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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.

Blood, Violence and Babes
John Allman

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New Releases for Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2012

Posted Jan 7, 2012 by John Allman

Updated Jan 7, 2012 at 02:05 PM

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

Contagion
Genre: Thriller
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Run time: 106 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: Director Steven Soderbergh has crafted a nifty, fast-paced, real-world thriller that looks gorgeous in high definition, and for the first 60 minutes or so, careens along a downhill track to hell with such nerve-rattling efficiency that you find yourself feeling disappointed once the sickness slowly subverts to a sniffle instead of the plague.

Don’t get me wrong, “Contagion” will unnerve you.

I watch a lot, A LOT, of horror movies, and blood, guts, gore, torture – I can handle. But pandemic/unknown virus spreading thrillers scare the crap out of me. Why? In my mind, they are more like documentaries or prophecies put to the screen, not some fictionalized serial slasher running around hacking up coeds.

This kind of thing could happen, and it has, throughout history.

Soderbergh drafts an all-star cast to tell his tale. I mean, really, it’s like watching some bizarre A-list edition of “The Pandemic Boat.”

You could spend much of the movie just picking out the cameos. John Hawkes, recently Oscar-nominated for “Winter’s Bone”? Yeah, he gets maybe 10 lines. Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow? She is on screen for all of 15 minutes – the first 15 minutes.

That’s like having Michael Jordan on your team and only playing him for one quarter of the game. Well, not really the best analogy, since I don’t think too much of Paltrow as an actress, but she does have her fans. You get what I mean.

“Contagion” also hands Jude Law and Laurence Fishburne their meatiest roles in years, and both actors do a good job of seizing the opportunity, particularly in one well-crafted back-and-forth, CNN-style television interview.

The thing that “Contagion” gets the most right is the fear. How often have you seen a disease thriller where one of the good guy CDC scientists becomes infected early on and dies a horrible death, on screen? That doesn’t happen often, but Soderbergh seems to know that stark imagery like that will drill down to our basest fears and hollow out a home, and he’s right.

The problem with “Contagion” is that it ultimately reaches a crossroads, and thankfully it’s a crossroads we haven’t reached in real life – yet. Go full-bore down the “I Am Legend” wormhole and depict a civilization that completely collapses with billions of dead corpses littering the streets, or stop just shy of total anarchy and have the researchers discover a cure?

That doesn’t mean the film fails. Not at all. It strikes the right note at its conclusion, showing a world that is definitely changed, but still clinging to the old traditions that define us as a higher species.

And, in a wonderful post-mortem touch, Soderbergh shows us how the whole virus began, presenting a nicely condensed Day 1 nearly two hours after subjecting us to the hellish weeks and months that followed.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Well, yes, technically, but sex is the last thing you will be thinking about.
Nudity – No.
Gore – Minimal.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – A bat and a pig.
Buy/Rent – Rent it.
Blu-Ray Bonus Features – Three featurettes, “Contagion: How a Virus Changed the World,” “The Reality of Contagion” and “The Contagion Detectives.”
On the Web – http://contagionmovie.warnerbros.com/dvd/

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (Sony, 100 minutes, R, Blu-Ray): Don’t be afraid of the dark, little one. It’s only those stop-motion creatures returning from “The Gate.”

How else to explain how I was totally geeking out, reliving my first time seeing a considerably cheesier film from 1986, when I should have been appreciating a wicked slice of R-rated horror co-penned by Guillermo del Toro.

“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” fails on too many levels. The story is for crap. The relationship between Guy Pierce and Katie Holmes is ridiculously hollow. She’s been relegated to window dressing, which is not fair because Ms. Cruise can act. She just keeps getting offered, or she keeps picking, ill-defined roles. Pierce is such an A-hole from jump that you don’t buy him for one second as a concerned father. And poor Bailee Madison has to suffer through a numbingly repetitive series of shocks to the point that you almost want her to get carted off by those damn Gate-like, evil fairies.

Here’s my No. 1 question after watching “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” and it’s a time-honored query offered by many a horror fan: Why in the hell would a parent take their child BACK to the evil house where little creatures MIGHT be trying to kill people and kidnap her?

Why?

Why why why?

If you don’t have an honest answer, then the obvious answer is this: Otherwise, you would have a 45 minute movie.

So, I think it’s fair to say that if you’re going to keep the kid at the terrifying mansion filled with nasty whatchamacallit’s, you really need to deliver something truly scary, or shocking, or both.

And that’s where “Dark” fails most of all.

Shark Night (Fox, 91 minutes, PG-13, Blu-Ray): Why would a backwoods hillbilly create mutant, fresh-water, killer sharks in a dank Southern bayou?

Because he was inspired by “Shark Week” from The Discovery Channel.

That’s the big reveal, people. That’s the honest answer given to explain why giant killer sharks have been devouring dunderheaded, water-skiing coeds for more than an hour.

There – I broke my cardinal rule, I gave away the big reveal.

I feel justified in giving this secret away because “Shark Night” is the single dumbest genre film I have possibly ever seen, and I watch a lot of freaking movies, people.

Justified: The Complete Second Season (Sony, 546 minutes, Unrated, Blu-Ray): Speaking of “Justified,” the wonderfully dark, meticulously detailed crime series set in the tradition-rich coal country of Kentucky, if you haven’t been watching the past two seasons of this FX cable series, you are seriously missing out.

Timothy Olyphant has been given a career-defining role in Raylan Givens, the Deputy U.S. Marshal created by one of our best crime novelists, Elmore Leonard, and he imbues the character with a rich, complex moral code. Givens grew up straddling the line between right and wrong, with a father who blatantly broke the law and a childhood friend, Boyd Crowder (the amazing Walton Goggins), who has risen to become his arch nemesis and his closest ally.

“Justified,” developed for TV by Graham Yost, the mastermind writer behind “Speed,” “Broken Arrow” and some of the best shows on television, from “Band of Brothers” to “Boomtown,” crackles with intensity but always manages to respect the rural traditions and hard-scrabble life that its warring factions of kinfolk have protected and defended for generations.

Nothing is simple in this world. There is no all-good and all-evil, and the show deftly traverses these grey zones, presenting some of the best character development you’re likely to ever see in a show that’s essentially, in a nutshell, about a rogue lawman meting out Old West justice as he sees fit.

You grow to care for the various family members, even as you watch them do terrible things to one another.

The first season dealt with Givens return to Kentucky after he shot a Miami drug kingpin point blank at a marina restaurant. The long-standing truce between the Givens and Crowder families was decimated and lots of blood was spilled.

Season two, which you need to watch before next week’s Season 3 premiere, deals with a new family, the pot-growing Bennett’s, led by the deliciously evil matriarch, Mags Bennett, and her three sons. The Bennett’s have a plan to go legit and make a fortune off selling land to a coal mining company. But they just can’t help themselves from exhibiting old-school vengeance when someone goes and breaks one of the unspoken rules that governs life in such a place. In this case, that would mean reporting a pedophile to authorities instead of asking Mags and her boys to deal with the problem personally.

Raylan also has a long history with the Bennett clan, one that has simmered for years, barely below a boil. And Boyd Crowder, though he’s making a concerted effort to stay away from crime, keeps getting tempted by outside forces that want to exploit his penchant for violence.

On top of all that, Yost & Co. find the time to delve deep into a handful of satisfying subplots involving Givens’ ex-wife, with whom he may be reconciling, if her current husband (William Ragsdale – that’s right, Charley Brewster of “Fright Night” fame) doesn’t try to have them both killed, and Givens’ boss, Art, who doesn’t trust Raylan or like him much, for that matter.

At 13 episodes a season, this is a show you can quickly absorb, but your appreciation for the characters and storylines will resonate long after the last episode has played.

Also Available:

Mildred Pierce: The Collector’s Edition – Kate Winslet knocks it into the bleachers in this wonderful HBO production.

I’m Glad My Mother Is Alive – Your mother, however, may not be so glad after she realizes you are her long, lost, given-up-for-adoption son, and you have grown into a creepy stalker playing a dangerous game of deception with her in the middle. Moms can forgive a lot, but maybe not that.

The Guard – This fish-out-of-water, buddy-cop comedy has gotten nothing but rave reviews for its writing, acting and sense of style. Plus it has Don Cheadle and Brendan Gleeson. Count me in.

Don’t Let Him In – OK, I won’t. But, what if he has cookies?

Ice Quake – Does your “Ice Quake” bring all the boys to the yard? Only the ones who love bad SyFy Channel-inspired Mother Nature madness.

I Don’t Know How She Does It – I do, people. SJP isn’t that talented! When is everybody going to wake up to that fact?

Serendipity – Kate Beckinsale, I would watch you in anything, but this overly-predictable rom-com is asking a bit much.

She’s All That – Finally! Your Freddie Prinze Jr. Blu-Ray collection is one step closer to completion. Rejoice.