Quick Movie reviews...

I've watched a dinkum amount of movies recently and here are some quick throw off reviews.


Fido - Pleasentville meets dawn of the dead. Makes up for watching Werewolf:the Devil's suckiest movie ever. Billy Connely doesn't do anything but moan the entire film and was still great.

3:10 to Yuma - Not sure what I was expecting, but I will watch a Christian Bale move in spite of Russel Crowe. Suprisingly... I thought Crowe did the better job, an pulled off being the devilishly charming but ruthless bastard quite well. Worth watching once.

Resident Evil - Extinction- First off I had really low expectations. The storyline was utterly predictable... but you've got zombies, out of control psychic powers, mutants, and malevolent mega-corps... add to that Milla in leather thigh-high chap thingees... well I had a lot more fun watching it then I expected. Anyway it was way better the the second one... which was not hard to do.

Skin Walkers - Chosen one... blah blah... save the werewolves... blah blah... fight their inner beast... blah blah... Sorry what oh... um... review. It wasn't bad. I enjoyed it. The costumes weren't terrible, and in the case of the lead bad guy they did a good job keeping the resemblance between man-werewolf forms. Plot was completely linear and predictable after the initial shootout that had me hooting like a banshee in amusement (Go go grandma Gunslinger!)

A note... when there are werewolves fighting in the back of the RV and your mom tells you not to open the nice solid steel door... listen to her mmmkay?


Alien Vs Predator Vs the National Guard... I mean AVP:R where R = Requiem for very strange meanings that apparently don't involve any music. Confused yet?

Remember what I said about expletive titles in my review of movie no-one should see? (A movie I disliked so much I've mentioned twice so far...) They are stupid. They treat the audience like they are morons.

So I sit down in a completely empty theater in time for AVP:R to flash across the screen... mmkay good.
Then underneath it spells out Alien Vs Predator: Requiem.

Ignoring their misuse of the word requiem... which I won't get into (here's hint ... if there isn't music or priest saying Mass involved it's not a requiem) I'm sitting there wondering who wouldn't know what the movie was with just AVP:R. Were there people in other theaters suddenly surprised that they were watching this film, people who paid for a ticket not knowing they were going to see aliens, predators... and a priest? Wait, no priest, sorry.

Things I liked:

Continuity - The movie picked up Exactly where AVP ended. This was nice touch. They set it up in the previous film, but still continuity is good.
Creature Design -The Predators did not look like Mr. Staypuff the marshmallow man. I don't know what the Predators were eating in the last film but they didn't look sleek... these guys did.
New Weapon - Not gonna say what it is, but it was adequate, and not overused.
Bully + molecular acid... my new happy thought.
Predalien - If you've played the AVP game you've seen them but it was nice to get some screen time. I liked the fact that it was also clearly dominant in the pack hierarchy.

Things I didn't like:

No surprises - There is very little mystery left to explore with these bad boys so instead the directors seemed to think that gore is an adequate substitute for tension. It's not.
Recycled poses - Every "tense moment" in the film has been done exactly the same way in previous films.
Wanton violence - Past alien films have made it clear that they attack with two seeming end goals: impregnation and food. These ones would attack, eviscerate, maybe nibble a bit and move on. Apparently this subspecies got the spree killer gene. See above quote for gore not being a substitute for tension.
Recycled Audio - Why in the name of Clarke and Roddenberry is there the sound of the motion tracker in the Army's command center? It's hundreds of miles away and the audio wasn't even subtle. It was loudly pinging away telling you that other army folks may be moving near you... STUPID.

Things both Good and Bad;

Blue Goo - Nice touch. How MUCH does he have in the little jar?

Overall a watch once.