CYBORG 3 more like "SIGH"-BORG 3

How is this for a plot synopsis?  CYBORG 3 is about some guy we never see because he is dead who banged some robot that looks like a woman and the robot gets pregnant.  That is probably the stupidest thing I have ever heard.  Just look at Malcom McDowell on the cover there.  He looks just as confused as I am.  Maybe he is more confused about the cover where it states "STARRING MALCOM McDOWELL".  Yea, that is a bunch of "durka-durka".  He is in the movie for about three minutes of screen time at the beginning and then he dies.  CYBORG 3 is the little movie that tried but failed.  Here is a little life lesson for you, CYBORG 3.  The road to failure is called TRYING.

CYBORG 3 is the bold and daring story of a woman robot (some chick from HEAD OF THE CLASS) who is pregnant and is trying to get to a robot "paradise" called CY-TOWN where she can have her robo-baby in peace.  Remember that kid (Zach Galligan) who was the main character in GREMLINS.  Yea, he stars in this sucker too.  He is a robot designer who helps her get to CY-TOWN.  Hot on their heels is Anton played by Richard Lynch (who is great in everything he does) and his robot muscle bound henchman who looks like the son of Robert Z'Dar.(That big dude with the even bigger chin that got electrocuted in TANGO & CASH) 

I feel kind of bad for picking on such a low budget poorly made film that only made it to Pay Per-View back in the early nineties.  I can't help it though.  This movie needs to be kicked to the ground and have it's milk money stolen.  Why?  Because the movie doesn't know what a cyborg is.  A cyborg is part human and part robot.  Examples include Robocop, Darth Vader, Jason X and me when I accidentally got my foot stuck in a toaster.  I'm not anymore though.  For a short time I had the strength of a full grown man and a toaster until it fell off.  In CYBORG 3 however cyborgs are just robots that look like people.  It kind of bothered me that people were killing robots and they constantly referred to them as cyborgs.  CY-TOWN is short for CYBORG TOWN (get it?) but there are only broken down robots.  There are cyborgs in this movie like Malcom McDowell with his robot arm and Richard Lynch has a robot eye but I do believe they are considered just human.  It doesn't make any sense.

CY-TOWN is suppose to be this hard to find city that is out in the middle of nowhere.  Those who have found it never lived to tell about it.  Anton speaks about it like its the freakin fountain of youth.  Its so hard to find that our heroes found it in two minutes roaming the desert.  Way to go CYBORG 3!  The great and mysterious CY-TOWN is a couple of shacks in the desert.  Big whoop.  That is what they call a city in the future, I guess.  Its a major let down, folks.  What is not a let down is William Katt.  He plays a C-3PO kind of robot.  If you don't know who Willian Katt is then I recommend you go out and buy every season of THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO to get yourself educated in awesome-superocity.  Honestly he doesn't do much but he is such a delight to see on screen.  He will always be my "greatest American hero".  CY-TOWN is populated with broken down robots that the robot designer repairs to help fight an army of robot hunters.  These robots are young looking dudes who looked like they spent their teenage years in the eighties listening to Butt-Rock bands like POISON and MOTLEY CREW and participated  in a lot of backyard wrestling.  These guys try so hard to be tough but all they do is complain and you find yourself rooting for the bad guys. 

The end fight is so wonderfully awful and embarrassing to watch.  If you were watching this in your room by yourself and your friends walked in you would trash the t.v. trying to turn it off.  Your friends would be like "Ha-Ha!  You were watching porn!" and you would be like "Yes.  Yes I was".  You wouldn't dare admit to watching CYBORG 3.  That's the kind of shame that never goes away.  The final fight is a bunch of poorly strung together action moments that try to be badass but deliver unintentional laughs. There is a lot of motorcycles jumping around and some explosions.  This good guy robot has no hands so he asks the designer to make his hands guns.  Yea, that's cool right?  There is a problem that is never addressed in the film.  How do you reload, genius?  Of course there is another guy who watched too much HIGHLANDER.  He runs around with a samurai sword (of course) but he barely uses it.  He does the twirly stuff with it but then he stabs it into the ceiling and takes down a couple of guys with his hands and then he pulls it down to cut off some mannequin's  head that just appeared out of nowhere.  The whole finale is weak sauce with an abrupt Dire Straits MONEY FOR NOTHING music video style robo-baby appearing ending.  Its weird looking and hard to explain but you are just thankful that the movie is over.

As bad as this movie is there was strong potential for CYBORG 3 to be a cult classic.  The start of the movie focuses on Richard Lynch's character hunting robots and selling them to Malcom McDowell.  Richard is a fantastic actor and he brings some weight to this film that instantly disappears the second he is not on screen.  For a moment I thought maybe the whole movie would be about him.  That would be awesome.  He is the kind of badass villain we want to see carry the story and develop some kind of character arch.  But instead we have to deal with boring people that act as our heroes but bring nothing of interest to the standard stock characters that populate most low budget sci-fi-direct-to-Pay-Per-View movies from the nineties.  Obviously budget does not make a film good.  Most of the time its the imagination and talent to bring a vision to life that makes a movie good.....Or boobs.  CYBORG 3 does have some boobs in it.  So yea, its a good movie.

Watch it on Netflix, folks.

Jason

HIGHLANDER! BLANDLANDER!

What can be said that hasn't already been said about this 1986 classic?  HIGHLANDER spawned four sequels, a couple of spin-off t.v. shows, a cartoon series and a video game and probably a whole bunch of other stuff I don't know about.  The problem is that none of the other movies lived up to the "greatness" of the original.  Time after time fans flocked to the cinemas to see the next installment of the HIGHLANDER series only to find a confusing boggled mess of storytelling and bad acting.  Nobody seems to know why.  Well that is why I am here, folks.  I will answer the question that hundreds quested to find only to never be seen from again.  Do you want to know the answer?  Trust me you won't like it but if it will save a life I will tell you.  The reason that the sequels suck so bad is because the original is a stale, embarrassingly bad piece of wannabe badassness.  Search your feelings.  You know this to be true.

I would be lying to you if I said that HIGHLANDER is the story of an immortal (Christopher Lambert) who is trained by a large talking peacock (Sean Connery) to help fight and prevent an evil immortal called the Kurgan (that guy from SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION) from being the last immortal and claiming the "prize".  Nope, that is not what this movie is about.  HIGHLANDER is about swords.  This movie is hugely popular in the nerd community and nerds love swords.  CLING-CLANG CLASH SPARKS!  COOL!  Look at all those cool swords.  COOL! Look at the Kurgan's cool broadsword.  COOL!  Wouldn't that be cool hanging on my wall?  COOL!  Oh, my gosh!  Sean Connery's sword is a samurai sword.  COOL!  I want it in my mouth!.............Cool?  In fact the only way to kill an immortal is by cutting his head off.  That's convenient.  The swords themselves seem to have all the power.  They slice through steel and concrete causing major sparkage like maybe the immortals have super strength.  But this super strength is never demonstrated unless they are fighting with their damn swords.  It just makes me wonder is all.

I find it strange that so many regard this film as a classic but crap all over the sequels.  HIGHLANDER is just as bad as HIGHLANDER 2,3,4, and 5.  There really isn't that much difference in quality.  They are all hokey with weak protagonists and convoluted stories that are filled with plot holes galore.  If anything HIGHLANDER is the grand daddy of poor storytelling.  It laid the foundation of stupidity that the rest merely followed up on.  I do like the Kurgan though.  Maybe that is just because I like to say the word "Kurgan".  He is totally badass at the beginning with his huge sword and skull helmet.  But even his lovable evil antics get WAAAY over the top by the end.  You can tell he was a huge influence on the creation of the Guardian character in HIGHLANDER part 5:  THE SOURCE.

The story for the first HIGHLANDER fails to explain where immortals came from.  They are born like everyone else.  Wouldn't that mean immortals can be born at anytime creating an unlimited supply of immortals?  Why wouldn't more immortals be born throughout time?  How does Sean Connery know so much about the "gathering"?  How does the Kurgan know that Conner Macleod is an immortal?  Remember when Conner is trying to fight in the big battle in the highlands and none of the bad guys would fight him.  Why didn't they fight him?  Because they knew he was immortal but when he is stabbed and is walking around perfectly fine the next day his own people kick him out and even try to burn him alive.  How come they didn't know?  You can see how the writer had two neat scenarios for Conner to demonstrate the drama of being immortal but they rub against each other the wrong way.  They contradict each other.  Its called bad writing, folks.............Yeah, I know I am guilty of that too. 

A lady forensics officer shows up to investigate Conner's kill in the parking lot of  a wrestling stadium.  Those were weird looking wrestlers by the way.  Conner sees that she has discovered a piece of his sword that was stuck in a concrete pillar.  At this time Conner is the main suspect of the murder.  Her part in the story would have stopped right there with her investigation coming to a dead end.  It would be impossible to connect that piece of sword (that should not exsist by the way according to history) to Conner.  Instead Conner tries to hit on her in a bar which makes her follow him and see him fight the Kurgan.  She isn't even interested in finding the killer she just wants to see the sword that the piece of metal belongs to.  Conner grabs the girl to protect her from the Kurgan who he senses is nearby.  Suddenly the Kurgan just stands up right next to them like he was sitting there the whole time in plain sight!  Does that make sense to you?  How could you miss that guy?  He's ten feet tall!  I like how the two immortals are fighting and then this random police helicopter shows up to interrupt things and everyone just kind of walks away and the police don't even bother to follow.  Kind of lame if you ask me.

Speaking of random.  Everyone makes a big deal about the planet Ziegst (or whatever its called) but I don't hear any complaints about the crazy marine character.  For a brief moment the movie kind of turns into TAXI DRIVER or something when this crazed ex-marine loads up his car with guns and starts driving around looking for something crazy to shoot at, I guess.  Boy, does he find it.  He just so happens to find two immortals stabbing it out in some alley somewhere and he decides to investigate things with his machine gun.  He sees the Kurgan kill one of the last immortals.  The crazy ex-marine's response is to shoot the Kurgan.  Of course nothing happens and the Kurgan impales the marine with his sword and hoists him into the air.  Then he is flung off the sword like poo from a stick and lives.  The crazy ex-marine ends up in a hospital to give the cops a description of his assailant.  The guy had a broadsword in his guts!  This character serves no purpose except to see one of the last immortals die.  Surely there is a better way to show that there are only two immortals left.

That is my biggest problem with HIGHLANDER.  The story needed to be focused on the immortals and their unique relationship with each other.  The immortals can get along with each other and be good friends but they all know that eventually they are bound by the rules to fight each other to the death until there is only one.  What a great premise for a story but instead the script follows more of a classic cop movie formula in part with too many scenes involving police and interrogations and questioning eyewitnesses which all of this adds up to nothing.  Only once when Conner and (Sean Connery's character's name goes here) are sparring does this dilemma come up.  Conner asks what would happen if they were the last two and for a moment Conner has the upper hand to kill his friend right then and there.  He doesn't of course and the issue is never brought up again.  You get the sense that the movie is about to get interesting but then it just goes poop.  Wouldn't it be more interesting if Conner and the talking peacock had to fight it out at the end?  It would be hard to predict that fight.  It could be that the main antagonist of the film is the rules of being a immortal themselves.  They could come to an agreement to not kill each other and leave the "prize" a mystery.  Then if you wanted to make a sequel you could say that because they stopped seeking the "prize" that more immortals came into existence over time drawn to the "prize".  Shoot! I should have written HIGHLANDER.

So let me get this straight.  The "prize" is to gain ultimate knowledge and the ability to die.  Does that make sense to you?  How is being able to die a prize?  Being able to die is only a prize if you work in retail.  If you are immortal that is the last thing you want.  It kind of defeats the purpose of preventing the Kurgan from getting the "prize".  In fact if I was the second to last immortal I would let him cut off my head.  Then I would haunt him as a ghost and be like "Ha-Ha, sucker!  The prize makes you dead too."  If I can't turn into a ghost then I would say it very loudly so he can hear me from Hell.

HIGHLANDER had great promise of being a truly great classic.  The story of immortals forced by the unknown to kill each other makes for great drama.  Unfortunately the movie stays away from such interesting concepts.  Why is Christopher Lambert in this movie?  He talks funny and looks like a neanderthal.  The movie strives to make him badass and a little humorous but he can't pull it off.  He's no Clint Eastwood is all I am saying.  They should have casted somebody better.  In fact before the writer ever wrote a single word down for the script he should have watched a ton of westerns with John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson to know what it takes to make a badass hero.  It takes more than a weapon to have a stoic presence in a film.  And don't think having Sean Connery makes the movie watchable!  Lets not forget Sean was the main star of the artsy-fartsy-wtf movie ZARDOZ.  What the hell was going on in that movie?  I don't know.  I kind of get this weird "STAR TREKIAN" feel to HIGHLANDER.  Its hard to explain.  If you like STAR TREK then you have to like HIGHLANDER.  Its in the nerd guide lines or something.  Conner himself is kind of stiff like every single character in STAR TREK.  The badassness of Conner is defined by his samurai sword like a nerd would define Klingons as great warriors because they got those stupid moon shaped swords.  What is so great about Klingons anyway? 

Hey, while we are on the subject of STAR TREK! Wouldn't it be cool if a Highlander, uh, I mean immortal lived so long that he made it to the future and joined the crew of the Enterprise and went with them on their many adventures into space and fought Klingons and crap!?!

The answer to that is "No."  No, it would not.  The end.

Jason

ONECHANBARA: BIKINI SAMURAI SQUAD

I don't know what ONECHANBARA means and I certainly don't know how to pronounce it but if you asked me I would have to say it means "over sexed Bratz doll who wears inappropriate clothing for fighting creatures that stopped living and became mixed up zombies happy luck wish well."  That's a rough translation from Japanese into English.  Or maybe not. 

ONECHANBARA is the story of a kung-fu zombie killing machine chick whose name is......I don't know I am just going to call her Onechanbara.  She is on a quest for revenge in a world destroyed by zombies.  Onechanbara is set on killing her sister who murdered her father back in the good old days before the zombies ate my neighbors.  The evil sister is working with an slimy scientist who is responsible for turning the world's population into fleshing eating zombies.  Onechanbara is a quiet kind of wannabe Clint Eastwood man with no name  type character.  Its a little hard to take her seriously when she is walking around in a bikini, cowboy hat and feathered boa.  Lets just say that she isn't the most convincing argument for women fighting in the military.

ONECHANBARA is a video game movie and its not too bad overall.  There is plenty of action and there are a couple of hot chicks running around to keep things interesting.  You do see boobs at one point but they aren't the boobs you want to see so that is somewhat of a major let down.  But the movie follows the #1 rule of a good zombie movie.  They kill lots of zombies.  Apparently Onechanbara and her evil sister have special powers. I call them "video game powers" because they don't really make sense unless you live in the world of a video game.  This allows our heroine to slice and dice zombies into bad special effects and to do the splits on their faces.  The two sisters have this huge fight at the end where everything turns into DRAGONBALL Z.  Their moves are so fast that they appear in brief flashes on the screen impossible to follow with your eyes.  Its badass.  There is no shaky cam close up crap to try and intensify the action.  While the concept of a woman in a bikini fighting zombies is the stuff of exploitation the movie does its best to make you care for these characters.  All the characters suffer from major loss in their lives and movie focuses on their pain to drive the story.  I like that.  It gives the movie some heart.

Since this is a video game movie I have decided to call the special effects "graphics" instead.  The graphics in this movie aren't very good.  This super zombie is shot at the beginning of the movie and the bullets break against it's clothing in digitized pixels.  The bullets don't even break the clothing.  It looks terrible.  When the zombies get chopped up they turn into cartoons but that doesn't really bother me though.  Its a video game movie after all.  The biggest improvement the movie could have made was the cinematography.  The beginning takes place at night and the first thing you notice is how ugly everything is.  Its too dark and colorless.  The sets are empty warehouses and the outsides of empty warehouses.  Its not too imaginative.  The end fight looks a lot better in a open field in broad daylight.  Maybe they got a new director for the ending.

They were scraping the bottom of the barrel when they picked the main villain.  The bad guy scientist looks more like a child molesting uncle than the guy who destroyed the world with zombies.  I am not sure why this guy ended civilization as we know it.  Maybe he got teased a lot as a kid.  Maybe he showed up to some kind of scientist convention not wearing pants.  He was like "Hello everyone.  I have invented a transportation device that can transport any item from my machine to anywhere in the world and from anywhere in the world to my machine.  It will revolutionize traveling as we know it.  No longer will we depend on fossil fuels to move around in our four wheeled coffins."  And then some jerk in the audience was like "Hey doc, why don't you transport your pants back on!" and everyone laughed at him.  That is probably what happened but they don't mention it in the movie.  He's not a very menacing bad guy is all I am saying.  He is more slime than man. 

ONECHANBARA should have been a better movie.  They should have invested more in the look of the film and some of the special effects.  But despite its flaws its still a good bit of fun.  If you like zombies, badass ladies, violence galore then you should like this movie.  Its kind of like D.O.A. Volleyball meets Left 4 Dead.  Weird.  Also weird is the title.  I don't remember seeing a bikini samurai squad anywhere.  There is only one gal in a bikini.  What a rip-off!  Can't wait for the sequel though.


Jason

EISIS

(Full disclosure time, folks.  My friend edited this film.  Now you know so don't think I have some personal bias for loving this film.  Its a great movie.  Would I lie?  You probably shouldn't answer that question.)

EISIS is about a man named Eisis.  He is part of a four man special forces recon group sent in to some country to investigate the possibility of a Russian presence.  While on recon the entire team is wiped out by a mine.  Only Eisis survives.  On his own the soldier must survive his wounds, hide from a Russian Captain and his men and wait for extraction.  Eventually he befriends a lady shaman who helps him while he continues his mission.

To start things off this isn't an action movie.  It is an art film.  It just happens to be a badass art film.  There is weaponized military might mixed with nature and eastern religious beliefs.   You can tell there are some brains behind the camera.  This is a well directed movie and very colorful.  Its a low budget movie but it never feels that way.  I love the night scene where the special forces have just parachuted in and everything is in green nightvision.  It was filmed in the day with a green filter to make it nightvision.  It allows us to see what the soldier sees in their world.  Its highly imaginative.  The entire movie takes place in the woods.  Most movies would become tedious and boring but not EISIS.  Watching our hero survive in the wild with his military training while the lady shaman helps him and eventually befriends him is compelling.  You are not quite sure where the story is going or how these two are going to work together because they come from two different worlds.  Its an unpredictable film to say the least.

If you watch the world premier feature on the extras DVD you learn that the story and imagery in this film has a specific meaning to the director but he purposely leaves the explanations of what your are seeing vague so you can come up with your own interpretation.  That's kind of neat.  At one point Eisis has a dream about a fallen viking also named Eisis.  Maybe he's an ancestor and his strength is carried on in generation after generation.  I have no idea what that means except both characters are wounded and must continue to fight.  They don't really follow that up with more dream sequences to parallel with the story.  It almost seems out of place but it still works.  The only time it is referenced again is near the end when Eisis is running to save the day and a brief flash of a viking shield and spear (or sword) appears.  The lady shaman has a vision of a tree coming to life and walk past her.  Its a great special effect.  Maybe these kinds of "out of left field" moments may be off putting to those who seek a more action extreme in this film because it deals with the military.  It is risky to put originality in one's work nowadays. 

I guess maybe my only complaints are that EISIS is a little slow in the middle.  It takes a long time for our two main characters to come together and help each other out.  But its never boring.  Let the movie take its time.  The visuals, direction, and concepts presented in the film keeps your mind occupied seeking deeper meanings.  Also the Russian Captain is surprisingly a very interesting character. I would have liked to have had the film explain what his impact on the locals would be if he succeeded in his mission.  That would add a bigger sense of accomplishment in the success of Eisis's mission.

This is a very exciting piece of work.  According to the director the film goes for authenticity.  So a lot of what you see from the soldiers and their practices to the shaman and her rituals are real.  This is a labor of love.  It is evident from every camera shot, piece of music, sound effect and bizzare imagery that there was a lot of thought put into EISIS.  You are not watching another RAMBO clone or something.  EISIS was made to make you think.  It has been a couple of days since I bought it and I still keep going back in my mind thinking of what I saw in this movie.  I plan on watching it again very soon just to see if I get more out of it from a second viewing.  I bought this film simply because my friend had a hand in putting it together.  What I found was a small masterpiece of filmmaking. 

Buy it at Eisis-themovie.com.


Jason

THE PUNISHER......The watered down one.

Back in the mid 90's I was on this Gary Busey kick where I would watch as many of his films as possible.  There was one film called WARRIORS where at the beginning of the movie these special forces guys led by Busey walk through these tall reeds of grass approaching a mafia birthday party.  They gun everyone down including the kids.  It wasn't a very good movie.  Gary Busey didn't die in it.  Busey's best films are usually the ones where he dies in them.  The WARRIORS was a pretty forgettable film.  I hadn't thought of it in years until I was sitting in the theater watching Thomas Jane's THE PUNISHER and I saw the exact same scene happen right before my eyes.  I knew right then that this wasn't going to be the Punisher movie I had been waiting my whole life for.

To sum it up exactly take one part badassness and two parts weak sauce and put them together.  Stir thoroughly until everything that resembles the Punisher from the comic books is completely mushed away into a bland mish-mash of uncreative mainstream gobblety-gook and pour it into a baking pan in the shape of Spider-Man.  Bake for one hundred and twenty three minutes.  Taste what you have created.  Tastes pretty "blah" doesn't it?  Its not terrible but it isn't what you want either.  That is what T.J.'s THE PUNISHER is.  It doesn't suck completely but it does suck in enough areas to ruin what should have been an easy comic movie franchise.

First off lets talk about some positives.  I like the villains.  Travolta is great as Howard Saint the father of a tight knit crime family that is responsible for the death of the Punisher's family.  I know a lot of critics think he is terrible and way over the top but I think he plays the part just right.  He is sharp as a switchblade.  I like how he and his men dressed in black stick out in stark contrast from the happy sunny Florida setting.  The film has a retro eighties action film look to it which is nice to see in this age of over the top CGI extravaganzas.  The blood effects and explosions are practical until the stupid Punisher skull explosion fire at the end.  Thomas Jane is passable as the title character also known as Frank Castle but he doesn't feel authentic.  He always has this sad dopey expression on his face.  He isn't mean looking enough.  The Johnny Cash hit man was pretty cool too.  I really liked his death song for the Punisher.

The thing I hate most about T.J.'s THE PUNISHER is how uncreative the story is.  Again we must suffer through another origin story that follows the SPIDER-MAN formula.  SPIDER-MAN  was also an origin story that had a hero defining memorable line "With great power comes great responsibility."  Also the soundtrack has a duet between the idiot lead singer of Nickleback and the hokey gross lead singer of Saliva.  THE PUNISHER is an origin story with the not so memorable weak hero defining line "Good memories can save your life" or something like that.  It tries to be deep but fails miserably.  At least the duet between whatshername from Evanescence and the singer from Seether is way better.  Look how they treat the story.  First we get a bunch of boring, awkward, poorly acted family scenes to show us the human side of the Punisher.  Of course there is a child that gets to barely spit out his lines and deflate any sense of seriousness the film strives to maintain.  Why do we need to see the origin of Punisher's trademark skull?  The skull represents protection from evil spirits?  WTF?  The comic book Punisher came up with the white skull as a symbol of punishment and to draw the eye of the enemy to fire at his armored chest instead of his head.  See there is some thought there.  None of this, my son bought me this shirt so now I got to wear it so he doesn't feel bad from beyond the grave crap.

The Punisher's past family life is something none of us should see.  It is something that should be left up to the imagination.  But of course the movie needs action scenes so where do they put the biggest one in?  Well the big family reunion seems just as good as any for an action scene.  After all they used guns to kill his family in the comics.  Lets up it a little and involve the Punisher's entire family, relatives and that guy from JAWS as an homage to JAWS because I like the movie JAWS.  Put gun fights in there as well and be sure to add a big car chase with explosions and motorcycle riding and sailing!  The result is the audience's emotions to the characters are distracted by all the action going on.  The spectacle takes the place of the loss of Frank Castle's family.

THE PUNISHER is a revenge film when it shouldn't be.  Castle's main motivation is punishing the guilty.  It is not for revenge.  In the comics I remember reading in the early series the Punisher talking about not knowing if he ever got the guys that murdered his family.  It was realistic like in DEATH WISH.  Charles Bronson never went after the guys that murdered his wife and put his daughter into a coma.  He went after crime in general.  The Punisher did the same.  The not knowing fueled his mission to punish evil doers.  By giving THE PUNISHER the cliched most obvious plot about going after those who murdered his family not only shows how unoriginal the studio is when creating the film but how the creators completely missed the point of the whole character of the Punisher.  I know that in the film the Punisher states that this is not about revenge but it clearly is when after completing his mission he attempts suicide.  His pain from the experience of loss should be responsible for his need to continue on doing the Punisher's work not some weird flash of his dead wife making sad faces at him.

Is it just me or did they overly sexualize the Punisher and make him really stupid?  Seriously I think ol' Frank Castle spends most of the movie with out his shirt on showing off his perfectly sculpted sweaty boobies.  He is like one of those "BOD" fragrance commericals.  He even has these deep meaningful conversations with his neighbors with his shirt off.  When he is wearing a shirt its a tight white t-shirt.  Does he make money winning wet t-shirt contests at gay clubs?  He sure looks like he does.  That is not the Punisher I know.  The funniest part has to be when he rises from the floor in that elevator with his shirt half torn and Rebecca Romain Stamos at his feet with the dramatic lightning over emphasising the cheesiness of the scene.  It looks like something right out of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.  Why would the Punisher announce to everyone in the media that he is alive?  Wouldn't a better strategy for revenge be to make your enemies think you are dead so they don't know who to look for when they go after you?  Why would the Punisher think that no one would call the cops the second they see him on the streets?  Doesn't he risk his fellow neighbors calling the cops on him?  They obviously know who he is from watching the news.  He got really lucky is all I'm saying.  Also the bad guys find his place of residence pretty easy (how?) which almost got him and his new friends killed.  Frank Castle in the comics was a soldier.  He thought in a militaristic mindset on how he dealt with criminals.  There was none of this drinking your sorrows away melodrama or exposing himself to the media and to the cops.

Thankfully THE PUNISHER WAR ZONE got it right.  I can die a happy man now.  Maybe I will do a review on that one someday.  Watch and compare.  Which one understands the Punisher better?  Which one is more creative, colorful and fun to watch?  Heck, I think the Dolph Lundgren version of the Punisher is a far more superior film than the high budget blandfest that came out in theaters in 2004.  I love Thomas Jane.  I don't fault him for the poor story and terrible dialogue.  I do believe that he actually saved the Punisher franchise by rejecting the sequel script.  That allowed for a "no name" actor to take the role and allow a smaller studio to take a more creative approach to the next Punisher movie.  The bigger the name the more mainstream and PG-esque the film has to be.  I still like this version of the Punisher even though there is a lot to forgive.  It has some decent action moments near the end and the funny neighbors are likeable even though they have no business being in a Punisher film.  At least this film doesn't have the Punisher jumping from a tall building and following him down as he shoots his guns shot like DAREDEVIL and GHOSTRIDER ripped off from SPIDER-MAN.......At least.


Jason

doomy-doom-doom of DOOM!

F@#k you, DOOM!  F@#K you up your mother truckin a$$, you vile holocaust to my eyes.  You are like, what is that popular American expression?  You make the movie screen "make toilet to my face".  Yes, that is the expression.  Can you be more stupid?  Please try.  STOP!  I was just kidding.  How can you be so gullible?  Man, if I had a stick to beat you down with I would be so happy.  My eyes still hurt from the experience of watching you.  You make Uwe Boll proud.  FROM HELLS HEART I STAB AT THEE!

Sorry about the profanity, folks but this movie is "whack, yo!"  That means it is not good.

Now that I got that out of my system let us talk some DOOM.  Why do these video game movies miss the point on what we gamers want to see?  In the case of DOOM the movie deliberately goes out of its way to completely insult the audience by changing the whole concept of the game.  DOOM the movie has almost nothing to do with DOOM the game.  They both take place on Mars and they both have marines but that is it.

Most of the time I have a hard time deciding where to begin when it comes to the sucktasticness of a movie.  With Doom it's no problem.  There is no gateway to Hell and there are no demons or demon possessed marines walking around accidentally shooting each other and getting into fights.  Think about it.  They had the coolest most simple concept for a game that could easily be transferred to film no problem and they poop it up.  Instead of a gateway to Hell being opened up and hundreds of demons come spawning out to eat peoples' faces we get people turn into monsters because of some extra gene or chromosome or whatever that also can turn certain people into super warriors.  By certain people, of course, I mean Carl Urban.  Does that even for a second sound interesting to you?  What movie would you be more interested in?  The one about the gateway to Hell or the one about gene science mumbo-jumbo?  A doorway to Hell opening up in an outpost on Mars millions of miles from Earth sets the imagination to work.  You wonder what kind of demons you are going to see.  Gene science mumbo-jumbo is uninspired, predictable and overly used in science fiction horror.  How many genetic science run amok movies are out there?  The answer is 3....Oh, no wait.  I just discovered that the SyFy channel exists.  The new answer is now 11,258,259,003.

Story wise there really isn't much to say.  These marines come to Mars to investigate these missing scientists.  Instead of doing that however they just roam around in poorly lit corridors getting bumped off one by one in traditional ALIEN fashion.  I guess I could say something about Carl Urban being the nice guy marine who is trying to find his sister who is one of the archaeologists on the planet but, nah.  Too boring.  The marines look like actors on a real bad SyFy show too. None of them look like real military soldiers. Didn't one of them have a wrestling match with a monster in a pit somewhere? I don't remember that happening in DOOM the game.

Impressive deaths.  That's a simple one, right?  Apparently not.  The deaths in DOOM are weak sauce.  They just kind of happens with no visual impact.  They are kind of forgettable.  At least I don't remember them very much.  Most of the time you aren't even sure what just happened.  When you see some guy get murdered up super hardcore in PREDATOR you say something like "Man, that looks like that would suck."  When you see someone die in DOOM you say "What just happened?  The movie is too dark. I can't see what is going on.  Oh, no!  My eyes!  I've gone blind!  PLEASE SOMEONE.  HELP ME!  SOMEBODY IN THE AUDIENCE PLEASE HELP ME.  I'VE GONE BLIND!  THE MOVIE IS DEFENDING ITSELF SOMEHOW!"  Then you touch the back of people's heads in the row in front of you as you feel your way to the aisle.  Be sure you fall and roll your way down the aisle too before you leave.  That's a great and dramatic way to piss people off in the movie theater.  What was I writing about again?

B.F.G.  The three most important letters in a DOOM game.  If you find the B.F.G. in DOOM you know some demons are about to eat it.  B.F.G. stands for BIG FROLICKING GUN.  It shoots little bunny rabbits out of it's barrel and they run around and frolic in a nearby meadow.  Nah, I am just messin with ya.  It really means BIG F&@KING GUN.  It kills everything on the screen.  Use it and use it often.  In DOOM the movie however apparently the writers think B.F.G. stands for SOMETHING YOU SHOOT WALLS WITH.  I say that because all they shoot with it are walls.  Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson makes a big deal about finding it and you think that he is going to shoot the crapola out of some monsters but he doesn't.  He shoots some walls and that is it.  No monsters die by the B.F.G. in DOOM the movie.  What did the film makers think we wanted to see?  Did they actually think we didn't want to see monsters get their heads all explody-like by the B.F.G.?  It's called bad writing and it tends to happen a lot in American action movies.  Remember in Jet Li's THE ONE where Jason Statham shows off his super-cool-mondo-badass gun that he somehow magically brought with him from his dimension even though we never saw him have it before.  The movie made such a big deal about that gun and the first thing that happened was that he lost it from a big explosion.  He didn't even get to fire it once.

I think it's cute when the movie tries to be clever by having the big "star" Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson die near the end.  Did anyone not see that coming?  Maybe the wrestling fans.  They had a hard time keeping up with what was going on in THE MARINE.  True story.  Johnson says "I am not suppose to die" like the film has suddenly become self aware SCREAM style and we are left with Carl Urban.  But don't worry though because Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson appears at the end and fights Carl Urban in this way out of place wire-fu matrix wrestling match.  Remember that in the game?  That's way better than a total-badass-scary-as-hell twelve foot tall demon goat god with a rocket launcher for an arm.  No, please don't show that!  I like Carl Urban.  I think he was a great lead in the DOOM movie.  Too bad the whole movie sucked around him.

I guess I have no idea what is going on in this movie.  There are all these people that haven't been turned into monsters yet.  Why did they only send some marines in?  Why didn't they send transport ships in as well to evacuated the people?  I am sure it is possible some how.  Didn't they use some kind of warp to get the marines to Mars quickly?  Instead the people are put into a giant room where they turn into monsters for the finale.  What a terrible excuse to have a large amount of monsters in the movie.  A gateway to Hell is a better way to explain why there are so many monsters.  You never know how many there are.  That would add to the horror of being alone on this planet millions of miles away from the nearest help.  In DOOM the movie, however, there can only be a set amount of monsters because they are the population of the people.

My favorite dumbest thing about this movie though is the fossil people that the archaeologists find.  Apparently they find a mother holding her child with her arm stretched out to fend off something that is attacking them.  Obviously this is inspired by all those people who died by a volcano in Pompeii and everyone is buried in lava so fast that they are statues positioned in what they were doing in the moment they died.  These fossils are suppose to foreshadow the monsters.  What was she trying to fend off?  That is what you are suppose to be asking yourself.  Not me though.  I was asking how do you fossilize yourself in a moving motion as you are being attacked by a monster?  It doesn't make any sense.  The idea is that they were killed by a monster and that is how they fossilized.  So instead of the monster killing and eating them it kills them and uses rig amortise to position their bodies to show what they were doing when they were killed.  Yea, that makes sense.

I know this isn't a very good review but then again this isn't a very good movie.  Maybe this isn't the worst video game movie ever made but there is no way it should be this bad.  Its a simple idea that should have been a great B-movie.  Not some boring sloppy waste of my time snore-fest.  What a poop-trocity.  Now if you will excuse me I am going to sing the "doom song" now.   Doom-doom-doom, Doomy-doom-doom, DOOM-doom-doom-doom, doom doom...................


Jason

THE GREAT SILENCE! THE GREAT MIDDLE FINGER TO THE AUDIENCE!

What?  You have never heard of THE GREAT SILENCE?  It just happens to be one of the greatest westerns ever made.  Heck, in my opinion it is one of the greatest movies ever made.  Its like #3 on my all time favorites list.  I obsess over this movie.  I have the DVD, the soundtrack, and a poster of it in my living room. (Now I am blogging about it.  How cool am I?......Don't anwer that.) I've watched it like a hundred times since I bought it a few years ago.  Every time I watch it I see something new.  Its one of those kind of films.  There is a lot to digest in this Italian action western.  I love it and hate it all at the same time.

THE GREAT SILENCE is a strange film to say the least.  It embraces many of the cliches of its time.  Most Italian westerns at the time (the late sixties) had the same kind of story with the same kind of characters.  They usually had a stranger show up to a town run by a corrupt rich land owner and starts trouble intentionally or not and in the end has a showdown with the land owner's fastest meanest gun man.  THE GREAT SILENCE has all of that and at first this movie is nothing new.  You can see how everything is building up.  You can see the foreshadowing.  Everything is going fine and then the ending happens.  If you have never seen this movie don't read anymore and just rent it if possible.

Everything comes together in this film.  Even the stuff that should make this movie bad actually helps.  The director, Sergio Corbucci is at times very sloppy with his camera.  There are shaky zooms, poor framing, shaky cam, and at the beginning you can see the filter clearly covering the camera lens.  But all of this helps not hinder the film.  It gives the film it's own unique character.  The film takes place in the snow which is unusual because most Italian Westerns are filmed in the desert.  The cold, the snow, the wind through the mountains are all part of the film's character.  It sets the roughness of the film's environment.  There is a lot of imagery referencing death too.  At one time there is a scythe rising above the hill carried by a "bandit", and another time in a graveyard there is a murder of crows flying above.  All of it foreshadows what is to come.  But not the way you expect.  The music is perfect too.  The theme music is Ennio Morricone's finest work.

The stranger's name is Silence (Jean-Louis Tringnant) because he can't speak.  His throat was cut by bounty killers.  That is what they call bounty hunters in Italy because they assumed they killed all their bounties.  Silence spends his life killing bounty killers for a price.  He shows up to a town called Boot Hill.  There he takes a job to kill the local bounty killer Loco (Klaus Kinski) who is employed by a greedy Justice of the Peace who put unjust bounties on the local homesteaders in an attempt to steal their land.  It is interesting to note that both Silence and Loco have a similar code of conduct.  Both kill for a thousand gold pieces.  Both kill for money only.  Both will make the other draw first.  But Klaus is more likely to break those rules because he is smart enough to know that Silence is far too fast for him.  It is important to note that Silence never misses a shot.  He always hits his target no matter what.  He always shoots them in the head and if they surrender he shoots their thumbs off so they can't fire a gun anymore.  The fact that he is so good with his gun indicates how much he hates bounty killers.  He has done nothing with his life but shoot that gun.

SPOILER ALERT!

What THE GREAT SILENCE is is a anti-western.  I guess more specifically its an anti-Italian Western.  All the conventions of the Italian western are present.  Everything is pointing to the good guy overcoming overwhelming odds to save the day with the help of the goofy sheriff who rides in at the last moment.  The last time we saw the sheriff he was taking a swim in a frozen lake supposedly dead but we never see his body.  Silence's gun hand has been burned beyond use.  He has to save the homesteaders from the bounty killers.  Loco has challenged him to a one-on-one duel to the death.  So Silence shows up to the saloon that Loco and his men are keeping the homesteaders.  Loco stands at the door.  Silence stands out in the open in the middle of the street.  At anytime you just know the goofy sheriff will show up to help Silence kill the bad guys.  Instead reality steps in.  Before Silence can pull his gun to shoot, one of the bad guys shoots him dead from the saloon's window.  As Silence is dying Loco puts a bullet into our hero's head.  Then Loco shoots Silence's new girlfriend as she tries to shoot him.  Then with all the heroes dead the bad guys massacre horribly all the homesteaders and ride off into the sunrise to collect their reward.  Loco even steals Silence's cool pistol.  How bleak and horrible.  Its probably the darkest ending I have ever seen especially for an action western.  It is a very ugly ending.  Yet without this ending the movie would be nothing but another low budget Italian western.  It's the ending that makes this movie stand out.  I hate the ending but love it at the same time.

What Sergio Corbucci did was shatter the standard Leone western.  Usually in the Leone westerns the hero and villain would have a fair fight where the two would stand out in the open and see who was faster.  The hero is always faster by far.  Corbucci opens our eyes to the reality.  In real life if the hero stands out in the street in the open like a damn fool (but he looks cool, right?) the bad guys would just shoot him in his stupid face from the safety of the indoors.  Not a pretty sight.

Watching THE GREAT SILENCE is a unique experience.  It shows us what would happen in DIE HARD if John McClain died trying to save his wife.  What would happen if Rambo died in RAMBO part 2 trying to save the P.O.W.'s?  Now you know because you have seen THE GREAT SILENCE.  This film should have made Sergio Corbucci as famous as Sergio Leone.  Rumor has it that Clint Eastwood saw the film in Italy while promoting THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.  Apparently he wanted to remake it in the U.S.A.  The film was not released over here because of that. The result was JOE KIDD a mediocre western that had nothing in common with THE GREAT SILENCE except for Silence's gun makes an appearance.  I don't think that story is true.  I think the film doesn't appeal to main stream American audiences.  It's that plain and simple.  Interestingly enough there is a "happy ending" that was filmed and played in certain parts of the world and it appears on the DVD without audio in the extras.

I have read from one review that THE GREAT SILENCE is about who is really good and bad.  The idea is that Silence is really the bad guy and Loco is the good.  Silence kills those who work for the law so he is bad.  Loco kills bandits so that makes him good.  This is probably the dumbest interpretation of the film and I feel that such an idea is created to come to terms with the film's dire ending.  THE GREAT SILENCE is a film about evil triumphing over good.  Loco is a liar.  He bends the rules and has no problem killing in cold blood.  He looks like the freakin Devil for crying out loud with those large bewildering eyes and dominant forehead.  Silence on the other hand looks like an angel.  He has a young handsome face that is heavily sympathetic. Silence sacrifices himself trying to save the homesteaders.  He didn't have to.  He could have left.  There was no reason to return except he had to try.  He knew he didn't have a chance but he tried anyway.  He died a true hero's death.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is a similar film.  It sets up a cat and mouse modern day western story where eventually the hero and villain meet for a final showdown.  But that showdown never happens.  Reality steps in and the hero is gunned down in his hotel room by a bunch of drug dealers trying to get their cash back.  But that film is more about Tommy Lee Jones being too old for his job than evil defeating good.  If you are really into film especially the ones that fall into the genre of "badass" then I highly recommend THE GREAT SILENCE.  It puts a different perspective on every film you watch from then on.

Jason