read interviews with cast and crew, I watched the trailer repeatedly on the internet … and the verdict was always the same: THIS FLICK IS GONNA SUCK. Worse than that, even. I thought this movie was going to be the ruination of modern horror film making as a whole. I figured it was gonna be nothing more than a bunch of short-attention-span machine-gun edits set to a Nickelback soundtrack … raping the dignity and memory of Romero’s classic, iconic horror masterpiece.

Anyway, I couldn’t take it. I swore I would only watch this if somebody brought me a bootleg. No way were these cinematic rapist, necrophiliacs going to get MY money! But Friday night came and it just wouldn’t get out of my head. Then I read a couple reviews. They weren’t so bad. Dammit, I thought, are people actually going to LIKE this tripe? I know a lot of people dug that Chainsaw remake, too … was this gonna be another bamboozling of the horror-going public by the major studios? Then I thought, Well, I DID like Tom Savini’s Night of the Living Dead remake (which means I’m, like, one of ten other people in the world.) So fuggit, fine, I’ll go. Whatever. I’ll bring some booze, turn off my brain, and set back and let my vitriol fly! I’ll be a martyr! I can take it! Bring on the bullshit!

It’s important I let you know what my mindset was going into this. I was truly distraught over it. After all, this past year they’ve announced plans to remake pretty much EVERY good 70’s horror film (Suspiria, The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, Assault on Precinct 13). Hell, now they’re even tapping into the 80’s with a Pet Sematary redux just around the corner. (And, lest we forget the impending remake of Mute Witness, a movie that was released in 19friggin94!)
Ok … so … take a breath. I saw the movie opening night. Heart aflutter, ready for the visual equivalent of having my balls caught in an old top-loading VCR … Ready to look every jackass in the eye and tell ‘em, I TOLD YOU SO!

But something happened. I ended up seeing one of the best horror films, and certainly one of the best ZOMBIE films, of the pat ten years. To my surprise, this flick smacked me solid in the face and made me EAT pretty much every single word I typed in the first two big paragraphs of this review. Damn, was it great! There’s a few things I could nitpick there and there, but who cares? This was just great, great stuff, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve stepped back from the ledge; I’m a believer now.

You know the story: Something is causing the dead to walk and they begin to decimate the population of planet Earth. A gaggle of survivors barricade themselves in a nearby shopping mall and learn to adapt to a new way of life. Not much has changed, premise-wise, from Romero’s original. But they make enough changes and update it enough for it to qualify as its own movie. Or, if not its OWN movie, then at least an extension of the original. My theory is, Hey, there were probably more than just one group of people during the Zombie Holocaust who found refuge in a shopping mall; this is just THEIR story. It’s possible. Deal with it. Move on.

Nothing here blemishes the original. The filmmakers get pretty much everything right. The first ten minutes ALONE are worth the price of admission. It had me hooked. From there it just gets more and more intense. There was a point where I couldn’t even breathe I was so into it. The zombies are fast and furious (as opposed to Romero’s more somnambulistic ghouls), which normally I don’t like, but they did ‘em right this time. Even the use of pop songs in the soundtrack didn’t bother me (I mean, can any movie that uses Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around” for its opening titles go wrong?)

James Gunn’s script is fun, fast, but never false. He more than makes up for that Scooby-Doo crap. And Zack Snyder’s direction is taut and well-intentioned. There are a few missteps, like I said, but for the most part, it maintains the right tone throughout and generally delivers in all the places it should. People might have some issues with the ending, which plays throughout the end credits. I wasn’t that happy with it at first, but it’s grown on me. It’s SOMEWHAT reminiscent of the original Night of the Living Dead in tone.

The thing about it is, the filmmakers never treat it like it’s beneath them. The subject matter is taken seriously, it isn’t video-game or MTV-ized. The flick has integrity, folks, that’s it. They didn’t try to one up, or disdain the source material, and they never pandered to the lowest common denominator. They just told the story they wanted to tell, and they told it well. They occasionally winked at the fans, but they never gave ‘em the finger. If you know what I mean.

While it’s not as good as the original, it’s really damn good in its own right, and that’s all you need. I whole-heartedly recommend this one. It knocked me out, man. Bravo to all involved. You proved me wrong. You put a wicked smile on my face. You did it, that’s all I can say.

You did it.

(Ryan Lies is a staffwriter for No-Fi "Magazine" and knows dead from live flesh.)

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Hangar 18
starring Darren McGavin, Robert Vaughn, directed by James Conway , Color, , 1980
Distributed by Legasy
Video Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

I was sick the other night and wanted nothing more than to lay stuffed between my blankets on my bed, sipping orange juice and watch something utterly cheesy and frivolous. I threw in an old, decrepit video called Hangar 18 and got JUST what I wanted. Not only that, I managed to solve a childhood mystery as well!

Sometime way back in 1982 or ’83 (those bygone years are so nebulous now) I stayed up late with my father one night to watch an “alien movie” on network TV (I never had cable growing up, so I have a lot of late-night network TV memories). My dad said it looked like it might be alright, and me being the sucker for anything that had ANYTHING to do with space or aliens or other planets figured sure, why not? I don’t actually recall what I thought of it at the time. I pretty much liked anything back then, just cuz it was a movie. My tastes haven’t exactly grown any more discerning over the years, but back in my formative years, I was even LESS discerning. Weren’t we all? (It’s the only explanation I have for why some of us grew up loving crap like Yor – Hunter of the Future, Metalstorm and TV shows like Manimal.)

Anyway, for years I remembered the movie but I never remembered what it was called. And as the years went by, the only images from the movie I could actually remember with any clarity were a couple of dudes driving a beat-up red truck, and a scene where a guy punches a guy and says “Ouch, I haven’t hit anyone since high school.” That’s all I had to go on. I wandered the aisles of video stores for years wondering what the hell that movie had been, or if I had actually seen it at all.

Well, as you’ve probably guessed, Hangar 18 was that movie. It was also known as Invasion Force, which may be the title I saw it under, cuz even now Hangar 18 doesn’t ring a bell. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what it was called, cuz this is the flick I saw all those years ago. The two elements I mentioned above are in the movie, just like I remembered ‘em.

Hangar 18 is pretty standard fare, cheesy to the extreme, but actually fairly entertaining, if you’re in the mood for it. Light, predictable … Gary Collins and James Hampton (the dad in Teen Wolf) play astronauts who watch a UFO crash into a satellite. When they get down to Earth, they find themselves embroiled in a government cover-up (it’s an election year, and they don’t want some pesky UFO nonsense ruining the president’s shot at re-election. Timely, eh?)

Not much in the way of high-octane thrills and chills. Just a couple of dopey guys running around, trying to prove they aren’t crazy. Lots of interesting things happen and then are dropped from the story altogether (like, what’s up with that girl they found comatose inside the UFO? Or those “landing sights?”) And it has one whopper of a stupid ending.

But I was sick, and I was so happy to have finally solved that childhood conundrum that I just went with it and didn’t care. Maybe I was just so glad the Pepto was finally working that I would’ve loved ANYTHING right then.

Side note: Hangar 18 is also the name of a pretty cool MEGADETH song. The video for it is really wicked. Check it out. Much more entertaining than this movie.

Here it is folks! What may be THE WORST MOVIE OF THE LAST DECADE. It is undoubtedly the WORST ZOMBIE MOVIE EVER MADE. And it is CERTAINLY the WORST MOVIE OF 2003! After seeing Dreamcatcher in early ’03, I didn't think ANYTHING could be worse. Then I saw that insipid, headache-inducing puke called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake in 2003 and I thought there was no way to go further down. Then I saw House of the Dead.

Now, as you all know, I spend a great deal of my life watching and enjoying bad movies. And I'm also a verified, card-carrying zombie nut. Which goes without saying that I've had to trudge through some pretty awful zombie movies (come on, Zombie Lake or Revenge of the Zombie anyone?)


Someone once remarked (and I'm paraphrasing here) that if you put 500 monkeys in a room with pen and paper for 500 days, or whatever, they would end up writing Hamlet? Well, you could stick TWO monkeys in a dark closet for an HOUR with nothing but pretzels and beer and they would come up with something better than House of the Dead. Hell, they could be DEAD monkeys … it wouldn't matter!

There are some gratuitous nude scenes, which is great, but other than that, this movie redefines the term “piece of shit.” We can start with the script, which was penned in part by Mark Altman, who wrote at great length back in the summer of ’99 about how awful George Lucas's script for The Phantom Menace was. Well, let me tell you something Mark … I'll admit Lucas's strongpoint is NOT as a writer, but compared to you, He's a Nobel Laureate! I hesitate to even call anything in this movie “dialogue.” It's a bunch of words thrown together in the hopes creating coherency or wit. Strike out on both!

Want a sample? At one point, the characters come across a swamp and they start sniffing and one of them says “Man, it smells like someone farted.” Come on. This is the best you can come up with? Every line in the movie is something you've heard a thousand times before in horror movies: “It's quiet.” “Yeah, too quiet.” Or “I've got a bad feeling about this.”

But the PRIME example is this: the characters finally come across the “bad guy” who's responsible for all the zombies and they realize He's been doing all these weird experiments to attain immortality. So they say to the “bad guy,” “You created it all so you could be immortal … why?” To which the “bad guy” replies “To live forever …”

WHAT? You wanted to be immortal so you could live forever?!? Are they kidding us? That's word for word, folks. I even watched the subtitles and THAT'S what he says.

The zombie make-up is horrible, the action-sequences are confusing and haphazard. At one point I saw a zombie being launched from a springboard mounted on the ground. It was so glaringly obvious it made me wonder if the editor was blind.

There's a lot, and I do mean A LOT of Matrix-style bullet-time FX and once about every three minutes they edit in some footage from the House of the Dead video game. Sometimes we don't even see the real zombies getting shot, we see the video game zombies being shot. And SOMETIMES they show us scenes from the game FOR NO REASON AT ALL. Like, there's one part where the characters are all walking in the woods and QUICK! They flash to some scenes of zombies getting mowed down on the video game screen and then they cut right back to the woods. Nothing happening … just a little reminder that what you're seeing is a movie based on a video game.

This is positively the worst example of short-attention-span filmmaking. Everything about it just sucks. And worse, it's insulting. How dare these “filmmakers” assume we are all that stupid. This is the movie equivalent of watching someone play a Gameboy while driving REALLY fast through Time Square while someone scans the radio dial over and over again, never settling on a station. This is what the makers of House of the Dead think of their audience.

This isn't even a movie, people. This is nothing more than a sloppy, loud kick to the groin of the mind. We should ban these primates from ever making another movie ever again!

In the commentary track, Mark Altman says they wanted to make the Saving Private Ryan of zombie movies. Spielberg should have him shot.