Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Legacy of Blood

Directed by Carl Monson

" There's a ham in the refrigerator " and plenty of hams acting in this uneven picture of a group of heirs who are reunited for the reading of a will. Christopher  Dean ( Carradine ) a crusty, mean old man has passed away. His unappreciated adult children and their spouses along with the two servants and the groundskeeper of the mansion have gathered together,waiting for the arrival of a lawyer.
Each of the persons in attendance are entitled to inheirit a certain amount of money, provided they remain in the mansion for the remaining week. Upset with the conditions that have been made, everyone makes do , until one by one the inheiritors are being knocked off. As another stipulation of the will stated that in the event someone also passes away , their share of the inheiritance shall be divided among the living.
There was plenty of weirdness in this low budget film, from the incestuous siblings to the groundskeeper who had made himself a bed side table lamp from a Nazi soldier he killed in the war. And you just have to love the  Mel Brooks look alike , Igor who enjoys the beatings at the end of Christopher Dean's cane. I can't believe Carradine is billed top star in this mish mash  of shoddy entertainment. He may have put in an appearance of a total whopping ten minutes, which is mostly in flashbacks.
The ending breaks the fourth wall, anyone unfamilliar with that term it simply means the character(s) is aware of the audience. The first time I had seen this done was in Michael Haneke's Funny Games. If you are still awake at this point you will hear a witty remark from Elga, the maid.
My Final Thoughts : All of these characters were such a gang of losers, we were not given anyone to care for, or root for, except for maybe the killer who was eliminating this sorry lot.
My Rating : 1 and a half Go Go Girls out of 5

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Swarm- killer ants on a plane ( unrated edition )



Directed by George Mendeluk; Starring Jessalyn Gilsig, Antonio Sabata Jr. and Serge Houde

Swarm starts off promising enough with some nice cinematography of the Colombian jungle and it's habitat. But quickly spirals downhill with some constraint dialogue between a mother and her teen aged daughter as they make their way to the airport. Elsewhere, we are quickly introduced to another American visitor consulting a local doctor about digestive problems he has encountered after drinking a glass of water he believes to have been contaminated by the country's unclean lifestyle.
Meanwhile at the airport we meet the characters, this bare bones story will revolve around, there is the ass hole who has had one too many to drink at the airport's bar. There is the just engaged flight attendant, who gets hit on by the drunken ass hole, but is intervened by a tall dark stranger who turns out to be, no surprise here , an air marshall Ethan Hart. Add a lesbian couple travelling with a new born, a pair of newly weds where the bride has some soul searching to do and thousands of ants as the guest of honour. These critters have stowed away on board by smuggling inside one of the passengers . Once the plane is in the air it doesn't take long for the little buggers to emerge from the chest of the man who obviously should have taken the advice given from his doctor. Thousands of ants burrow their way out of a man's chest, creating a new orifice and not a single drop of blood to be seen and this was the unrated edition, sure as hell would hate to to see the PG version. No blood , no breasts, two deaths and no swearing unless you count " bull crap " as a naughty word. This waste of celluloid also lacked scares, suspense and tension, unless you consider close up shots of ants crawling along the wires of the plane's electrical system scary.The sound effects were greatly exaggerated making the ants sound more like an angry pack of beavers gnawing away at a California Red Wood. But mostly the ants were provided by C.G. I. that really wasn't very impressive.
The film was peppered with some poor acting and some of the worse displays of dialogue to enter these ear canals, the writing and direction didn't help much as we are not given any one to care for, even though there is a sub plot dealing with  how the plane is  refused to land, due to home land security issues. The main characters were all cliches and then amped up another one hundred degrees.The surfer type dude who became drunk at the airport bar and then demanded more drinks after he boarded the plane. Thankfully this ass hole eventually ended up dead , unfortunately it didn't look painful enough. Even his best bud just threw him back into the lavatory when the ants covered him. Good bye obnoxious ass hole. Then there is the newly weds, the beautiful bride and the selfish, cowardly husband who literally jumped up onto a seat  and whimpered like a little school girl when his wife's leg began to be covered in the ants. At one time this sad sack of shit wanted the captain to depressurize the cabin to kill the ants, not caring if it might kill the lesbians little baby, "It's all about survival of the fittest" he explained. I was really surprised this ass hole wasn't killed off too. Remember the mother and her teen aged daughter ? Holy co-incidence  Batman ,  the mother, Carrie Ross is an entomologist. The only reason to have an entomologist on board  is that the writers were lazy and  the character can explain the scientific information about the ants such as these are bullet ants who are mutating into some kind of super ant blah, blah, blah. Of course she is a widow, five years now, and the daughter is playing match maker. Enter one Ethan Hart,( Sabato Jr. ) air Marshal and a bachelor. In one , but not the only embarrassing moment , Ross and Hart have a romantic interlude as the plane is full of killer ants and the plane is leaking fuel with only minutes to spare to fix that fuel leak. Wow , talk about your priorities. Eventually the fuel leak is repaired and the couple even find time to neutralize the queen ant. The plane can now land at a test runway that the co-pilot remembers training at, he has been in control since the captain was attacked by the killer ants, amazingly he survives. See, it pays not to be an ass hole.
Mean while back on the ground government officials are contemplating the fate of flight 603, the director of homeland security wants the plane and the passengers on board destroyed, one person who is against this decision makes a quick phone call to her reporter friend. When the news team arrives , soldiers waiting for the passengers to disembark from the plane are now ordered to put their weapons away. Why wouldn't the government just order fighter jets  up to blow that sucker out of the sky if they really wanted it destroyed ? With all of the passengers safely out of the plane Dr. Ross reaches into Hart's carry on and pulls out a flare gun firing it into the spilled  fuel that is now spilling onto the tarmac. The plane explodes, ending the danger of the killer ants populating U.S. soil. The passengers will need to be quarantined, but over all it's quite the happy ending, the mother and daughter becoming closer in the face of danger, a newly married wife discovering the true personality of her husband, the engaged flight attendant who will still get the chance to walk down the aisle, yada, yada yada, the daughter is  given a puppy that was found in the luggage section  for Pete's sake. She is even going to name him Lucky, which pretty well sums up most of the passengers and their flight from Columbia. But not the viewers.
Just when I thought this couldn't get any  better (there is a hint of sarcasm here ) the camera looms into the wreckage to reveal an ending like no other I have seen before ( more sarcasm ). Oh the horror of it all, the Queen ant , she lives.
My Final Thoughts: This comes across like a made for television  movie, it even has the fade to blacks to conveniently fit in an advertisement for your favourite snack food. Actually this would probably go over better shown on television, this way you could stay and watch the commercials and fix a snack or go for a piss when this celluloid after birth is playing. This makes Snakes on a Plane look like Citizen Kane.
My Rating : 1 Go Go Girl out of 5

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Taxidermia


Directed by Gyorgy Palfi; Starring Csaba Czene, Gergely Trocsanyi, Marc Bischoff, Istvan Gyuricza, Piroska Molnair

This is a strange but fascinating story about three generations of men that unfolds in the most ugly , repulsive manner possible, but told in a visually striking style. Sprinkled with many unsettling images that will stick with you for quite some time.
The lives of the three men act as an allegory for the political changes of Hungary throughout it's history,where it was set and produced. Personally I'm not up on my Hungarian history, but after doing a little homework I could see that was possible. Although personally this is not what I took away from the film , but more on that later. The film is beautifully photographed but littered with repulsive images as the three generations of men are shown to represent three of the seven sins. Lust, glutton and sloth.
Morosgovanyi, a soldier living in a state of squalor is also dealing with a domineering military officer, this could be seen as the invasion of Hungary by the Nazis in 1944. As Morosgovanyi's dominant other dines , drinks and makes merry, Morosgovanyi lives his life in poverty and has a long list of chores that must be completed each day. Morosgovanyi has the misfortune to be born with a hair lip ( although characters don't mention this fact in the film )a trait the Nazis wouldn't take a liking to , considering they would eliminate anyone who wasn't physically flawless, in building their perfect race.
Morogovanyi fantasizes ( masturbates ) a lot,  dreaming of  sex with the two young women who happen to be the commanding officer's daughters. At one time he even had a run in with an angry rooster who had pecked him while having sex with a knot hole when watching the two young women frolicking outside his shack. A gorgeous moment of  the use of C.G.I turns ugly when Morogovanyi opens a pop up book of Charles Dickens' The Little Match Girl and a Dickens like village blossoms from the pages. Morogovanyi emerges from a paper door and descends a flight of paper stairs , to sit beside the little match girl, a beautiful scene that turns ugly when pedophilia is hinted at. After a night of passion with his commanding officer's fat, unattractive wife, Morogovanyi sires a son which he'll never see. There are a couple of gratuitous glimpses of genitalia, but believe me it's not the least bit titillating. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Morogovanyi shoots fire out of his penis.
The second part deals with the story of Kalman who was born with a very unusual birth defect. which is quickly done away with. Kalman grows up to become a champion speed eater and becomes a hero to his country even though the International Olympic Committee refuses to recognize the sport officially. This is where some of the grossest images presents themselves as these so called athletes must purge their stomachs as showers of vomit flow freely between bouts. It is at one of these events that Kalman meets his future wife Gizella. Kalman eventually grooms her to become a speed eater as well  and the two will grow to celebrity like status even performing in front of royalty. Kalman and Gizella give birth to a son, Lajos who is the runt of the maternity ward and a disappointment to his parents. Kalman has grown grossly obese over the years and is confined to a chair in his apartment. Gizella has found wealth in America as a speed eating coach. Lajos, a scrawny  build of a man comes by his father's apartment each day to care for him and his giant cats his father is creating for the compensation of siring such a weak offspring. Lajos makes a living as a taxidermist and is given a very strange object to preserve for his final customer.  Being the shy, introverted type that he is, Lajos has trouble asking the checkout girl at the local super market for a date. He realizes he will spend the rest of his life alone, unmarried, and childless. With a very unusual method, Lajos plans to immortalize himself.
What this viewer took away from Taxidermia is the fact that we all want to leave our mark on the world some how, any  way that is possible. Not all of us will be fortunate to become film, television or sport celebrities, so the next best thing is pursuing those dreams through our children. Or perhaps better yet, one may become preserved like a great piece of art, timeless throughout history.
My Final Thought: Taxidermia may be a little short on the plot side of things, but those images are so compelling. You will not forget this movie.
My Rating: 4 Go Go Girls out of 5