Feral is better than ambien

I try to treat every film I watch fairly. To this, I manage my expectations. If a film is billed as an erotic thriller, I don’t compare it to Citizen Kane. Instead, I ask how well it did what it set out to do.  If a film has a low budget, I don’t compare its FX to Avengers. I also look for something that makes the film worthwhile. Sometimes a movie isn’t very good, but there’s one thing in it that makes you glad you saw it. Think of Primal Fear, a terrible movie that deserves to exist because of an outstanding performance by a young Edward Norton.  Sometimes it’s top-notch make-up FX that I enjoy. Sometimes it’s an engaging subplot. Most movies have something. Feral has nothing.

You tend to expect any movie with a “name” actor in it to have a baseline level of competence. Feral fucks that expectation right up.  The plot is pretty simple. Three couples go on a camping trip in the middle of nowhere. One of them is attacked and killed by something. The others succumb to a sickness that turns them into wild zombie-like creatures one by one. That’s it. Further summary isn’t really warranted as nothing novel or interesting happens. Sure, then meet a man who lives in the woods and take refuge in his cabin, so that’s more plot, but by then we don’t really care. T

The attempts at character development are thin, and kind of cliché. There’s a romantic triangle that isn’t believable, mostly because the people involved seem less like actual humans and more like some novice screenwriter’s half remembered recollections of characters in other, better, movies.

The star is Scout Taylor Compton (who was good in Rob Zombie’s Halloween, and other films). Here she is wasted. The screenplay gives her no real character traits and nothing to do.  

The “characters” stumble about behaving almost entirely but not completely unlike humans.  They make stupid decision after stupid decision and eventually we start to forget which of them is which as they are all identical in their stupidity. The dumb is fractal. No matter how closely you look it is always the same amount of dumb in the same dull shapes.

Thy FX are bland. The music is flavorless. The trees at least look like real trees and watching this slog of a movie I started to feel badly for them. These trees did not deserve the indignity of being featured in this monument to wasted investor funds. Whoever paid for this movie should demand a refund.

Feral made me tired. I wanted to be angry that it had wasted my time, but honestly what would be the point.  Mostly I feel like I need a hot shower and a long nap. 

-Nathan Tyree

Movies For Guys Who Like Boobies

The Mandalorian

Over at COUCH THING MotD's own Nathan Tyree has some very spoilery thoughts about Disney plus' new Star Wars series The Mandalorian.  You should give it a read.

Couch Thing

Folks, we would like to direct our attention to a new website that tackles film in different ways. Are you curious if George Romero can tell us anything about the mind-body problem? Is there a good film about cock fighting? Is Wilford Brimley the real hero of John Carpenter's The Thing?

Couch Thing can help!

The Best Films of 1999

1. Being John Malkovitch
2. Audition
3. The Talented Mr. Ripley
4. Magnolia
5. Bringing Out the Dead
6. eXistenz
7. Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai
8. All About My Mother
9. Eyes Wide Shut
10. The Iron Giant
11. Office Space
12. Election
13. The Blair Witch Project
14. Fight Club
15. Dogma
16. Man on the Moon
17. The Red Violin
18. Bowfinger
19. The Matrix
20. Three Kings
21. Boys Don’t Cry
22. The Straight Story
23. American Beauty
24. The Insider
25. The Limey

geek out

Geek Out is a web series starring Bruce Robinson.

See it here: Geek Out

Free State of Jones

I don't care if the reviews are bad, I want to see Free State of Jones

sunspring

Sunspring is a movie written by a neural network. It is an amazing piece of cinema. You can see the entire film and read about how it was made here. After seeing it I no longer want to do any thing or have any experience that isn't me watching this film.

Batman versus Superman

It most assuredly does not suck. I want to get that out there right up front. Now that I've said that, let me tell you about all of the things that do suck:

1. Really, we're doing the Batman origin story again? Why?
2. Every scene featuring Lois and Superman together outside of the action sequences are dull and pointless.
3. Several minutes of shirtless Affleck doing cross fit seems a bit much.
4. Someone, anyone, teach Zack Snyder how to cut an action scene in a coherent way, please.
5. Eisenberg's Luthor is better than Spacey's Luthor, but that is a very low bar.
6. Zod is in this movie for no reason at all.
7. MORE WONDERWOMAN! We need more Wonder Woman now!
8. More Aquaman! (I may be the first person in history to say that ever).
9. Too many batman dream sequences.
10. Henry Cavill is just the worst. Really.

having said all of that, it is entertaining. It had the seeds of a great movie in there, it just doesn't find them. It's better than Ant-Man, Age of Ultron, Iron Man 3, both Thor movies and Man of Steel.

I'm glad I saw it, but I'd like to see an anti-directors cut with about 35 minutes trimmed out.

Best part was the trailer for Lego Batman! I need to see that badly

Zombie Entanglement

Zombies are everywhere these days. The Walking Dead is the biggest thing on TV. Movies are overrun with the undead. Donald Trump's supporters are (mostly) brain dead flesh eaters. So, why not get into some serious zombie fiction.

In the early days of the zombie epidemic a group of survivors band together to escape their decimated city. As they travel through a savage, brutal landscape they encounter terrible brutality, surreal events, and the end of history. Along the way they stumble upon a mystery and attempt to solve it. If they succeed, mankind may be saved. How to make Love Like a Zombie is a dark, brutal, sexually twisted exploration of the depths of man's depravity.

How to Make Love Like a Zombie

Seriously, give it a shot. 

It wasn't personal

He asked death to get him off the hook for old time's sake, but it couldn't be done. It was only business.

Abe Vigoda, best known as tessio in The Godfather and Det. Fish on Barney Miller. Has died. Along with him dies my dream of making a film called Planet of the Abes.

Abe and Spider Man

Bears

Jezebel has the best review of The Revenant that we have read so far:

The undeniable standout performance in The Revenant is obvious to me. It’s all anyone’s talking about. The real hero of this otherwise C-grade dud is the BEAR who came out of hibernation to do this shit. They asked her (Yes, you SEXIST) to rip this guy to shreds and the only headlines she gets are about a completely misinterpreted bear rape scene.

Read the entire review here

Asleep inside a deconstructed horse

Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant is a massive film. Big is the word that keeps crashing in your brain while watching it. The vistas are big. The Themes are big. The characters are big (psychologically if not always physically). The brutality is big.  This is just a big damned film. 

Brutal is another word that cannot be escaped. Toward the end of the movie there is a fight in which one character has his fingers chopped off and it is the least violent thing to happen in the scene. This is Cormac McCarthy violence. Blood Meridian violence.  And it is everywhere.  The Americans are violent. The French are violent. The Native Americans are violent. And, above and beyond all of that, nature is violent. In tooth and claw and trunk and branch.

Perhaps the most extraordinary part of this film is the camera. Inarritu uses a disinterested style in which, through long almost languid shots, the camera finds the actions (or sometimes fails to find it). We in the audience must just observe. The camera, like nature, is disinterested.

I recognize that my thoughts here are scattered – I saw this at an advance screening last night and have not really slept yet. Sorry

The hateful Eight 70mm Roadshow

This weekend I went to the Hateful Eight as part of the glorious 70mm roadshow. It was an amazing experience. This is the first 70mm film in fifty years and damn do I hope that the format is going to make a comeback! No film has ever looked so deep, so sharp, so glorious. This movie makes you realize just how shit digital projection is.

The Force Awakens

Star Wars The Force Awakens is a triumph! I will not offer spoilers, nor will I delve too deeply into plot. Rather, I simply want to plant a flag and say that this installment is better than Return of the Jedi. For those keeping score at home, that makes the rankings order:

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. A New Hope
3. The Force Awakens
4. Return of the Jedi

The various novelty films (e.g. Ewoks the Battle for Endor, The Phantom Menace, etc) don't really deserve ranks and are better forgotten.

My Prediction for the best picture Oscar

Nominations are still in the future. Making predictions at this point is a fool's game. I am a fool! The Academy Award for best picture will go to Mad Max: Fury  Road. Just wanted to get that out there now.

Don't look at this

This genius site offers 

More terror than any one person should have to see!

The Green Inferno

This clip brings back the gut wrenching feel of Cannibal Holocaust and so many others. Eli Roth, you sir, will get my dollars soon.

Rooster: Spurs of Death - A Review

Just so you’ll know what sort of mad man you’re dealing with, let me explain that I spent quite some time trying to find a copy of this movie. I have longed to see Rooster: Spurs of Death for quite some time. Finally, after months of fruitless searching, a friend came through with a pirated copy. Now, so that you don’t think I’m completely insane, let me explain my reasons for wanting to see this film.
Rooster was filmed in my neck of the woods, south-east Kansas (I was being literal when I said woods). That fact alone makes it worth my time.

Rooster has been described as “the touching story of the bond that forms between father and son, over the sport of cock fighting”. I’m not kidding here. This is really what the film makers had in mind. Where I live, cock fighting is an unfortunate reality. It’s been illegal for years, but it still goes on. I can drive up the highway from my house, and see the fighting roosters chained to their barrel houses. Everybody knows what these birds are being raised for. Nobody does anything about it.
The film opens with a bit of narration telling us about the “long and proud history of cock fighting”. Then we meet Stoke (Gene Bicknell). Stoke is an old “cocker”, about to head out to a big cock fighting derby. His son, Wyatt (Vince Van Patten, who you may have seen in Rock N Roll High school, as well as other real movies) is going with him. Wyatt is going to be involved for the first time.

The film turns into a road movie for a bit, being made up largely of protracted shots of a pick up truck cruising down dirt roads, inter cut with Stoke telling Wyatt outrageous stories of his youth. We are given a sub plot about Stoke’s wife, who may be having an affair with a big city “cocker” named Clure. We are also given a subplot about Chicken, a midget in love with Kink’s daughter. Kink (Jeff Corey, another real actor who has appeared in a variety of films including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) is the man in charge of the cock fighting. He spews forth ridiculous dialogue, mostly meant to justify the brutality that makes his living.

Then we arrive. Well, first there’s an interlude at a house of ill-repute (I), then we arrive. Much deception and cheating lead to Stoke attempting to rob everyone at the cock fight and (watch out now, I’m going to give away the store here, so if you don’t want to know how it ends, stop reading here) then Stoke ends up dead. Shot by Chicken. Wyatt wants to finish the robbery, Clure tries to stop him. I lose track of how it came out. I can’t decide if the ending was supposed to have a point or not.
The film uses real footage of cock fighting (they must have filmed those scenes in Oklahoma, where it’s still legal). These sequences are a bit rough to watch. Cock fighting is a barbaric, cruel, and inane pastime. In a real cock fighting arena you would not see the sort of attractive, well heeled men the film portrays. Real cockers tend to be toothless, ignorant, inbred, middle aged men who are sexually excited by cruelty. A large number of them are likely to have spent some time in prison for violent crimes. Often sexually sadistic acts. This only makes sense. Sadism, is sadism. Anyone who enjoys torturing animals will eventually get around to torturing people.

This movie is filled with scenery chewing. The overacting is nearly as difficult to watch as the cock fighting. Between the actors there is enough false melodrama to fill the grand canyon. The direction is bland. This film was shot largely like a cheap made for TV movie. It has no style, and no substance.

The script is preposterous. I’ve heard better dialogue in porn.

The film also suffers from incredible padding. It runs ninety-two minutes. Minus the long shots of the same truck going down the same dirst road, and the endless sequences of a plane landing, taxiing, taking off, landing again, this movie would run about sixty-eight minutes. This film is padded like a Jr High school girl’s bra.

So, even if we ignore the ethical problems this film suffers from (and those problems are legion), it is simply bad. This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. And I saw Cut Throat Island! So I’ve seen really bad movies. The film does contain some unintentional humor. It is ripe for MST3K style lampooning. However, even that could not make it an enjoyable experience.

I cannot recommend this film to anyone. It should be avoided at all cost. But then, you weren’t likely to see it in the first place.

Stephenson - A Vampire Movie

Okay, this is something I want to see:

The Gospel According to Stephenson is a vampire movie with a secular message. I learned about it from The Friendly Atheist.

 The basic story concerns the appearance of what appears to be a supernatural being in our modern society — Stephenson — and how the worldview of the people he comes in contact with colors their perception of him.

    Those with a supernatural worldview — “The Believers” — see him as an evil being needing to be stopped in the name of God and morality. Those with a naturalistic world view — “The Skeptics” — see vampirism as a disease that needs to be understood, and if necessary, cured. The Believers call in armies of Christians armed with crosses, wooden stakes and holy water. The Skeptics call in reason and science in the form of the CDC.

Stephenson is possibly the first movie to deal with the vampire myth from a skeptical POV. It is going to be partially crowd funded, so you should chip in! Help make this happen!

Street Fighter - A Review

So: you like martial arts films, eh? You’ve seen all of Bruce Lee’s movies, even Game of Death (which barely has Bruce in it). You’ve never missed a Jackie Chan flick. You think you’ve seen it all. Well, have you seen Street Fighter? If not, then you haven’t even come close to seeing it all. You’ve barely scratched the surface!

What is there to be said about Street Fighter?

The first thing we must clear up, is that we are talking here about the Japanese Martial arts movie starring Sonny Chiba, and not the dreadful Jean-Claude Van Dam movie of the same title. We are also not talking about the cartoons, video games, and pinball machines that carry the same name. All of the above are silly children’s entertainment. The Street Fighter we are interested in is patently adult.
Bruce Lee brought martial arts into the American Mainstream. He became a huge international star, and then suddenly died. After his untimely death, there was a mad rush to find other stars who could fill his shoes. The Bruce Lee clones began pumping out movies at a rapid pace. However, no Asian martial arts actor would attain the same level of success until Jackie Chan. And even Chan would work for years in Hong Kong before he made a real mark in the U.S.

Out of that fervor to find the next big thing in the world of Martial arts movies came something very interesting. Among the garbage, and un-entertaining movies spewed forth, was one very good movie. Street Fighter.

Sonny Chiba plays Terry Sugury. Terry isn’t so much a hero, as simply a super bad a**. He kicks many many butts, and doesn’t seem to care whose butt it is. Terry seems to feel that everyone deserves to get their skull cracked from time to time.

The film opens with Terry pulling off a daring prison break. He was hired to do this job. Who does he break out of prison? It doesn’t matter. This is just the opening scene. The real plot comes later. Terry is hired by a consortium of Yakuza and Mafia to kidnap a rich girl. He does. They wont pay. He goes after them, and protects the princess in the process. Not that he really cares for her. She’s an investment of sorts.

They end up on an oil tanker, where a wounded Terry continues to kick butt, demolishing person after person. Oh yeah, it rains a lot.

Terry is helped by his sidekick, Rat nose. I wont say much about this fellow, except this: Rat nose may be the strangest sidekick in movie history. And that’s even if you disregard his awful name.
I know, that’s not much of a synopsis. But really, there isn’t much of a plot. The plot is like a wire hanger, meant merely to have the action sequences draped over it. It exists merely to provide connection from fight scene to fight scene.

We will notice that Terry’s tough guy: quiet, deadly, seemingly uninterested in how others feel or what they want, driven only by money harkens back to Toshiro Mifune’s character in Yojimbo, and Sanjuro. This character will also remind us of numerous roles played by Lee Marvin and others. Terry is driven by greed. He is one dimensional.

This movie exists for the fight scenes. So, are they any good? Yes. They are amazing. The fight scenes in Street Fighter are unlike anything you have seen before. They are brutal, fast, and wonderfully choreographed. Terry pauses often during fighting, preparing himself for further battle, I suppose. These pauses act as Caesurae, artful pauses that increase tension, create suspense, and keep you interested.

These fight scenes are unlike those we find in Bruce Lee’s films, they are also of a different variety than the ones we have come to know from The Matrices, these scenes are in a category of their own. No other film has really recreated this style.

An interesting thing about these scenes is the way in which we are forced to focus on the outcome of all this fighting. In most Kung Fu movies we see people hit, but we rarely see much blood. We never see the true outcome of such combat. Street Fighter gives us the logical end of the fight. It is dripping with gore. There are times when it is hard to look at all the carnage. This gore fest is what led to the film’s X rating in the United States. Of course, X ratings were handed out like candy in those days. Back then, theaters would actually show films with the dreaded X.

Today the NC-17 (the successor of the X rating) is certain death for a film. This is a sad state of affairs. In the old days patently adult films (not pornography) could be made and marketed to adults. Those days are over. But I digress.

Today’s action films seem watered down, cleaned up, and Disney-fied in comparison to this movie. Even today’s horror films are tame in comparison to the unrelenting gore and violence of Street Fighter. This is a movie to turn weak stomachs. In other words: I love it. There is nothing better than good action, done well.

This movie was followed by several sequels. Among them:
Return of Street Fighter
Sister Street Fighter

and others.

I have only seen Return of Street Fighter, so cannot comment on the other films in the series. About Return I will just say that it is not as impressive as the first film. Like many sequels, it seems to lose something.

I recommend this film highly. I would also suggest that anyone interested in martial arts movies check out Bruce Lee’s great films. Also, the early films of Jackie Chan, John Woo’s great crime movies (like Hard Boiled, and The Killer), and of course some of the movies from my favorite genre: samurai films. For those interested in Samurai movies I suggest Yojimbo, and Seven Samurai.
Final thoughts on Street Fighter:

This film is from an era that has passed us by. It is a fine film, and I suggest finding a copy, making some pop corn, grabbing a cold beer, and enjoying it with friends. The DVD (from Platinum Disc Corp) is acceptable. The picture quality is fine, and the sound is okay. There are no special features, which is sad. There is a great Laser disc available, that has much better picture and great sound. If you can find the Laser, I suggest it. If not, the DVD will do. Enjoy the movie!

A note:

Quentin Tarrantino deserves some credit for returning this film to the American consciousness after being forgotten for many years. He wrote direct references to it into his script for True Romance, and then allowed a praiseful quote from him to be printed on the Laser Disc cover for a re-release of the film. I have to thank him for reminding the public that this interesting film exists. So, thanks Quentin!