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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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New Releases for Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Posted Mar 2, 2010 by John Allman

Updated Mar 14, 2010 at 10:32 AM

Here’a a look at what’s new in stores and on video shelves this week:

2012 (Sony, 158 minutes, PG-13, Blu-Ray and DVD): It’s official – Roland Emmerich was the second shooter in the grassy knoll.

Would you really question such a revelation?

After all, this guy has made a career out of destroying the White House – either by alien invasion, a new ice age courtesy of global warming and most recently by a massive tidal wave in the apocalyptic CGI orgy known as “2012.”

Emmerich is like that kid in school who always had to one-up your summer vacation story. Oh, you went to the Grand Canyon? Well I not only went to the Grand Canyon, but I had to carry my mother up a sheer rock wall in 118-degree heat after she was bitten by a rattlesnake. Top that!

In “2012,” he really does top himself, however. Everything is bigger, badder and louder than in his previous apocalyptic epics. You don’t just get one edge-of-your-seat, seconds-to-spare, narrow takeoff by a plane before the earth’s crust crumbles beneath the wheels. You get three of them, in rapid succession.

You don’t just get one big money shot of doomsday destruction. You get California, Wyoming, the District of Columbia, Hawaii and Tibet all flattened, ripped apart and ruined by natural disaster.

In fact, at 158 minutes, you get nearly three movies’ worth of eye-rolling, head-shaking, oh-no-he-didn’t gratuitous carnage. You also get not one, not two, but three treacly, tearful goodbyes between father-daughter, son-father and father-son. You get the fat foreign guy getting his comeuppance, but only after saving his (also) portly (and mean-spirited) spoiled kids. You get the Russian heiress saving her cute dog at the last second. And the ever-popular will-he-or-won’t-he survive moment with the top-lining movie star who – spoiler alert – naturally survives.

“2012” isn’t just a disaster movie. It wants to be the last disaster movie you ever need to see. Emmerich blows up, burns or drowns every last bit of recognizable land. The only thing missing is a giant asteroid hurtling through space while roughneck oil drillers frantically scramble to keep their cool and reach the necessary depth to drop a nuclear charge.

Obviously, you’re assuming I hated “2012.”

Oh, how I wanted to. Oh, how badly I wanted to despise it.

But a funny thing happened as I sat captivated for much of its too-long running time. I actually was entertained – OK, I wasn’t bored – and I couldn’t help but wonder why.

It comes down to two words: John Cusack.

For every odd career choice the actor makes – and I’m specifically thinking about “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” or “The Ice Harvest” or, worse, “Pushing Tin” – Cusack somehow holds onto and calls upon his inner “Lloyd Dobler” when he needs it most and you just can’t help but like the guy and want to see him succeed, survive and get the girl.

Cusack nails the ‘Holy hell, we almost died…again’ shucks and awe vibe that is critical to selling this kind of schlocky excess. You can’t help but root for him to nimbly navigate his way through each escalating, over the top life or death challenge.

Where the Wild Things Are (Warner Bros., 101 minutes, PG, Blu-Ray and DVD): Review coming soon.

##### Slap (20th Century Fox, 109 minutes, Unrated, DVD): Review coming soon.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (Screen Media, 97 minutes, R, DVD and Blu-Ray): Robin Wright leads an all-star cast including Keanu Reeves and Alan Arkin in a story that spans generations, telling the story of Pippa, a woman who is forced to confront her past.

Ponyo (Walt Disney, 90 minutes, G, Blu-Ray and DVD): Acclaimed Academy Award-winning director Hayao Miyazaki’s interpretation of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid” is presented in a two-disc special edition and features the voices of Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Tina Fay and Liam Neeson, among others.

Castle in the Sky: Special Edition, Kiki’s Delivery Service: Special Edition, My Neighbor Totoro: Special Edition (Walt Disney, 125 minutes, 105 minutes, 88 minutes, PG, DVD): These two-disc special editions provide further evidence of the vivid imagination and wonderful style of Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki.

Alice (Lionsgate, 180 minutes, Unrated, Blu-Ray and DVD): The SyFy miniseries re-imagines the classic “Alice in Wonderland,” offering a modern twist on Lewis Carroll’s story of the girl who fell down the rabbit hole. Starring Harry Dean Stanton, Kathy Bates and Caterina Scorsone, who recently appeared with Mel Gibson in “Edge of Darkness.”

Gentleman Broncos (Fox, 90 minutes, PG-13, Blu-Ray and DVD): It very well could be the worst movie ever made.

And there are some, no doubt, who would fervently argue this point. They would spit and cuss and ball fists in angry indignation at having lost an hour and a half to such a dazzlingly dumb motion picture.

But would they be right?

“Gentleman Broncos” is without a doubt proof that Jared Hess, the man who gave us “Napoleon Dynamite,” is a one-trick pony. The majority of ideas swimming around his head aren’t funny. And in a parallel universe, “Dynamite” would have received the same critical lambasting as “Broncos” and the “Liger” and other stupid creations and quotes wouldn’t have caught on with the Hot Topic crowd.

“Broncos” tells the story of a high school student in a small Utah town who writes science fiction stories about testicles and yeast and Cyclops sentries in hopes of one day becoming a published author. His father is dead, and his mother is a loon. In fact, every character that invades Hess’ world is skewed, left of center, flat-out weird.

It’s one thing to pepper a comedy with a handful of eccentric personalities. But when your entire film is populated by people who need to be sedated, it becomes increasingly difficult to find someone with whom to identify.

How Hess – who attracted Jack Black to star in the equally unfunny “Nacho Libre” – got Sam Rockwell, Mike White and Jemaine Clement to agree to embarrass themselves in this train wreck is baffling.

Just say no.

This week’s notable Re-Issues:

Clash of the Titans (Warner Bros., 118 minutes, PG, Blu-Ray): Yes, it’s a shameless tie-in to the all-new, big-budget CGI remake. Yes, it looks every bit like it was made in 1981. Yes, I owned a white plastic Pegasus flying horse action figure.

But damn if watching this inspired Ray Harryhausen cult classic doesn’t evoke strong memories of a time when stop-motion animation truly wowed us and made us daydream of flying horses, hideous gorgons and four-armed Krakens.

Harry Hamlin is a pretty-boy Perseus with impossibly plump lips. Laurence Olivier totally slums as Zeus, delivering such memorable lines as “Let loose the Kraken” with all the gusto of a poor schlub trapped in a dinner theater production from hell. And Judi Bowker shows some side boob and bare butt as Andromeda.

Warner Bros.’ reissue comes in a handsome, hardback digibook complete with a full-color booklet of photos and cast and character biographies, film trivia and more; a color preview book of the remake; and a $7.50 movie money ticket for the remake.

Of all the announced and rumored remakes, “Clash of the Titans” is a worthy candidate for the wonders of CGI. But all the computers in the world can’t replace the feeling of awe that I had at age 11 sitting in a dark theater, gourging myself on mythology and rooting for a mechanical owl named Bubo to save the day.

How awesome it is to see so many years later – through the marvel of a high-definition upgrade – the strings that kept Bubo aloft as he avoided a giant stop-motion vulture.

Technology has made movies more entertaining, for sure. But there are some things that can’t be improved upon, no matter how impressive the special effects.

The Wraith: Special Edition (Lionsgate, 93 minutes, PG-13, DVD): What a difference 24 years makes. I absolutely loved this sci-fi/car chase hybrid when it first was released in 1986. I went to see it in the theater. I had the original movie poster on my wall. I bought the soundtrack, which included Ozzy and Billy Idol and the Crue.

What the hell was up with me?

“The Wraith” is like a time capsule of everything that was wrong, and wonderful, with low-budget releases in the mid-1980s. The effects are truly laughable. The zipping neon lights meant to stand in for Charlie Sheen’s alien avenger’s ship look like cost-cutting Close Encounters rip-off. The alien “suit” is nothing more than some cheap body armor and a fighter pilot helmet. The racing scenes elicit about as much tension as a soapbox derby. The car – the infamous Dodge Turbo Interceptor – doesn’t really look that impressive hustling down scenic Arizona byways. And the acting – good God. Two words, people – Clint Howard. When Clint Howard is the subject of one of the two brand-new documentaries included, that about says it all.

There’s no explanation of what’s going on. The big, shocking “murder” is a bloodless affair that is inexplicably wiped from the memory of the “good girl,” played by Sherilyn Fenn, whose topless scene was but a hint of what was to come in “Two Moon Junction.” And no one, including the law, seems capable of corralling the hot rod gang of car thieves led by Nick Cassavetes.

No one but Sheen, that is.

Director Mike Marvin says that he was going for “High Plains Drifter,” the classic Clint Eastwood “man with no name” flick about a stranger who delivers justice to a lawless western town.

I don’t know that he quite succeeded in recapturing the spirit of that iconic 1973 film. But then again, this is the man who gave us “Hamburger – The Motion Picture,” which I sadly, fondly recall.

But he did create a memorable slice of 80s cheese that falls somewhere between “The Last Starfighter” and “My Science Project” on the all-time guilty pleasure list.