A warrior from the Ming Dynasty is defrosted in this Donnie Yen action film. Thrilling, expensive, and incredibly cheesy, Iceman features spectacular stunts, thrilling acrobatics, impressive martial arts, and beautiful scenes of Hong Kong, but these moments are bogged down in a convoluted plot that drags in the middle. It's almost as though the film-makers attempted to American Blockbuster-ize a Shaw Brothers period film. During an impressive battle sequence where a cast of hundreds on horseback are engulfed in an avalanche, someone jumps on an awkwardly CGI'd shield and cheezily snowboards. Then someone rambles on about a Golden Wheel Of Time that's powered by Shiva's lingam, a crap-filled toilet explodes, and there's a scooter/Lamborghini/horse chase on a bridge. Meh.
Insufferable douches meet their end at the hands of a mermaid who lives in a well in this tedious Serbian horror film. Lovely scenery and images of a foreboding fort are marred by unconvincing boogieing and dodgy accents as a fun-loving group investigates an 'abandoned military base' while wearing Frederick's Of Hollywood-style swimwear, and it takes nearly an hour for the mermaid to put them out of our misery, and by 'put them out of our misery' I really mean 'wallow on the ground looking either seductive or a little nauseous as some other guy walks around and puts a giant hook through the cast's necks'. Featuring human chum in a bathtub, shaky cam, and a glaring Franco Nero, Killer Mermaid bores when it isn't eliciting unintentional snickers.
The warrior Hun is awakened in this dreadful Asylum film. After some LOL-worthy narration and a totally necessary Asylum helicopter scene, some warriors unconvincingly push over some villagers, and then there's some stock snake footage. A two-star general gets irrationally angry because a recently excavated archaeological find is dirty, then Attila comes back to life after ingesting some poorly computer animated blood. Then Attila runs, fights some guys, then runs some more. Then Attila runs, fights some guys, then runs some more. Then Attila runs, fights some guys, then runs some more. Then Attila runs, fights some guys, then runs some more. Meanwhile he searches for a staff that supposedly belonged to Moses, I suppose, but it looks like an oversized skull Pez dispenser that been spray painted with some gold spray paint, and it wouldn't be out of place on the discount shelf at a Halloween superstore. Then Attila runs, fights some guys, and then runs some more. After about a month of really bad movie, some stuff explodes and it finally ends.
I still have about a dozen reviews that I haven't finished yet. I've been somewhat busy illustrating my next book, which may or may not be called Stabford Deathrage Goes To Hell: High School Reunion, and by 'illustrating' I mean 'poorly scribbling', so I haven't had time to finish those reviews, and by 'busy illustrating my next book', I really mean 'watching conspiracy television programs on Netflix'. I don't have time to watch TV, and people often try to convince me to watch some new program, but that eats into my movie watching which I already don't have time for. Therefore, I decided to watch America Unearthed, which is a show about a forensic geologist who investigates the history of the United States by looking at rocks. It's just awful, so of course I watched every episode. Scott Wolter travels around the country checking out slabs of rock someone carved symbols into and believing every single one is authentic, and meanwhile I'm scrambling to check Wikipedia to see if these things are real or phony. Mr. Wolter never saw a conspiracy theory he didn't like, so he's an awful lot like an Agent Mulder for rocks. Wolter really, really, really wants to believe.
Speaking of rocks, I watched a couple of episodes of the British docu-series Shaun Ryder On UFOs.
Shaun Ryder (5' 8") was the lead vocalist for the band Happy Mondays.
Although once compared by Factory Records owner Tony Wilson to the poet W. B. Yeats, Ryder was somewhat unflatteringly portrayed in the film 24 Hour Party People.
Due to his infamous reputation, I tuned in to Shaun Ryder On UFOs merely to see if Ryder would either smoke crack or pull a gun on someone. Surprisingly enough, Ryder was relatively well-spoken, charming, and a little more skeptical than Scott Wolter.
Featuring racier nightgowns, more cleavage, and more sexual tension than the Bela Lugosi version of Bram Stoker's vampire tale, the spanish version of Dracula is anecdotally seen as a better film than Tod Browning's, but I'm not 100% convinced. For instance, this scene features an affable, smiling, neighborly Dracula in lead actor Carlos Villarias.
He plays Dracula as a warm, earthy, wide-eyed killer, but still seems as though he is a human-like being. Compare the same scene with Lugosi.
Here Browning imparts the scene with a hesitant tension, as Dwight Fry warily greets his host. A ghoulish Lugosi plays a game with Fry, luring him into his web, as inhuman as the phony spider climbing the wall.
I was going to post more clips, contrasting and comparing various scenes from these two films, but honestly, I'm sick of it. Here's a music video by Bauhaus:
Ha! You probably thought I was going to post that other video by Bauhaus. Yeah, I didn't, because I'm sick of that, too. It seemed like back in the early 80's whenever I entered a nightclub, they always played that song. Maybe it was because I was dressed in black and looked a little like a vampire, but I'm not sure. Like I always say, if you remember the 80s, you probably didn't do it right.
Anyway, the scene as Villarias rises from his coffin obscured by smoke was a good one and might be better than its English counterpart. Conversely, the Spanish version doesn't quite top the English version when the mad, cackling Renfield is revealed as the cargo hold is opened, played in a scenery-chewing performance by Dwight Fry in the original. Still, the Spanish version of Dracula seems a bit more modern than the Tod Browning version. Either film is better than any vampire film where someone sparkles.
Linguist Noam Chomsky is interviewed by director Michel Gondry in this quirky, dry, and academic documentary. Michel Gondry's hand drawn animations add levity to some big brained concepts, such as the epistemology of The Ship Of Theseus, and the evolutionary Great Leap Forward of modern humans from 50,000 years ago. I was intrigued by Chomsky's quip that scientists have to be willing to be puzzled by simple things, which I often am, and the brief examination of the 'occult forces' of attraction and repulsion, and there isn't a word in that part of the sentence that I dislike.
Scuba divers are attacked and dismembered by what appears to be dead and/or plastic barracudas being held just slightly off camera in this derivative horror film. After the crew is reflected in the passenger side window of a nefarious Dodge, lots of movie happens. It's not very good and/or interesting. Suddenly, a golden retriever finds a severed human head, and several people are fascinated by a beach filled with fish chunks. The movie continues for what seems like forever, then it ends. Klaus Schulze's ominous electronic score livens up a dreary film, but only briefly.
