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John Allman

If you’ve ever wandered the aisles at the video store or surfed the DVR pay-per-view options and seen a bunch of movies that you’ve never heard of, chances are John has watched them. Why? He loves movies. All kinds of movies. Good, bad, so-bad-they’re good, even the truly unwatchable ones. He mostly loves horror and science-fiction and drive-in exploitation movies that most upstanding model citizens wouldn’t dare watch. Then he writes up his thoughts so you can decide - watch, don’t watch or avoid at all costs. Sometimes he even gets to talk to the cool folks who make some of your favorite films.

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John Allman

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New Releases for Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2011

Posted Dec 11, 2011 by John Allman

Updated Dec 11, 2011 at 01:19 PM

What’s new in stores and on video shelves this week:

Point Blank
Genre: Thriller
Directed by: Fred Cavayé
Run time: 84 minutes
Rating: R
Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: It’s been 16 years since Keanu Reeves boarded a bus bound for hell, strapping in along with the audience for a white-knuckle thrill ride of improbable twists and turns.

“Point Blank,” is an amazing French thriller about a married nurse, Samuel Pierret (Gilles Lellouche) who interrupts an assassination attempt at his hospital only to have his pregnant wife (Elena Anaya) kidnapped, throwing him into the middle of a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with a deadly police detective and the criminal underworld.

It’s as gripping and electric as “Speed,” but without the bus.

Director Fred Cavayé maintains such a frantic pace that the viewer barely has time to breathe. It’s an undeniably kinetic experience, one that generates such adrenaline that you feel as if you’re racing on foot along with Pierret.

The master stroke of “Point Blank,” however, is that it offers not one, but two protagonists to cheer for – Pierret’s hellbent husband, determined to find his wife or die trying, and Roschdy Zem’s Hugo Sartet, the expert safecracker and notorious criminal whom Lellouche saves from death in the hospital.

Sartet is a bad, bad man. But he and Pierret must team together, a la Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in “The Defiant Ones,” in order to survive.

Where Pierret would show mercy, Sartet kills with ease.

It’s a fascinating and thrilling dynamic that crackles with renewed energy, a tired plot contrivance given a second life.

And, at a time when most films struggle to find a villain worthy of fear, Cavayé unleashes upon his unlikely heroes a true devil of a man, Commandant Patrick Werner (Gérard Lanvin), whose moral compass never points in any direction but south. Werner is a man driven by an unmoral code to protect the establishment at any cost, no matter who he has to kill, whether it’s a criminal or a police colleague.

I can already foresee the inevitable Hollywood remake. It’s the type of movie that should have producers salivating to cast the roles of Sartet and Pierret. I could see proven A-list celebrities lining up for the chance.

But I can tell you this with confidence, it wouldn’t be nearly as good.

The reason why is simple. Something critical will get lost in the translation from foreign thriller to glossy Hollywood tentpole. Because it’s a French import, you’re almost willing to overlook the leaps in faith, the gaping lapses in logic and the insane, death-defying action that would render any other, ordinary hospital nurse dead on a sidewalk, either the victim of a 20-foot fall or a bullet to the back.

“Point Blank” is not a film you spend hours analyzing. It’s like a 5-hour energy drink. You consume it, you feel the jolt to your senses and you eventually wind down.

But during those five hours, or 84 minutes, as is the case here, you feel clear-eyed and alert, buzzing with nervous energy, sketchy and alive and praying to God that a humble, everyday guy can somehow keep evading bullets and torture and high-flying leaps between tenement buildings to save his wife.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Yes.
Nudity – Yes.
Gore – Gun violence.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – An elite squad of corrupt cops.
Buy/Rent – Buy it.
Blu-Ray Bonus Features – Behind the scenes documentary, theatrical trailer.
On the Web – http://www.magpictures.com/pointblank/

The Hangover Part II (Warner Bros.,102 minutes, R, Blu-Ray): A lot of sequels recycle the same ideas that made the earlier films successful. Or they take specific elements and ramp those up to comic proportions like a bodybuilder on ‘roids.

Very few sequels try to replicate the entire film that preceded it. In fact, I can think of just one film that I’ve ever seen that attempted this and pulled it off: “Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn,” which was basically a shot-for-shot remake with a few new added elements, and it was wonderful.

“The Hangover Part II” is not “Evil Dead 2,” far from it.

It’s not even “The Hangover Part I,” despite trying to copy it nearly point-for-point.

I wouldn’t care if “The Hangover Part II” was at least funny. But it’s not, honestly, and that’s a shame. There’s one big gag that works near the midway mark, but the rest looks and tastes like a reheated dinner that came out of the microwave. There’s nary a hint of oven-baked goodness to be found.

I think the potential is there, however. And there are precedents that would justify a third adventure with the Wolfpack because the chemistry of the three leads is undeniable. Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis riff off each other with impeccable timing, and they seem to genuinely get along.

But what worked in small doses last time – Ken Jeong’s manic energy, Mike Tyson’s hysterical cameo – become annoying and clichéd with a larger helping.

Saddling Helms with the brunt of them misfortune, again, and tying the entire plot around another ill-conceived group drug dosing by Galifianakis, makes the film feel lazy instead of inspired.

Michael Bay was able to recover from the blasphemous, overlong, overloud blight that was “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” I think Todd Phillips & Co. can do the same. But they have to go in an entirely different direction for the third, and hopefully final, “Hangover.”

The Debt (Universal, 113 minutes, R, Blu-Ray): A good, but not instantly great, espionage thriller, “The Debt” succeeds in small doses, giving viewers a chance to see familiar actors like Sam Worthington in roles that they might never otherwise have imagined them.

The best bits involve the flashbacks because in those scenes, younger versions of Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson crackle with intensity, none better than Jessica Chasstain as a female Mossad agent who is forced to expose herself, literally and figuratively, to a German war monster, a butcher of women, whose crazed experiments are the true stuff of nightmares.

Cowboys & Aliens (Universal, 135 minutes, PG-13, Blu-Ray): Here’s the deal: “Cowboys and Aliens” isn’t a bad film, it’s just not a very original one.

But it’s still a fun slice of escapism, a worthy waste of two hours on a Saturday spent crashed on a couch.

The genre mash-up of Old West meets Sci-Fi doesn’t feel as fresh and electrifying as it should. No one runs around shrieking about the end of the world and WTF are those crazy flying saucer things (which, it should be pointed out, I would have done).

There’s never a sense of a group of people discovering something for the first time, which is absolutely essential to sell a premise like this. Even with a movie like “Dances With Wolves,” you honestly believed that Lt. John Dunbar lived by himself at a remote, abandoned outpost, and that he genuinely had never encountered a Native American tribe before. That sense of wonder, of possibility, of being immersed in the unknown, was true, and infectious.

In “Cowboys and Aliens,” each scene feels like a set-up for the next big set piece. Part of the problem is that because these Old West settlers had never encountered aliens from outer space before, they realistically should have had no idea how to combat them, or even find them.

But find them they do, with relative ease. And they hold their own against an improbable force that otherwise should have wiped them out like a militia storming a retirement home.

A bigger problem is Daniel Craig, who I never realized looks almost alien-like with his fascinating bone structure and refusal to smile. He doesn’t feel right in the role. As I watched, I wondered what a different actor, the first actor rumored for the part, Robert Downey Jr., might have done with the role.

Craig is a fantastic actor, he has such presence, but he just doesn’t fit here. He plays his role with such earnestness that it’s almost maudlin. He just doesn’t seem to be having any fun, and fun is exactly what a movie called “Cowboys and Aliens” needed most.

Also Available:

Underbelly: The Trilogy – Epic, sprawling, ambitious. Those are just a few adjectives to describe this Australian television sensation, which features three 13-episode seasons broken into three parts, all of which help tell the story of that country’s violent, 30-plus year crime war. There’s A Tale of Two Cities, The Golden Mile and War On The Streets. Did I mention gratuitous violence and nudity? That’s right, kids. Other countries can show a lot more than the buttoned-up, conservative suits in the U.S. will alow.

The Help – I’m beginning to think it’s a little wrong how much I fancy Emma Stone. Is she the perfect woman? Discuss.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Fourth Season – Russell T. Davies created this spin-off of the wildly successful BBC hit “Doctor Who” about an investigative journalist, Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), who fights to protect the Earth from alien attack. The cool crossover potential has been realized on several occasions with both David Tennant, the 10th Doctor, and Matt Smith, the 11th Doctor, making guest appearances. Sladen first appeared as Sarah Jane back in the 1960s on the original “Doctor Who” serials, and she continued to appear off and on through the 1980s and 1990s before re-emerging in 2005 when Davies kickstarted a fresh take on the iconic show. The spin-off, now in its fifth season overseas, faces an uncertain future with Sladen’s death in April 2011 at the age of 66.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 XXII: Mighty Jack, Time of the Apes, The Violent Years and The Brute Man – Joel, Mike, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot return to lay waste to a host of awesomely, unbelievably, mind-blowingly bad B-movies that you otherwise might never know existed.

The Smurfs – NPH, I’m willing to overlook this. I haven’t said anything about the “Harold and Kumar” movies because, honestly, you were the best thing about the first two (I haven’t seen the third yet). But there better not be a Smurfs sequel. I don’t care how much money it might make. That’s your one and final warning.

Mr. Poppers Penguins – I think the movie would have been funnier if the penguins were all laying around taking big whiffs of amyl nitrite and getting into trouble.

Big Love: The Complete Series – See 2011 Holiday Gift Guide

Astral City: A Spiritual Journey – Based on a best-selling book by a renowned medium, this visually dazzling journey through the afterlife, en route to spiritual awakening and fulfillment, is probably what the creative team behind “What Dreams May Come” was hoping for, but couldn’t quite achieve.

Mangus! – It’s a coming of age story about a high school student who wants to play the title role in “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I’m not kidding. And it has been described as early John Waters meets Pedro Almodóvar. That’s pretty enticing, if you ask me.

Psychic Experiment – Katie Featherston tries her hand at horror that doesn’t have “Paranormal Activity” in the title. Unfortunately, this one is a confused mess of rehashed imagery you’ve seen in a bunch of other direct-to-DVD fright flicks.

Transformers Prime: Darkness Rising – This new take on the mythology of the ages-long battle between Autobots and Decepticons is supposed to thrill longtime fans while serving as an introductory primer for people who have only seen the Michael Bay films and not any of the older cartoons.

Triple Tap – This Chinese import takes a unique approach to a classic action premise. The protagonist here is a competitive marksman who finds himself caught between the criminal underworld and a rival marksman, who just happens to be a cop.

Elvira’s Movie Macabre: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians/Beast from Haunted Cave – It wouldn’t be Christmas without big boobs, bad puns and a classic B-movie about Santa Claus defending the Earth from those pesky little green guys.

Tora! Tora! Tora! – Pearl Harbor, told with meticulous attention to detail. It’s a classic, restored and enhanced to high definition, and it comes in a handsome hardback case with a collectible booklet.

Medea - The classic tale of Medea is told with opera legend Maria Callas in the title role.

The Simpsons: The Fourteenth Season - This collection includes all episodes from the 14th season (2002-2003) of Fox’s long-running animated hit.