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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, Nov. 1, 2011

Posted Nov 5, 2011 by John Allman

Updated Nov 5, 2011 at 11:25 AM

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

Trespass
Genre: Home Invasion Thriller
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Run time: 90 minutes
Rating: R
Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: It’s like watching a prize fighter past his prime, in less than tip-top condition, trying to compete in a ring filled with young studs.

This is no “Rocky” fairy tale. There isn’t going to be an unexpected, completely improbable comeback.

This is going to be the equivalent of 15 rounds of punishment, a slow slog to Hell. In short, today we’re dissecting the latest Joel Schumacher film, and it ain’t pretty. The guy has lost his mojo and I don’t think it’s coming back. Not now, not ever again.

Schumacher is an iconic genre director, no doubt. This is the guy who gave us “The Lost Boys,” “8mm,” “Flatliners,” “Falling Down” and “A Time to Kill,” one of the best John Grisham adaptations. Hell, this is the guy who directed Mr. T in “D.C. Cab,” a longtime guilty pleasure. Ok, I saw it in the theater. I can’t lie.

But Schumacher is also responsible for “Batman and Robin” and “The Number 23” and “Phone Booth,” a movie about a guy stuck in a phonebooth! Lately, he’s been directing smaller, direct-to-DVD genre pictures like the weird Nazi/zombie hybrid “Blood Creek” and the Curtis “Fiddy Cent” Jackson-starring “Twelve.”

“Trespass” has the feel of a throwaway action movie from the 1980s, except it isn’t. It has elements of the surprisingly good Bruce Willis vehicle “Hostage” from several years ago, only it’s nowhere near that good.

There are moments – tiny, tiny, seconds-long snippets of dialogue and acting and scene composition that smack of genre greatness, that punch through the heavy-handed melodramatic crap and give a full-throated yell.

Nicolas Cage delivers most of these moments, and it is because of those moments that I love him. Cage always brings something to his seemingly random, pluck a script out of a hat, film choices of late.

Here, he channels his early-career spastic Cage, with his rat-a-tat-tat delivery and buggy eyes. He practically froths in one of the film’s best moments when Cage finally man’s up and delivers a rousing indictment of the situation, blistering through his limp, barely-there captors.

The problem is there just isn’t enough of that raw, crazy spirit, that shoot for the moon exuberance that carried the best B-movies back in the day. There’s no switch where Cage goes from goofy “Vampire’s Kiss” method actor to kick-butt Castor Troy killing machine from “Face/Off.”

Instead, Schumacher’s lazy camera eye and the increasingly ludicrous script from Karl Gajdusek, who otherwise has only written a handful of episodes for the ghost soap “Dead Like Me,” bury any fun to be had.

In fact, I counted five distinct points that the movie could have ended well before it did. The single best moment in the movie when you are conned into thinking that Cage and Nicole Kidman are about to go medieval on their captors’ butts, happens about an hour in. If the scene had played the way I wanted it to, the film would have ended with a bloodletting of epic proportions about 10 minutes later.

This is not a highpoint in the career of anyone involved. “Trespass” is quickly forgotten. Up-and-comers like Cam Gigandet and established stars like Cage and Kidman will have five or six new films on their IMDb resumes to bury this disaster in no time.

But Schumacher, that’s a different story. He isn’t as prolific as he was earlier in his career, which might be a blessing. “Trespass” may end up being a weight around his neck, dragging him down to the bottom of the lake.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Nicole Kidman, aging hot.
Nudity – No.
Gore – No.
Drug use – Yes.
Bad Guys/Killers – The worst home invaders ever.
Buy/Rent – For fans of Cage only, this is a rental. But only as a curiosity.
Blu-Ray Bonus Features – Inside the Thriller featurette.
On the Web – http://www.trespass-the-movie.com/

Also Available:

Tabloid – Errol Morris returns with a wonderfully irreverent, yet completely timely and topical documentary about celebrity, true crime and the ridiculous lengths people will go for what they believe is love.

“Tabloid” might seem slight, a small topic for a filmmaker of Morris’ stature, yet his eye for story has never been sharper, and his leading lady, Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming, who found in beauty pageants the confidence she needed to pursue any dream that popped into her blonde, bubbly head, even if it meant stalking and kidnapping a Mormon missionary whom she believed was her soulmate.

Watching and listening to McKinney tell her story, her big wide eyes filled with delight, and hearing the same account from others who lived through the ordeal, you realize how detached from reality she really is, and it’s both chilling and fascinating. It’s like watching a game of Operator, where one kid starts a story that gets passed down a line in whispers until the person at the end of the line is told something wholly different than what the first person said.

This one is a definite rental.

Cars 2 – Pixar returns with a sequel to one of its most popular franchises. Children everywhere rejoice. Parents weep at the amount of merchandising they will now have to buy.

Copland – One of Sylvester Stallone’s finest moments, a genuinely good police drama about corrupt cops in New Jersey.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind – George Clooney’s directorial debut is uneven but exciting, a take on the life story of Chuck Barris, the host of “The Gong Show,” who maintained that he led a secret double life as a CIA assassin.

Crazy Stupid Love – Women everywhere could barely get past Ryan Gosling’s abs of steel in the trailer. But the rest of the movie is pretty amazing too.

Water for Elephants – Hey, Francis Lawrence, you’ve directed the ridiculously good and gory big-budget, sci-fi/horror hybrids “Constantine” and “I Am Legend.” What do you want to do next? Come again? A movie about a traveling circus based on an international bestseller starring the kid from “Twilight”? Huh?

Wintervention – It’s a movie about the fanatics who live for winter, for snow, for strapping tiny strips of wood to their feet and hurtling down a mountain at incredibly dangerous speeds.

Californication: The Fourth Season – This show started strong, but there’s only so many bad decisions one guy can make before he either angers everyone around him to the point of exile, or he contracts something that a shot of penicillin won’t cure.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan – There’s a silk fan and two women trying to stay connected yet they’re living in parallel timelines and the fan is mystical or something. If you read the book, you know what I’m talking about.

The Phantom of the Opera – This isn’t the stage production, this is the original 1925 classic starring Lon Chaney, restored and featuring two versions, one silent, of the iconic film.

An Invisible Sign – Jessica Alba tries to play mousey and plain. Does she not understand she is way too hot to pull that off?

Roswell: The Aliens Attack – Of all the movies about Roswell to watch, this is not the one.

Rawhide: The Fourth Season, Volume 2 – Remember that good looking guy named Clint Eastwood who starred on the TV western “Rawhide”? It’s a shame his career never went anywhere after that.