Summer Movie Fun Times

It's summer time.

That last sentence was for those of you who live inside caves somewhere in the middle of Antarctica and, though you have the use of the internet, sometimes you need a reminder of the seasons as you always appear to be in the middle of Winter's colon.

As I have not seen anything new and awful in quite some time (barring the most recent episode of "Who Wants to Date My Dead Goldfish") so I've decided to give you all (my fifteen person audience) a chance to change the course of Blog history.

Again.

That's right, I'm taking suggestions. And no, this isn't just a ploy to force me into less work. This is a chance for all of you to pick your favorite worst movie and have me give it a whirl.

I will still review anything bad I happen across, but this is a treat for all of you out there, so go ahead and let fly.

And, as always,

Watch carefully.

--AK

From the Makers of 24--2: The Sentinel

>>WARNING<<
Some spoilers ahead

I am a huge fan of "24."

I say this in order to set the tone for the rest of this review.

Most people view the show as more crazy conservative programming from FOX. And that's all well and good, but it's much more than that.

"24" is a statement of machismo and glory that surpasses all other television programs, including other staples of mine such as "Battlestar Galactica", "Prison Break" and "Firefly." In each hour of the action-packed day, Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland of all that is badass) draws in attention like a magnet.

It's honestly amazing what the writers pack into each day (though, I will concede that this last day did suck just a wee bit).

So when a movie comes out starring Mister Sutherland as a big time Secret Service man, with Michael Douglas in for the ride no less, I couldn't say no.

Actually, I said "no" for a long time, mainly because the ratings were as poor as can be.

But now, given the new freedom summertime has alotted me, I dove into the movie with a mind set toward darkness and bags of awful dialogue.

And I wasn't entirely disappointed.

"The Sentinel" is a below-average political thriller wrapped in a below-average action movie.

It's very hard to make a political thriller nowadays without pissing off half the country. "24" consistently touches on hot-button issues such as Islamic fanatics, torture of terrorists and the ability of a sitting president to sleep with or without his wife.

But "The Sentinel" plays it safe and dredges up a bad guy from beyond the grave, namely the KGB.

For those of you who never watched a James Bond film before "Tomorrow Never Dies" (and shame on all of you), the KGB stands for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, which is Russian for "Super Secret Spy and Torture of Dissidents Agency Which May or May Not Kill Everyone in a Vain Attempt at Covering Our Failing Country's Great Flaws and Failures."

The KGB squared off against our own CIA for the many years of the Cold War (if you still don't know what's going on, punch yourself until I stop laughing). In this film, for some reason, some guy with some connection to the KGB (no, that's never explained) wants the president dead (again, for reasons we don't fully comprehend.

Somehow he has a man inside the Secret Service, those sunglasses-wearing, square-jawed BAMFs we always see around the president. The idea of getting a man on the inside the Secret-F-ing-Service is a pretty big stretch, but you haven't even seen the movie yet, so you have no idea how far it goes.

The star of the film is Michael Douglas, who plays the role of Agent Pete Garrison, the head of the First Lady's detail, and her man on the side. His long career was punctuated by a few rounds taken in the service of President Reagen. Now he spends his time joking around with old friends and diddling the most powerful woman in office.

Now the Secret Service is not only a security team for the president, they also have an incredible team of investigators working out of the Treasury. In this case, the head investigator is a hotshot agent named David Breckenridge, but you can call him Jack.

That's right. Jack Bauer is the co-star of this movie.

Don't let the name they've given him fool you. Jackie's been known to take on aliases in order to penetrate the highest levels of governments. In this case, he's on the inside of our own Secret Service, looking for dirt and coming up with both hands full.

His mannerisms, his looks, even the way he draws his weapon and fires at the baddies is all signature Jack B. They stop having his character addressed by any name just you don't have to remind yourself that this is in fact Jack Bauer and not some stupid David person.

So here's how it all goes down.

An informant drops some information on Pete's lap that intimates an imminent assassination attempt on the president. Pete begins the investigation, but all the evidence soon points to him.

What happens next is a high-octane chase remenicient of "The Fugitive" only with less acting. Pete is one of the best trained agents the Secret Service has ever had, and now he has to use all of his skills against his own in order to survive.

Jack is always one step behind, sometimes even arriving at the same building only seconds after Pete leaves. They have some sordid personal history that serves to instigate a few shoving matches and is politely forgotten when the audience realizes they never gave a crap.

The action, for the most part, is pretty dry. The "shoot-outs" last slightly longer than they would in reality, but too short to really grab the adrenal glands and squeeze. The director didn't know whether to go for realism or punchy action, and the mix doesn't really work.

In fact, a lot doesn't work. There are moments when the writers didn't know how to segue to another scene, so they opted not to. Scenes just follow each other the viewer is meant to figure it out.

News flash, writers. THIS DOESN'T WORK!

People don't go to movies in order to put together intricate puzzles. And even if we did, we don't want a three thousand piece puzzle with half the picture missing.

One of the highlights of this movie (aside from the startling fact that Kim Basinger is still a striking and gorgeous woman of 80) is Eva Longoria. Honestly, I don't know why she's in this movie.

True, she's absolutely the most beautiful woman in a Secret Service movie this summer, but her character doesn't add anything to the plot. She acts mainyl as a bridge character, constantly forgoing her own investigation to chat with fugitive Pete about how he needs to turn himself in.

She also tries to get to know Jack B., but he's too jaded from years of pain to be interested.

I don't know what to tell you guys, this film lacked a lot. I liked the fact that it paid a little homage to the shadows behind all great men, the Secret Service. There are few movies that even acknowledge these heroic people, and it's high time someone took notice.

Granted, they do it poorly, but I give an A for effort.

This movie really needed a better action director and a few more writers, but it does a passable job of retelling a story Tom Clancy probably wrote in his sleep, then forgot because it was so below his usual standards of excellence.

I give this film four stars for Eva Longoria, Kim Basinger, Michael Douglas and Jack B--I mean Keifer Sutherland.

Watch carefully.

Cross Country Corpses: 28 Weeks Later

>>WARNING<<
Spoilers to follow

I'm gonna be perfectly honest with all of you. I didn't much care for "28 Days Later."

I've never been a fan of sprinting zombies. "Dawn of the Dead", at least the remake, scared both legs of my pants off.

In the case of "28 Days Later," I was left with a few unanswered questions:

- Why would a group of scientists have a super-dangerous virus with NO SECURITY WHATSOEVER?
(This is actually a common problem, wherein the most deadly toxins/weapons seem to have little to no guards or cameras)

- Why infect monkeys with "rage"? How can you write that line of dialogue and not laugh yourself stupid?

- Why market your film as a zombie movie when the "infected" DON'T QUALIFY AS ZOMBIES??!??

Now, before you start chucking your computers at me, let me explain myself, and the directors as well.

I'm not that fast. It's a problem that the Army is trying to knock out of me. So when I see blood-vomiting, 400 meter-dashing, eye-gouging people chasing someone through the bedraggled streets of London, I get a little panicky.

And I prefer my zombies to be DEAD, not just "infected."

And slow...but I guess you could figure that from the above statement.

Now the directors of this film had other things in mind, namely money.

And their lack of it.

You see, movies cost a crap-load of money (an amount equal or greater than the tonnage of food horded by a constipated elephant) Directors without the clout of Spielberg or Cameron have to earn their keep making low-to-no-budget indies or horror movies.

This was an admirable attempt, and I liked a lot about it. The army men, for instance, provided a much needed twist. Granted, it all seemed to have colors of "Day of the Dead," but so did "The Last Kiss."

Now we have a sequel, one of the most dangerous moves in all of moviedom. Many mistakes were made before the credits finished rolling.

As this is a film I can still imagine recommending, I'm going to try and avoid too many spoilers, but be warned.

At the end of the first film, Jimmy, Selena and Hannah are in position to be rescued. The infected are starving off and all appears to end with an air of hope.

Now forget them. Those people are gone. In fact, all the emotion you invested in the first film is basically useless, as the beginning of the second is a sterile introduction to the facts of the timeline.

After, of course, the introduction of violence and gore. But that's the way good horror works.

I liked the introduction. Robert Carlyle ("The Full Monty") lives in a small cottage, riding out the infection with a group of friends. It all quickly comes crashing down, as the "infected" possess superhuman strength along with their commendable running talents.

The tension was well-played, and the acting was fine. I just...missed the old characters.

A standard trick with sequels is starting without your main characters. Think the beginning of "Terminator 2" or "Rush Hour 2". You get invested in the action, but you still wonder when the stars are gonna show up.

Without the stars, all you have is a sequel set in the same universe. It's like making "Lord of the Rings" but changing the Fellowship in each movie.

When "28 Weeks Later" begins, you already don't care about anyone in the film. If they die, fine. You've already lost three great friends, why waste time getting emotional again?

Next we have the setting of the film. America (being the big brother to England) arrives to save the day and rebuild the British country. They do this by hiring an inept one-star general and giving him an incompetent staff of officers. They throw in Delta Force (as portrayed by people who would never make it into Delta Force) to pull security.

When preparing to write this movie, the screenwriter wanted to learn about the American Army so he could create a realistic set of characters and events.

Unfortunately, after learning we had changed our uniforms, he forgot to ask any other questions and thus blew the chance at creating realistic characters, at least as far as this soldier is concerned.

The Delta operators are the most fun characters in the film, as they joke around and really act as though this were the worst possible situation to be in (both before and after the infection arrives). The lead operator (Jeremy Renner from "SWAT") leads with charisma that is restrained by common sense, almost like a real Special Forces soldier.

What doesn't make sense is the security set up by the inept one-star. This guy knows that the infection takes twenty seconds to spread to someone else, yet doesn't put security on any possible patient-zeroes.

When a woman appears who may or may not be infected, there isn't a SINGLE soldier waiting outside her door. It's just like they were asking to be infected.

I don't like the view that Hollywood has on the American military. In fact, most people who know someone in the Army, the Corps or any of the other branches don't like the way soldiers are oft portrayed in film.

This movie really annoyed me because of the gross mistakes the writer made with Army logic. I understand that most people haven't read the FM 121-88 (the Army Field Manual on a Zombie Invasion [sprinter variety]) but COME ON! Give us a little common sense here.

These "infected" can sprint like the Flash, jump like Superman and vomit like Ozzy Ozbourne.

Oh yeah, quick question to the writers. Why do they vomit? And why, if they vomit, does this not affect them?

I'm not dissing the idea. In fact, the bloody vomit was one of my favorite parts of the films. I mean, it's gross and awful and it makes you hate the fact that they exist, exactly the sentiment you need when zombies come to town.

This is not an awful film. It's not going to win any awards, but it can certainly entertain. But I met a woman who taught me a valuable lesson about fiction.

If you do something so unbeleivable that you lose the audience--even momentarily--you've lost them for good.

When you make Army officers as dumb as the ones in this film, I just lose interest. The characters were bland and not from the original film.

That said (and it was quite a bit) if you enjoyed the first film, I'm pretty sure you'll like this one.

This blog is my opinion on movies, and you may disagree.

You'll be wrong, but it's a free country, so go ahead and be happy.

I'll give this movie six gouged-out eyes out of ten.

Watch carefully.