Tag Archives: movie

Watch “Almost Human” Instead

I don’t see many movies in the theatre anymore, mostly because there hasn’t been much that’s piqued my interest lately. But this week was my husband’s birthday and he wanted to see Chappie. I agreed so long as I could have a large bag of popcorn and a big glass of cherry-vanilla Coke, thinking I’d have Hugh Jackman to console me.

I should have put up more of a fight. Though it features Jackman and Sigourney Weaver, Chappie is B-movie fodder at it’s mediocre-best.

In a future ripped from the pages of an Almost Human script, Chappie proposes that a few years from now the Johannesburg police force will consist totally of robot automatons. Deon Wilson (Dev Patel), the man responsible for inventing them, has finished an AI program for the robots in his spare time. He steals a robot marked for demolition to test his AI program, which is, in turn, stolen by a group of street thugs who name him Chappie, turn him into a gangsta, and convince him to commit crimes.

Jackman plays the villain in the piece, an ex-soldier, jealous that his destructive behemoth of a robot design lost out to Deon’s design for mass production, who manages to shut down the entire robot force with a virus for the sole purpose of killing people by proxy with the machine. His performance, like many of the others in this movie, is one-dimensional and disappointing.

Do not pay to see Chappie in the theatre. Watch the DVD of iRobot followed by the canon of Almost Human on Shomi instead. No amount of movie-style popcorn and Coca-Cola served from one of those fancy-shmancy machines is worth it.

Abraham the Vampire Slayer? Review of “Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”

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Image from ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BNjY2Mzc0MDA4NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTg5OTcxNw@@._V1_SX214_AL_.jpg

I had the opportunity to catch Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter on Space last night and I was surprisingly impressed. What I thought was going to be a campy movie turned out to be entertaining with amazing CGI.

In case you haven’t seen it, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter hypothesizes that former President of The United States, Abraham Lincoln, was a trained vampire hunter. After he witnesses his mother being killed by vampire, Jack Barts,  young Abe is trained by Henry to wield his silver-tipped axe to kill vampires. Abe wants to use his training to exact revenge on Barts, but he makes a vow to Henry only to kill those Henry chooses. After learning that the King of Vampires, the aptly named Adam, plans to take over the U.S., Abe take him on.

Like all paranormal hunter/slayers, Abe has his own “Scooby Gang”, composed of “Watcher” Henry, friends Will Johnson, Joshua Speed and wife, Mary Todd. I liked the dynamic between members of the gang, but would have liked to see Mary slay a few vamps of her own, no matter how out of character for the time. I also liked the revisionist history in the movie that draws a parallel between the fight for emancipation from slavery and the fight for the emancipation of the U.S. from becoming a country enslaved by vampires.

Benjamin Walker plays the part of Abe Lincoln well, and looks strong and sexy twisting his axe like a baton as he slices through attacking vampires. I was glad to see Rufus Sewell again, a favourite of mine since Eleventh Hour and Pillars of the Earth, who plays the evil Adam with great aplomb. Deserving equal billing with the actors are the CGI effects. There is an impressive scene in which Abe chases Barts on the backs of a stampede of wild horses. Equally impressive is the climactic scene on top of a speeding train and the final showdown on the burning bridge.

Though the title sounds like it promises to be a groaner, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a movie worth watching.

“RIPD”: “Men in Black” meets “Ghostbusters” meets lots of other things

RIPD (Rest in Peace Department) is where good cops go when they die. Their job? To track down escaped demons from Hell and return them or terminate them altogether. Ryan Reynolds plays Nick with one-note aplomb. His partner, Hayes (played by Kevin Bacon with similar gutsto), kills him over parts of a golden talisman they recover from bad guys. In the afterlife, Nick is drafted into the RIPD without ceremony and partnered with old west lawman Roy (Jeff Bridges) for training. On the first day out they happen upon the same case Nick was working when he was killed. They follow the trail to recover the rest of the talisman, failing to catch the demon when he is revealed. When the demon goes on a rampage in the city and Nick and Hayes are threatened with termination (which means meeting their final death), they take matters into their own hands.

I firmly believe there is nothing new under the sun; everybody works to put new spins on the same old archetypes. ABC’s Once Upon A Time, which puts a new spin on old fairy tales–especially on old Disney fairy tale properties–is case in point. The fun comes not in watching something new, but in watching a new spin on what must be an ages old concept. Many writers, I’m sure, set out to write something one of a kind and alternately cringe and scream when they see their original ideas manifested elsewhere (this was a regular occurrence while watching Fringe and working on Phase Shift). Other writers take someone else’s idea as a start and go from there (as is the case with every vampire property I’ve ever seen or read and The Revenant or The Time Traveler’s Wife and my untitled Alice piece).  RIPD has the typical old-timer-trains-newbie framework present in Men in Black or Lethal Weapon series. Unlike those movies, the old-timer is the strange-duck, while the newbie plays straight man.   Like Men in Black, the beings the cops hunt can hide in plain sight, appearing somewhat quirky, but for the most part normal. As is the case with Ghostbusters and television’s Reaper, RIPD detectives have a device to quickly dispatch the spirit back to the underworld before they wreak havoc on the living. Similar to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there is a Hellmouth that is in danger of opening if the detectives don’t thwart the bad guys in time. Similar to Ghost, Nick’s love for his wife transcends death. Also similar to Ghost, his best friend/partner is the bad guy and his wife is ultimately put into jeopardy. Nick and his wife also have a brief reunion scene near the end, as do Sam and Molly at the end of Ghost.

RIPD is lots of fun. In addition to it being a police procedural, it is a love story, and involves superheroes of a sort. There is a lot of comic book violence as well as interesting villains. Jeff Bridges steals the scene in the role of talkative, cynical Roy, and much of the comedy comes from his deadpan responses and odd behaviour (such as driving the car facing sideways with his right leg up on the seat, or the way he is more concerned that he loses his hat than that he loses the demon). Though it borders on the cliché, RIPD is a light-hearted romp worth a look-see.

Did you see RIPD? Leave me a comment to let me know what you thought about it.

We’re the Millers – Movie Review

In We’re the Millers, Jason Sudeikis plays David, a drug dealer who is robbed and must smuggle a large shipment of marijuana in from Mexico to repay his supplier. After seeing how the police react to a family in an RV, David decides the best way to get the job done is to hire people to play his family as cover. Getting the drugs into the States proves to be the least of David’s problems. It’s not until they arrive stateside that his troubles begin. Little does he know, he’s been sent on a suicide mission. He doesn’t so much as pick up the drugs as steal them and spends the rest of the movie on the run from the actual smuggler and supplier and trying to avoid capture by the DEA agent the “family” has befriended along the way.

We’re the Millers is an okay movie, once you get past the vulgar language and graphic grossness (I think I may have scarred my 14 year old girls with the full-on deformed male frontal shots). While there’s no overt sex, there is a sort of comedic scene between 18 year old Kenny (played by Will Poulter), his teenaged “sister” Casey (played by Emma Roberts) and his “mother” Rose/Sarah (played by Jennifer Aniston), that is as uncomfortable (watching it as a parent with her children) as it is funny. We’re the Millers is on par with Grown-ups and Bridesmaids in its bawdy humour—remember the blue pee scene in Grown-ups and the diarrhea attack in Bridesmaids?—that is to say, unrefined. While a tarantula bite on the testicles is nothing to laugh about, Millers milks it for all its worth. Equally disturbing is the scene in which the a Mexican policeman’s expectation of a bribe is confused with the expectation of oral sex, compounded by the discussion in which David convinces Kenny that he must take one for the team and satisfy the officer.

Jason Sudeikis plays the part of David with initial cool detachment, but, as you might expect, he mellows toward the end and realizes that he does, in fact, have some responsibility for his adopted family. Jennifer Aniston is more believable as the caring matriarch than the down and out stripper. Emma Roberts and Will Poulter play their parts—the battle-worn street kid with a heart of gold and the virgin ingénue—with stereotypical demeanour. It was nice to see Kathryn Hahn and Molly Quinn in the parts of the DEA agent’s wife and daughter. I’ve liked Kathryn Hahn since her Crossing Jordan days and enjoyed the way she plays the sexually frustrated prim-and-proper wife. I also really like Molly Quinn in her role as Alexis Castle, but her talent was underutilized in this movie, where she’s asked to do nothing but look as innocent as Poulter’s character, which she does, but it’s not enough for her to shine.

I went to see We’re the Millers because it was either that or The Butler playing at my local theatre and neither my husband or kids were interested in a heavy, historical docu-pic, but I wasn’t disappointed. We’re the Millers is a lighthearted, funny movie that had me laughing out loud at times and squirming at others. It’s mostly potty humour with a little quick and clever repartee mixed in, but it’s a movie that shouldn’t disappoint. 

Graphic from: http://www.bringthenoiseuk.com/201305/music/news/film-news-new-red-band-trailer-for-were-the-millers

About the Author

Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!