Welcome to TBO.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online

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

Most Recent Entries

Monthly Archives

New Releases for Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011

Posted Oct 29, 2011 by John Allman

Updated Oct 29, 2011 at 02:47 PM

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

Grave Encounters
Genre: Found Footage/Paranormal
Directed by: Colin Minihan, Stuart Ortiz
Run time: 92 minutes
Rating: R
Format: DVD

The Lowdown: The “Found Footage” genre’s origins can easily be traced back to 1999 with “The Blair Witch Project.”

But, truthfully, it wasn’t until years after Heather Donahue’s wailed “Joshhhhhhh!” that filmmakers realized the potential such a gimmick could deliver.

Superior films like “Cloverfield” and “Paranormal Activity” elevated the gimmick to an art form, establishing the single-lens, shakey-handheld camera as a legitimate storytelling device that could thrill, freak out and terrify.

That’s not to say every “Found Footage” flick has been successful. Like any genre, there are examples of greatness and woeful reminders that not every idea is worthy of being developed for the big screen.

Some have been wonderfully creative, like Norway’s “Trollhunter,” a rollicking, fantastic ogre epic. Others, like “The Last Exorcism,” held more promise than their execution could deliver.

Even “Paranormal Activity” has faltered. The second film in the series upped the ante, but failed to deliver more than a been there, screamed that feeling.

Now, along comes “Grave Encounters,” a film by The Vicious Brothers, another in the long and growing list of supposed sibling filmmakers who are actually not related. But while Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz don’t share a blood relation, they definitely share an appreciation for spooky setups and for much of the 92-minute running time, “Grave” delivers some rather unsettling imagery.

The problem is that now, after 12 years as a genre, most people have wised up to the gimmick. “Found Footage” films have, by necessity, been forced to grow bigger in size and scale, to push the boundaries of the believable in an ever-escalating attempt to deliver a big HOLY CRAP moment, often near the climatic whatever.

That need to really come up with something scary as hell or unexpectedly shocking undermines “Grave Encounters” at every turn.

Minihan and Ortiz couldn’t have picked a better, even if clichéd, location for their mock-reality ghost hunting show. They skewer all of the real reality shows that focus on the paranormal, employing similar opening graphics, creepy camera edits and a host who is much too full of himself (not unlike a certain host of a little show called Paranormal State).

At times, “Grave” resembles a mockumentary remake of “Session 9,” the wonderfully intense and scary Brad Anderson film. There are definite winks and nods to other classic and contemporary horror films, such as “House on Haunted Hill,” the remake, not the Vincent Price original.

Essentially, the crew of the show Grave Encounters are being locked inside an abandoned insane asylum for eight hours. The property caretaker is supposed to come back at 6 a.m. to let them out. They interview a number of ‘experts’ and locals who claim to have seen spooky occurrences that they can’t explain.

For the first 45 minutes or so, not much happens. There’s a definite sense of impending doom, but very few even jump scare moments. Once they start happening, such as a lock of hair being lifted unexpectedly or a wheelchair moving on its own, there’s a solid creepiness factor.

But when the big show kicks in and the ghosts of the asylum decide to stop playing nice, the line between Boo! scares and Holy Crap! scares blurs quickly. Minihan and Ortiz tip their hand too early. They show off too much.

That leaves them with a 20-minute chunk or so that seems to drag, when very little happens other than characters running around in circles, bickering, hiding, screaming, turning on one another.

There’s a point where things shift from paranormal to supernatural and that creative decision ultimately works against “Grave Encounters” because it requires too wide of a leap, too significant of a suspension of disbelief from the viewer.

Don’t mistake what I’m saying as criticism or a suggestion that “Grave Encounters” is a waste of time, because that’s not the case at all.

My biggest gripe is with the ending, which I saw coming the second a certain character was discussed briefly at the beginning of the movie. I suspect any good horror fan will know exactly what I’m talking about if they watch it too.

But there are three or four big money shots that the directors pull off exceptionally well.

And, taken as a whole, the film sits somewhere in the Top 10 for “Found Footage” flicks. It’s not necessarily in the Top 5, but it’s a well-made movie with solid scares that deserves to be seen.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Yes.
Nudity – No.
Gore – Lots of blood, not much gore.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – The tortured souls of the Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital.
Buy/Rent – Rent it.

The Last Circus (Magnet/Magnolia, 101 minutes, R, Blu-Ray): This is a movie that opens with a pair of circus clowns performing in an underground bunker as war planes shell the city above. Within minutes, the clowns have been recruited to fight and handed weapons. Faster than you can say “OMG, that’s a clown with a machete,” the lead clown is slicing through scores of rival soldiers, bathing in a bright spray of blood, before being remanded off to jail to wait to fight again.

The clown has a young son who comes to visit him in prison. The son wants to follow in his dad’s oversized footsteps (get it, clown shoes) and make children laugh. But his father says absolutely not. The tragic circumstances that have left the boy without the guiding hand of a parent have also shown the father what his son should be – a sad clown, forever frowning, fated to take the hard road always.

Sad Clown eventually grows up, and it is there that “The Last Circus” kicks into high gear, reveling in a succession of surreal imagery that feels fresh and vibrant. Sad Clown goes to work for Happy Clown, only Happy Clown is really named Sergio and he is a misogynistic drunk who brutally beats his longtime lover, the aerial beauty Natalia.

Happy Clown torments Sad Clown, berating him and doing whatever possible to make his life more difficult. Once he catches Sad Clown and Natalia on a date at the local fair, their relationship devolves quickly. Before long, you’ve got clowns running around with semi-automatic weapons and submachine guns, trying to kill one another and scaling impossibly high heights.

Writer/director Álex de la Iglesia has created an unbelievably vibrant alternative Spain where life is hard, life means pain and no one is guaranteed a happy ending. There are flourishes of Tim Burton’s love for grand, gothic architecture and touches of Quentin Tarantino’s visceral violence that erupts unexpectedly. There’s also a sense of cruel irony permeating his work.

“The Last Circus” is not afraid to flaunt its unconventional style, parading its colorful collection of oddities and freaks through a series of escalating adventures that keep raising the stakes. You know some main characters are going to die horrible deaths, it’s just a question of who and how.

The Howling Reborn (Anchor Bay, 92 minutes, R, Blu-Ray): I was 11 years old when my father ignored all the basic tenants of parenting (thanks Dad!) and took me and Joe Hinds to see “The Howling” in the theater. It was 1981 and “The Howling” was one of two awesome werewolf movies to come out that year. The other, “An American Werewolf in London” garnered acclaim and is widely considered one of the best horror movies of all time.

I still have a soft spot in my heart for “The Howling,” a decidedly darker, grittier, nastier slice of lycanthropia that distinguished itself through strong writing (John Sayles), direction (Joe Dante) and special effects (Rob Bottin’s impressive full-body transformations).

Over the years, there have been a handful of low-budget sequels, most of them barely worthy of the discount bin. The direct sequel, starring Sybil Danning, from 1985 is a cult classic, revered for its ridiculousness, but not for extending the legacy of the original film.

Now, 30 years after the original hit theaters, first-time feature director Joe Nimziki tries to resurrect the franchise with “The Howling Reborn,” a direct-to-DVD effort that actually proves watching movies can be detrimental to your health. I actually felt myself becoming less smart the longer I watched this God-awful excuse for a film.

Honestly, the only thing Nimziki could have done to sully the reputation of “The Howling” further would have been to personally visit each person responsible for the 1981 masterpiece and urinate on their shoes.

It’s that bad.

“Reborn” takes the “Twilight” approach, which is to say, it completely dumbs down the source material and thrusts all the action into high school. Where “The Howling” dealt with a secret society of lycanthropes co-existing in a seaside commune, trying unsuccessfully to curb their primal urges, “Reborn” deals with a bloodline curse that afflicts a young man whose mother died when he was born.

It’s like watching a primer on what not to do when writing a movie: There’s the handsome loner who has no clue what he’s about to become. There’s the girl he’s been pining over for years who finally notices him when he’s trying to deal with a life-changing transformation. There’s a band of rogue werewolves who want to either force the main guy to conform and join them or die. Oh yeah, there’s also voiceover narration.

It’s just cliché piled on cliché piled on cliché.

To make matters worse, Nimziki has no sense of pacing or continuity. Critical plot points just happen with no setup or explanation. It’s a slapdash, patchwork exercise that is so disjointed and incongruent that it literally leaves your head spinning with basic questions – who, what, why – and a list of practical reasons that would negate much of the film’s action from logically occurring.

It’s not often I say this, but rarely do I feel so passionate about a particular film like I do “The Howling.” This new entry into the franchise is a disservice to the original. It’s a disservice to fans who will likely pay money to rent or buy it based on a trailer that actually makes the movie look decent.

It’s not remotely decent. It’s just crap.

Subspecies: The Complete Chronicles (New Video, 450 minutes, R, DVD): The beloved Full Moon franchise “Subspecies” gets a proper and impressive release as a five-film set featuring the 1991 original and its four sequels. “Subspecies,” a campy, guilty pleasure, and its sequels tell the story of the evil vampire Radu (Anders Hove, playing perhaps the most vile-looking vampire ever. This is one of writer/director Charles Band’s best franchises, regardless of the high cheese factor.

Bad Teacher (Sony, 92 minutes, Unrated, Blu-Ray): Lost in the glut of hard-R-rated comedies this past summer, the Cameron Diaz-vehicle “Bad Teacher” did decent box office, but it failed to catch fire like “Bridesmaids” or “The Hangover II” or even “Horrible Bosses.” There’s a lot that doesn’t work with the decidedly adult-oriented comedy, but there’s also plenty to appreciate, starting with Diaz’s game turn as a gold-digging bad girl obsessed with finding a wealthy guy to care for her. Very few films, comedy or otherwise, would dare to build upon a foundation where the main character wants nothing more than to have breast augmentation because she’s convinced it will help her land a rich, superficial guy. To pay for the operation, Diaz’s character, Elizabeth Halsey, lies, cheats and steals – mostly from students. She also cusses like a sailor, smokes a lot of marijuana and resorts to going out to bars to try to pick up powerful and wealthy professionals. Elizabeth is the type woman who asks how much a guy makes, what kind of car he drives and where he is on the corporate ladder – and then, based on his answers, decides if he is worth sleeping with. This shameful behavior makes for some funny circumstances, especially whenever Elizabeth reveals her un-PC patterns to a buttoned up co-worker (Phyllis Smith in a hilarious supporting role). The two biggest missteps that director Jake Kasdan and writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (the guys behind ‘The Office,’ and also the long-rumored Ghostbusters III) make are giving in to conventional cinema expectations and having Elizabeth experience a late third-act epiphany and not going farther with Justin Timberlake’s ultra-conservative substitute teacher. Timberlake is good here, but his role is essentially one-note. There’s no room for him to maneuver or even expand upon the goody-two-shoes guy he has to play. And the eventual epiphany, which is of course expected, because that’s what happens in romantic comedies, even bawdy tales like this one, is disappointing because it’s so telegraphed. It’s the Hollywood ending that has to be tacked on, even if it’s not appropriate. In the real world, Elizabeth wouldn’t wise up and realize it’s OK to date someone who makes less money and drives a crappy car. Elizabeth wouldn’t care if he’s a good guy or not. She would continue boozing and carousing and eventually either land an empty-headed wallet who lets her spend whatever she wants, find herself trapped in an abusive relationship with a bigger douche than she is or contract an incurable STD and no longer be able to use sex as a weapon. That’s real life, but real life isn’t always quite as funny.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Disney, 136 minutes, PG-13, Blu-Ray): It’s official. Capt. Jack Sparrow may be able to navigate one of the wealthiest film franchises of all time, but he can’t keep me awake through an entire Pirates of the Caribbean film. I have fallen asleep during ever movie in the series, from Curse of the Black Pearl to the unbelievably overlong At World’s End. I had hoped to break that trend with On Stranger Tides and its mermaids and quest for the Fountain of Youth. Nope. Didn’t happen. Maybe it’s the acting, which is so stunted for a movie franchise of this magnitude, or the overly-convoluted plots or the fact that Depp doesn’t even seem interested in the character any longer, but Pirates is little more than a money-making machine. It’s certainly not an engine capable of producing the type of thrilling adventures that its name might lead you to expect.

Beware (Maya Entertainment, 95 minutes, Unrated, DVD): What a surprise, a low-budget retro-slasher that actually manages to capture the best elements of the genre without stumbling too far into the dreaded pitfalls that doom so many similar films. Jason Daly keeps a steady hand with his debut feature. Some of his decisions cause the film to drag, like allowing two characters to talk at length, but I will take character development every day over snazzy editing and camera tricks. The story is familiar: A small Florida swamp town has a history of people getting killed out in the woods by a madman or monster. A group of friends embarks on a long weekend trip before one of them leaves the country to pursue his dream of playing professional soccer. He and his girlfriend, her brother and another couple run into prejudice and car problems upon arriving in town. They make friends with a young woman, who invites them all to come stay at her house. Then things get really weird. Daly, who also wrote the screenplay, appreciates the genre. He includes some vicious kills, a seriously effective opening and just enough surprises to keep you guessing who will live and who will die. Plus, the majority of the cast is Hispanic, which adds an interesting perspective. I was pleasantly surprised by “Beware.” It’s definitely worth a rental.

Also Available:

Trancers: The Ultimate Deth Collection – Longtime Tim Thomerson fans, and I am one, will relish and cherish this nice five-film collection that gathers all the “Trancers” movies together for the first time. The original “Trancers,” released in 1985, remains one of director Charles Band’s best movies. The character of Jack Deth became an iconic role for Thomerson, and the series featured Helen Hunt in a recurring role.

Cape Fear – It’s hard to say who is better here, Robert DeNiro in one of his most chilling performances or Juliette Lewis as a Lolita-light schoolgirl who falls under his charm during one of the most uncomfortably erotic scenes in film history.

Top Shot: Reloaded Season 2 – So, you can go from a show based on a show about precision marksmanship based on historical events…

American Pickers: Volume Two – To a show based on guys who go around to flea markets and yard sales looking for hidden treasures? I miss the days when TV only had so many channels.

Freerunner – Here’s what you need to know about “Freerunner.” It sounds like a modern day “Logan’s Run” until you get to the part where you realize it was directed by the guy who wrote “The Cell 2.” That means you should free run as far and fast as possible to any other movie left to rent on the wall of new releases.

Little House on the Prairie: The Complete Television Series – The groundbreaking, family-favorite show, “Little House on the Prairie,” which ran for nine seasons and told the story of the pioneering Ingalls family in the early 19th century American west, finally comes to DVD in one gigantic collector’s boxed set. This 60 disc – that’s right, 60 disc – collection includes every episode of the show that cemented America’s love affair with Michael Landon and launched the career of Melissa Gilbert, who remains Hollywood royalty as a result.

Sucker Punch – I think I’ll let the IMDb synopsis do my talking: “A closeted masochist leads a double life while secretly getting his pain fix through an underground bare knuckles boxing syndicate.”

Robotech: The Complete Series – It’s a blast from anime’s past with the release of “Robotech: The Complete Series.” I’m not sure how many people remember this early anime from Harmony Gold, which debuted in the U.S. in 1984. The series was kind of a cross between “Speed Racer,” “Shogun Warriors” and “Ultraman,” with the main story line being that scientists and military leaders on Earth were able to develop new technology to help fight off an alien invasion after discovering an extraterrestrial spaceship in the South Pacific.

Page One: Inside The New York Times – Excellent documentary that takes viewers inside one of the last great newspapers left in the U.S., the New York Times.

Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest – Another excellent documentary, this one lensed by well-known character actor Michael Rappaport, who apparently loves the seminal rap band, A Tribe Called Quest.

The Real L Word: Season Two – All I’m saying is that if this show doesn’t feature two women picking out a U-Haul on their second date, it’s not an accurate representation.

Gigolos: The First Season – As soon as you finish the second season of “The Real L Word,” I think it’s time to jump into the first season of “Gigilos,” another completely ridiculous but fascinating Showtime series that definitely has that ‘I can’t stop watching this medical procedure show even though it’s freaking me out’ kind of vibe.

The Crow – I love, love, love Brandon Lee in “The Crow.” I love this movie, despite the fact that hundreds of goth kids across America stole the makeup and began trying to replicate Eric Draven’s look on regular school nights. This film, to me, launched the comic book movie craze, and it did so with a pitch black, rain-soaked, love is hell and hell is Earth view of society at large. It was bleak, harrowing, breathtaking.

Captain America/Captain America II: Death Too Soon – No, Virginia, this isn’t the big-budget summer tentpole starring Chris Evans as Capt. Steve Rogers, the first Super Soldier created during the waning days of World War II to help us defeat the Nazis. It’s a low-budget, no tentpole late 70s drive-in flick starring Reb Brown (Yep, that’s Yor, the Hunter from the Future) as Captain America and Christopher Lee as his nemesis, Miguel. Wait, wait, wait. Miguel? Miguel?

The Guns of Navarone – Classic wartime thriller starring Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn finally gets a high-definition upgrade.