WAS1 Productions

Originally Written 03/27/10

Hot Tub Time Machine is a goofy, dumb and crude comedy, but it’s also a lot of fun.

It’s a love letter to the 80s, or more-accurately a spot-on spoof of all those 80s movies. I was amused at a couple of good riffs on Better off Dead. It’s got a fun soundtrack as well which is full of period songs . The actors really make the movie what it is too.

Crispin Glover was fun to see as a surly one-armed bellhop.

Originally Written 04/20/10

Kick Ass is not quite the movie the trailers made it out to be. Yes it’s a comic book farce but while it has humor based on awkward social situations and dark comedy it also has scenes punctuated with gritty violence. The film was both entertaining and engaging and it had more character drama than expected too.

The trailer made it seem that an average comic-book fan decides to don a costume and the easily becomes a local hero. Thankfully there was a lot more to the story and Dave Lizewski runs into some heavy obstacles on his journey to becoming Kick Ass. He’s shown in over his head and outclassed in several scenes, which play both for gritty drama and sly comedy. In some ways Kick Ass isn’t even the main character of the film, for while the film does focus on him for large parts of it, he’s more of a catalyst than the hero.

There are two intertwining story-lines running through the film. One of Dave’s world of a high school nobody and his alter ego and one of Big Daddy, a vigilante dressed as Batman with a dark side to match, and his daughter side kick Hit Girl. It’s with these characters that the meat of the story takes place. Nicholas Cage does a wonderful job of playing both a doting father and a driven man with a mission.

Chloe Moretz was also impressive as Hit Girl. Yes having a tween girl swear like a sailor, play with heavy weapons and kick ass, while also getting into some scenes of possible peril is definitely edgy. It’s subservse and part of the sly comedy to Kick Ass. If it was a young boy fighting bad guys it would be seen as male empowerment, but when it’s a girl in that role it leaves the audience with mixed emotions. Hit Girl’s character is where a lot of the character drama came from too, which was a pleasant surprise.

I was curious how close to the comic book the movie would be. Reading up on the original plot on Wikipedia (warning, spoilers), it looks like it was fairly true to the source material. There was some softening of the character Dave has a crush on, which was pretty obvious in a couple of scenes, but it worked well for the dramatic story and some awkward teenage humor. The movie did deal with the costs and danger of being a costumed super hero, much like in the comic.

So, the film is no Spider Man, but if you like comic books and don’t mind gritty violent dramas, then Kick Ass is a film worth checking out. One friend described it as Mystery Men meets Kill Bill which was a good way of putting it.

Originally Written 03/04/10

I saw Shutter Island a couple of weeks ago. It was a decent movie and a solid mystery. The mood and atmosphere worked well, though I did think some scenes were overdone. I was a little disapointed that I’d mostly figured it out before the end, but it still was satisfying the way it played out.

I saw The Crazies tonight. I love zombie movies, so as soon as I saw the trailer for this, I knew I was going to check it out, even though it looked like it could just be goofy fun. It turned out to be better than expected and was entertaining and effective with both the tension and decent characters. It won’t win any oscars, but it was well done. I also recently learned that it was a remake of a Romero film from the 70s, so I may have to look that up.

Originally Written 02/01/10

I ended up watching a bunch of b-movies this weekend, some good, some not so good.

There were two episodes of MST3K, which I believe I’d seen parts of before. First Spaceship on Venus from the 1960s was notable for being a European production with a multi-cultural team made up of members from various countries. It started out fun and had some good riffing, but once they got to Venus there was a lot of pointless wandering around and the last half of the film dragged.

Future War a low-budget turd from the 90s was the other episode of MST3K. It sounded promising, as it was described as cyborgs with hunter dinosaurs pursued an escape human slave from a space ship down to 1990s LA, where the fugitive gets help from a streetwalker-turned nun. Come on, that sounds like it’d be a lot of fun, but not so much. There’s lots of boring dialog and multiple fight scenes with bad kung fu and characters throwing empty cardboard boxes at one another. The dinosaur puppets were amusing though.

We also watched Carnival of Souls, which is somewhat of a cult favorite. I’d heard about it and been meaning to watch it for some time now. The premise is interesting, where a woman escapes a deadly accident but is then haunted by mysterious apparitions and ghouls which threaten her sanity. It started out interesting and with a good atmosphere for a low-budget film.

Unfortunately it dragged on way too long with lots of padding that didn’t do much to flesh out the story, and it was just a long march to a predictable ending. It felt like a 30-minute Twilight Zone episode that had been padded out to an hour and twenty minutes. I believe there was an episode of the original Twlight Zone series which handled a similar story and worked a lot better.

By far the best movie of the bunch was It, the Terror from Beyond Space. In that film a rescue rocket is sent to pick up survivors from the first manned mission to Mars. They find only the captain is left alive. He claims a mysterious monster killed his crew and is taken back home by a skeptical crew to face court martial for murder. So the film starts off with some nice dramatic tension and before long they discover the survior’s story may ring true, as something has snuck on board the rocket and mysterious events unfold.

The film is a time capsul of the late 1950s and echos the times it was created in. Everyone smokes and the women are resigned to stereotypical roles of nurses and essentiall stewardesses in space. When attacking the monster they use WW2 guns and grenades, not fancy sci-fi weapons, but it feels genuine to the age.

The monster is obviously a guy in a rubber suit, but it’s a fun design. While it’s dated now, it is a solid film with some good tension and nice set design and lighting to create a creepy mood. It could be argued that the idea is prototypical to the movie Alien as well. Of the movies I watched, this is the one I’d recommend fans checking out.

Originally Written 01/24/10

Land of the Lost was a better movie than I was expecting, though admittedly I had low expectations. There were some groaner parts, but overall it was amusing and entertaining, if not high cinema.

They did some nice touches to reference the Sid and Marty Kroft TV show and I liked the visuals of lost world outside space and time. There were some fun creature designs too. The characters weren’t that great, but it was a fun little adventure. It’s nothing special but makes for a good popcorn flic.

The Maiden Heist was a fun find in the video store. Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman and William H. Macey play three security guards working an art museum, each one of them fascinated, no obsessed with a specific painting or statue. When they find out a large part of the gallery is being shipped to a museum in Denmark, they decide to save the pieces love by stealing them and replacing them with forged copies.

What follows is the planning and bumpy execution of an amateur museum heist. It’s quirky and uneven and a bit forced in places, but it had some sweet moments too. It was also fun to watch the three commanding actors having fun playing understated roles.