Death Sentence (2007)

Director: James Wan

Writers: Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, Brian Garfield

Composer: Charlie Clouser

Starring: Kevin Bacon, John Goodman, Aisha Tyler, Garrett Hedlund, Kelly Preston, Jordan Garrett, Stuart Lafferty, Matt O'Leary, Edi Gathegi, Hector Atreyu Ruiz, Kanin Howell

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Protect What's Yours

Plot: When a family falls victim to a vicious attack perpetrated as a gang initiation ritual, the vengeful father, Nick Hume, vows to track down each person involved in the crime. A sympathetic homicide detective questions her pledge to assist Hume after suspecting that he may have turned to murder as a means of exacting his revenge.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? No.

After watching this now it's no surprise that it was based on the novel written by Brian Garfield, the same cat who wrote DEATH WISH (1974) 'cause it's about the same theme and at times it feels like it's a DEATH WISH remake but with a few tweaks.  Bacon does a good job, as does the rest of the cast I suppose, but it's John Goodman that made me sit up a little more in my seat.  He's great.  He plays Bones Darley, a drug and gun dealer with a foul mouth and an attitude to match it.  Great casting choice on that one.  For the most part it's a standard revenge flick but it doesn't slow down much and the action and story move along at a pretty good pace.  What I didn't care for is some of what James Wan brought to the table like some scenes saturated in blue (think SAW (2004)).  Then there's the slow motion shots of the gang walking and looking badass with the pulsing, pounding score accentuating it.  It's such a cliche that it'll probably cheese you off or make you laugh.  There's another moment where Nick (Bacon) knows he's going to go batshit on these mother fuckers and kill every last one of them.  Yep.  The moment of realization is done in slow motion and with a pulse-pounding score that tells you more than you need to know.  The only thing that would have been worse is if they had flashing words on the screen saying he's really pissed and he's going to kill them.  There are some more little things that bugged me a bit but it's the combination of them all that equal me not watching this again, which is a shame because it's a pretty good film.

Man Bait (1952)

Original title: The Last Page

Director: Terence Fisher

Writers: Frederick Knott, James Hadley

Composer: Frank Spencer

Starring: George Brent, Marguerite Chapman, Raymond Huntley, Peter Reynolds, Eleanor Summerfield, Meredith Edwards, Harry Fowler, Diana Dors

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Blonde Blackmail!

Plot: The married owner of a bookstore is attracted to his sexy blonde clerk. He finally gives in to temptation and makes a pass at her, but that only results in him getting enmeshed in blackmail and murder.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No

NOIR SPOILERS!!!! YARRRRRR!

OK, so it's British.  That means the acting is going to be good.  No one's winning awards for it but it's good.  The picture looks good and the pacing is great.  Yeah, it's only an hour and eighteen minutes so it's relatively short.  It works.  My big problem is with bits of the story.  For the most part it's pretty great.  Ruby (Dors) is a bad news kind of broad but she's pushed even further into the dark world of deceit and blackmail by someone even worse, Jeff (Reynolds).  He's a slick criminal who knows how to manipulate.  When he sets things into motion that lead to her boss', John (Brent), wife's suicide, shit gets real and fast.  Problem number one.  John gets deeper and deeper with Ruby (the don't fool around, she's just threatening to cry wolf if he doesn't giver her money) and at no point does he go to the police, ESPECIALLY when a crate shows up at his house with Ruby's dead body in it!!!  Instead he runs and he's A-No. 1 on the copper's list of suspects now.  That's problem number two.  Now he plays detective and tries to figure out who killed her so he can clear his name.

Here's problem number three. The fuzz knows of the 350 pounds John received from his insurance maturing (or something like that).  John had given that money to Ruby to shut her up.  After Jeff kills Ruby for the money, some of it ends up in the hands of one of his gal friends.  She then goes to a small shop to buy some smokes and pays for them with one of the bills.  The clerk checks the serial numbers of the bill against a notice he received from the cops to be on the lookout.  The bill matches up and she gets detained.  REALLY?  Was this a common practice in 1950s London?  That's some super efficient police work, not to mention HOW THE HELL WOULD THEY KNOW THE SERIAL NUMBERS TO BEGIN WITH?!?  It's bullshit, piss poor writing like that that pulls me out of a picture.  It's a PROMETHEUS (2012) moment and there are a few of them in this film.  The ending has Jeff about to kill a good friend of John's but he and the cops get there in time to save her from being burnt to a crisp. Damn.  You know the ending is going to end on a happy note but this picture could have benefited from seeing her die but still having Jeff caught and arrested.  It's not a bad film despite these nitpicks so don't pass it up on my account, just know what you're in fer.

  

A Stolen Face (1952)

Director: Terence Fisher

Writers: Martin Berkeley, Richard H. Landau, Alexander Paal, Steven Vas

Composer: Malcolm Arnold

Starring: Paul Henreid, Lizabeth Scott, Andre Morell, Mary Mackenzie, John Wood, Susan Stephen, Arnold Ridley, Cyril Smith, Diana Beaumont, Terence O'Regan, Russell Napier

More info: IMDb

Tagline: TREACHERY wears a Stolen Face

Plot: A plastic surgeon has a brief fling with a concert pianist, then she leaves him to go back to her previous boyfriend. In order to "keep" her, he operates on a patient--a female criminal on the run--and changes her face to duplicate his former lovers. Trouble ensues when the pianist returns to him.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? Probably not.

Call me surprised.  The first half of this short 71 minute picture is a by the numbers melodrama where the guy falls in love with a gal but we the audience just know something's up with her.  Yup.  She dumps him when it's time for her concert pianist self to split when her tour is over and go home to...her fiance!  So what's a plastic surgeon to do?   Why use his skills to shape a scarred up female prisoner to look like his lost beloved...and marry her!!!  See, he's a brilliant plastic surgeon whose clients include charity work at the local women's prison.  We're told that nearly all of the prisoners he works on lead normal, non criminal productive lives after he finishes with them.  He thinks his new project will follow in the same pattern...only she doesn't, but it's too late since he married the broad.  The piano gal ends up not marrying her fiance and comes to reclaim the doc.  The last half hour is easily the best.  Once we catch on that he's making his new bride to look like the ivory tickler, the story starts wandering into THE TWILIGHT ZONE territory and it gets worse for the guy from then on.  The ending is great.  Love it.  It's one of 6 movies in the first Hammer Film Noir DVD set that I picked up on the cheap.  It's the third one I've watched so far and it's the best but it's still a fence sitter whether I'll watch it again.  If any of the other three are worth it I'll probably end up keeping the set.  Unfortunately the extras are limited to text bios and a few trailer but not for all of them.  Yawn.

Æon Flux (2005)

AKA: Aeon Flux

Director: Karyn Kusama

Writers: Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi, Peter Chung

Composer: Graeme Revell

Starring: Charlize Theron, Marton Csokas, Johnny Lee Miller, Sophie Okonedo, Frances McDormand, Pete Postlethwaite, Amelia Warner, Caroline Chikezie, Nikolai Kinski, Paterson Josepth, Yangzom Brauen

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The Perfect World Meets The Perfect Assassin

Plot: Aeon Flux is a mysterious assassin working for the Monicans, a group of rebels trying to overthrow the government. When she is a sent on a mission to kill the Chairman, a whole new mystery is found.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I remember watching the initial animated creation of Peter Chung's on MTV's Liquid Television way back when and, like most people at the time, I was enthralled with the brief minutes they showed us each week of this strange and wonderful creation.  It was stylish, sexy and cool as shit.  I even have the mid-90s animated series DVD set although I've barely watched it.  For years I've been meaning to get to this film as a fan of the original animated shorts and Theron.  She seemed like a great fit for the character and for the most part that's true.  What disappoints me is how Matrix-y it is and how different it is from its animated origins.  It doesn't feel like the AEON FLUX I knew and loved.  It's not edgy. It's got a little of the sexy appeal but the style is different.  The bottom line is, it feels like so many other sci-fi action films that came after THE MATRIX (1999).  It's not a bad picture, it's just not like the original source material and it's rather bland but in a reasonable distraction kind of way.  The tag at the end is crap when it brings us into a happy ending real world..  I want to stay in this universe (well, at least the universe the original animated stuff was in) and not escape to reality. I reckon I'm gonna have to bust out that animated set now and re-live the good ole days.

Fire Birds (1990)

Director: David Green

Writers: Step Tyner, Jahn K. Swensson, Dale Dye, Nick Thiel, Paul F. Edwards

Composer: David Newman

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Tommy Lee Jones, Sean Young, Bryan Kestner, Illana Diamant, Dale Dye, Mary Ellen Trainor, J.A. Preston, Peter Onorati, Charles Lanyer, Marshall R. Teague

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The best just got better.

Plot: The U.S. Government is willing to help any country that requires help in ridding themselves of drugs with support from the Army. Unfortunately, the drug cartels have countered that offer by hiring one of the best air-combat mercenaries and have armed him with a Scorpion attack helicopter. The army decides to send in it's best people from it's Apache Air Combat school. But first they have to be taught how to fly air-to-air combat mission.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

There are a lot of surprises to be found in this picture.  Tommy Lee Jones plays an ornery cuss, Nicolas Cage has difficulty showing any emotion besides rage and Sean Young takes her clothes off (again).  As you can see, this is the film that everyone decided to stretch beyond their comfort zone and really make a difference in their chosen field of acting. It's TOP GUN (1986) with helicopters and they're going after the drug cartels of South America.  It's a silly, macho pilot flick with Jake's (Cage) ego the size of Montana (but he really is good, see) and the bond he forms with Brad Little (Jones) and re-forms with Billie (Young). It's complete with a love montage backed with a Phil Collins-esque song.  [OMFG, I just looked up the soundtrack credits on IMDb and it WAS a Phil Collins song.]  Woof.  It's 85 minutes long, the first hour has very little conflict for the hero, Jake (who finds out he has an eye dominance problem which is very quickly remedied - really, that's the big challenge he faces, that and trying to win over Billie) and the last half hour is the big mission which is pretty uneventful except for the always fun Tommy Lee Jones.  He was the best part. Young does a fine job as usual and Cage...well, he was Cage.  There is a moment with Cage and Jones, just before the shit hits the fan, where Cage apologizes for being such a cocky sumbitch and Jones gives a nice little speech.  I really dug that scene.  Everything else is disposable.  It's not all that horrible of a picture but neither is it all that good.  I guess composer David Newman (one of my favorites) needed the paycheck.  It's not one of his finer moments for damn sure.

Alpha Dog (2006)

Director: Nick Cassavetes

Writer: Nick Cassavetes

Composer: Aaron Zigman

Starring: Bruce Willis, Matthew Barry, Emile Hirsch, Fernando Vargas, Vincent Kartheiser, Justin Timberlake, Shawn Hatosy, Alex Solowitz, Alec Vigil, Harry Dean Stanton, Frank Cassavetes, Ben Foster, Anton Yelchin, Sharon Stone, Olivia Wilde, Heather Wahlquist, Lukas Haas

More info: IMDb

Tagline: How did a crime with this many witnesses go so far?

Plot: Johnny Truelove likes to see himself as tough. He's the son of an underworld figure and a drug dealer. Johnny also likes to get tough when things don't go his way. When Jake Mazursky fails to pay up for Johnny, things get worse for the Mazursky family, as Johnny and his 'gang' kidnap Jake's 15 year old brother and holds him hostage. Problem now is what to do with 'stolen boy?'

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Get a load of that cast!  It's got a few names just before they hit the big time.  It's an interesting look into some 'kids' dealing with issues in the wrong way, letting their egos get in the way of reason.  The performances are good and the picture moves along quite nicely, making the two hour running time seem rather quick.  I didn't realize this was based on an actual case until the end but it still makes for an enjoyable movie.  Not much to say about this one except I dug it.

Lost Battalion (1962)

Director: Eddie Romero

Writers: Eddie Romero, Cesar Amigo

Composer: Les Baxter

Starring: Rosi Acosta, Arsenio Alonso, Bruce Baxter, Joe Dennis, Diane Jergens, Johnny Monteiro, Renato Robles, Leopoldo Salcedo, Joe Sison, Jennings Sturgeon

More info: IMDb

Tagline: 200 Men and one girl trapped in a ring of steel!

Plot: During World War II, a guerilla leader named Ramon (Salcedo) contacts a group of American refugees pinned down by the Japanese in the Philippines. With his vast knowledge of the jungle, he hopes to get them to a waiting submarine, but it won't be easy. As the group makes its way across enemy lines, they rescue a woman (Jergens) from bandits, but the heroic deed threatens to slow their progress.

My rating: 3/10

Will I watch it again? No.

A few weeks ago I stopped watching this about halfway through, having fallen asleep twice.  Last night I had to start from the top because I couldn't remember a damn thing about it. I fell asleep twice.  This is dreadfully dull.  It's not that the acting is bad (it's fine I suppose) or the score is ill-fitting (Baxter's music is rousing and works like it should) but it's the story and pacing.  It's 83 minutes long but should be half that.  Scenes linger past their sell date and there's too much walking and things going nowhere fast.  There's a little action but not enough to keep you going.  In all seriousness, I should pop this in when I'm having trouble sleeping.  It's proven to work, at least for me.