The Finnish star of sexploitation

I just watched two movies from Sirpa Lane, Finland's gift to the world of sexploitation and 70's B-movies, so here's my brief thoughts on them. I must say I'm not really a fan of sexploitation movies, so pardon me if I don't understand the “brilliance” of these two.

The Beast in Space (1980)

Well the camp values surely are strong with this one. Hilarious costumes, funny cheap special effects, some weird light sabre ripoffs, a half man half horse with a big dildo between the legs and a computer robot monster of some sort with some humanoid robot minions, just to name a few. Add to that all the naked ladies of course, so the entertainment values are high. But really even with all that it was rather boring most of the time, that says a lot about the story of the movie and the horrible pacing of it all. The story is some nonsense about people on a space ship looking for some rare material called Antallum, but everyone seems to be focusing on drinking in the bar and having sex. Eventually they then visit a planet which is ruled by some computer monster thing which controls people's minds turning the whole place into one big orgy. I watched the Shameless release of this movie which said it's the most complete “softcore” version with some shots inserted from the hardcore version which contains additional porn footage added to it. It was rather apparent where the actual movie switched to the porn inserts as you can clearly see it's different people having sex than before. And the weirdest part were the “stunt tits” used in some scenes which didn't look anything like the tits of Sirpa Lane which of course are already presented very thoroughly. I mean for example a scene where she is laying on the ground on a green background while a man rubs her tits cuts to some other tits being rubbed with a blue background while the actress is clearly standing and then cut back to the ground and rubbing the actual tits. What the hell is the point of that? Now I did laugh quite a lot watching this and wasn't bored at all but still I'd rate this among the average of it's kind.

48%

Can't find a trailer for this one.

Love Goddess of the Cannibals (1978)

Talk about a misleading name, apart from two scenes which were borderline cannibalism, this movie has absolutely nothing to do with cannibals. This is nothing but the usual Joe D'Amato sexploitation romp. Well there is a slight try for a statement as the movie is kind of anti nuclear energy, but the focus is of course on the naked ladies and softcore sex. The idea is that there's a nuclear plant being built on some exotic island and the natives have a leader (Melissa Chimenti) who seemingly likes to have sex with the scientists before her minions kill them. Amongst all this is Sara (Sirpa Lane), whose purpose being on the island in the first place is rather vague, except for having sex with everyone. So yes, it's not a great plot and neither is the movie. Apart from a few unintentionally funny scenes, the only thing I liked about the movie was the score by Stelvio Cipriani, though that as well was rather repetitive. Sexploitation fans might get something out of this, but can't really recommend it to anyone else, It's not even bad enough to be funny. I have to give some credit to the music and Sirpa Lane who's always pleasing to the eyes.

23%

Apparently I can't link the trailer here as it has an age limit on it, so search for it on YouTube if you want to see it.

The Bronx Warriors Trilogy

When movies like The Warriors (1979), Mad Max (1979) and Escape from New York (1981) hit gold at the box office, Italy was soon to answer the call for “post apocalyptic” movies. Enzo G. Castellari was the one who brought us this series here for what ever that's worth.

The Bronx Warriors (1982)

Well this movie is bad, but it's so bad it's actually not bad as it's so funny. The plot is pretty much nonsense, the idea is that in the near future, which was 1990, the Bronx has been turned into a free zone for the criminals where the gangs can roam free and the police rather stay out of there. One day a woman (Stefania Girolami) escapes from some corporate conspiracy into Bronx and ends up stirring things into an all out war between the different gangs. The main gang of this movie is The Riders, who are supposed to be this motorcycle gang and the ruling authority down there, but most of them look like your average office workers dressed in denim and leather. Apparently some of them were played by the real Hell's Angels and indeed some of the lesser characters look quite believable, but anyone with a few lines dialogue is most certainly not. Their leader is Trash (Mark Gregory). He's supposed to be this fearless leader, but he looks more like a gay kid who forgot the butt plug from last night still in his ass which makes him prance around like a fairy. And it didn't really help that he's also crying like a little girl. The other “gangs” are just as hilarious. There's the “gentlemen” gang, dressed in fancy clothing and who seem to be surprisingly wealthy for a slum like this. There's the roller skating hockey gang, which just leaves you wondering how do they get around this ruined city with their small skates. There's a tap dancing gang wearing flashy costumes and makeup who of course fight with only dance maneuvers. Then there's some pale faced zombie gang with with nothing but wooden planks as weapons. Not to forget the all leather wearing police forces in motorcycle helmets wielding flamethrowers while riding on horses. So yes, it's crazy. It's cheaply made which shows in many places, but then again that only adds to the camp values of it all. The acting is from crap to horrible and the fighting isn't much better. Luckily there were some nice gore effects to keep the entertainment values up. Even though I wasn't bored watching this as a campy fun ride, I must say it still wasn't a good movie. So as a proper post apocalyptic action movie it's just garbage and as a fun campy trash flick it's just ok.

52%

Escape from the Bronx (1983)

As the first part seemed to do a decent business on the box office, Castellari didn't waste time with the sequel and actually made two of them a year after the original. Even though the other one wasn't a direct sequel, it's still in the same category. Anyway, this time it's complete extermination as the corporate folk decide to clean up the Bronx, by killing everyone of course. Trash is unfortunately back, though this time he doesn't seem as feminine as in the first one, but it's not exactly a great improvement. His parents get killed so he decides to take revenge by kidnapping the president of the corporation tearing down the Bronx, in hopes of holding him hostage for the freedom of the Bronx. He's joined by a pre-school explosives expert and his dad. The story is ridiculous to say the least, but again that's not the main thing, it's the campy exploitative fun of it all. I must say the action was well in hand in this one, the body count must be close to 200 in this movie. So that combined with the horrible acting and the ridiculous plot ensure that the entertainment values are high with this one. The music was horribly 80's disco-like electronic beats which was rather annoying most of the time. Even though this was worse than the original I still enjoyed this more. Go figure...

63%

The New Barbarians (1983)

This is actually the only part which is post apocalyptic as in the previous two the “apocalypse” was merely a decay in the Bronx, but this one it's an actual nuclear winter aftermath. And to be honest it doesn't have much to do with the other two, except the general idea of ripping off these post apocalyptic box office hits. But as it's in The BronxWarriors Trilogy and done by Castellari, that's why it's here as well. The story in this one is like from any spaghetti western, the setting are just futuristic instead of the old west. A group of bandits, called Templars, are terrorizing the people who are trying to build another civilization after the nuclear apocalypse. Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete) is a lone wanderer with a righteous mind who gets mixed up in the mess and well you basically can guess the rest. But it's the little things that made me have a constant “what the fuck?” expression on my face. The costumes are ridiculous with their over the top shoulder toppings and especially the transparent armors were more than weird. The Templars, who are all men for obvious reasons, blame literature for the apocalypse and seemingly just want to kill everyone still alive. They also seem to be an openly gay society as raping a woman is not their ball park, but raping a man is a group event, good for them I guess. The props are just silly, the cars look like modified golf carts and the laser rifles are standard M-16's shooting fireballs. So it's clear the budget was small, luckily most of it went to the explosions and gore effects so the entertainment values are good. I must say I was quite disappointed in the soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti, usually his name is a guarantee for something good, but this time it was a miss. This movie has tons of unintentionally funny moments which made me laugh out loud. Especially the not so subtle hint at the end where the butt raped hero seemingly rejects a woman who fancies him but instead takes the hand of a young boy left me quite troubled. I really hope I misunderstood the meaning. I'd say this is the best out of the three, at least it's the funniest, though that doesn't mean it's a great movie no matter how you see it.

66%

Like always with these ripoffs, there's plenty of other unofficial sequels as well, like Endgame - Bronx lotta finale (1983), Bronx Executioner (1989) and others as well, but I'll leave those to another time, after all there's only so much I can take of bad movies at once.

A sci-fi giallo?

Footprints on the Moon (1975)

Well it's not really a giallo and it's not really sci-fi even though there are elements from both of those genres in it. It's a true Hitchcockian mystery done with the audio-visual style of giallos and involving sci-fi side plot. Alice (Florinda Bolkan) is troubled by weird dreams of astronauts being left stranded on the moon. One day she wakes up to see that she has missed two days and not knowing what has happened in those days. She starts to investigate the past and ends up in a nearly deserted island town called Garma which looks strangely familiar to her. When people seem to remember her being there before she starts to question her own sanity. I really like this movie and even though I had seen it before it didn't trouble me at all that I already knew the mystery behind all this. When I think about it, there's actually not much happening in this movie, apart from the beginning and the ending, but the atmosphere is just so magnificent that it doesn't matter one bit. It builds tension brilliantly right from the start and it even nears horror at times even though there's no serial killer on the loose or anything like that. I must say that the Shameless release of this one was a bit of a miss, I mean it's good quality as always and the added scenes were mostly good, though again they were in Italian only, but the ending is where this one goes wrong. The American cut didn't have the text at the end which gives you the answer to the biggest question this movie leaves you with, but this Shameless release has it and it kind of waters down the otherwise strong ending. Like I've always said, it's better to leave some things open for the viewer to ponder on and not overly explain everything. Without the text this would have been a brilliant movie, now it's “only” very good.

88%

High tension in a tin can

Voyage to the Bottom ofthe Sea (1961)

I love old sci-fi movies, the wacky designs in them are usually just a feast for the eyes. Not only that but you either get something so absurd that it turns out to be hilariously entertaining or every now and then you actually see a movie that's quite current in themes even today. This was a bit of both. The Americans have invented a new atomic submarine, called Seaview, and during it's first test voyage the Van Allen radiation belt around the Earth catches fire. As the Earth is slowly turning to a barbecue grill and the extinction of the whole human race seems imminent the best scientists around the world seem clueless as how to prevent this. But fear not as the two brightest scientists are on board the Seaview and they have a plan to blow up the Van Allen belt with an atomic rocket. As most of the other scientists seem to disagree with them as they think it would be wiser to just wait for it to burn out, the tensions rise between them and even amongst the crew of Seaview. First the parts that worked even today. Michael Schiffer must have watched this movie for inspiration to the screenplay of Crimson Tide (1995) as there are so many similarities to them, even though the plot around them is quite different. When you have a group of people inside a submarine with no connection to the outside world and the Admiral has a plan that could either save the planet or destroy it, it of course creates conflicts between the crew. And it surely doesn't help that the United Nations have sent a submarine to destroy the Seaview before it can shoot it's rocket. Also the fact that the world is about to end and there's no guarantee that the crazy plan will work the crew needs to figure out how to spend the last moments of their lives, with their loved ones or with a seemingly crazy plan in hopes to stop it. Another thing that worked very well were the problems created between science and religion. So there's quite a few things that worked even today as an interesting and thought provoking movie.

But as it's an old sci-fi movie there's plenty of that absurd stuff in there as well. Of course the whole idea of a ring of fire around the Earth was just ridiculous and the stuff one might find deep at the bottom of the sea turned out to be a hilarious surprise. So there are quite a few of those ridiculous moments as well. Then again they kind of fit the pace of the movie, once the “smart” stuff turned into a stall it went to the “funny” stuff to keep up the interest. The cast were fairly ok, nothing to rave about but surely nothing to complain about either. This movie looked surprisingly good and the restored print on the DVD was a feast for the eyes. Sure some of the effects were bad in modern standards, but still most of the underwater shots looked amazing. A movie well worth watching, especially if you're into old sci-fi.

85%

I meet Abbott and Costello

I have a big gaping hole in my general knowledge as I haven't seen any of the Abbott and Costello movies, so it was time to patch that up. I started with the double feature of Abbott and Costello: MeetFrankenstein/Meet the Mummy as it had the Frankenstein which seemed to be recommended by most as one of their best and the Mummy from the next decade to give some diversity.

 

Abbott and Costello MeetFrankenstein (1948)

This movie should rather be called Abbott and Costello Meet the Universal Monsters as they don't actually meet Frankenstein, but they do meet his monster with Dracula, Wolf Man and a surprise guest at the end. Right from the start I must say I was amazed that Bela Lugosi was playing Dracula and Lon Chaney the Wolf Man, just like they did in the originals. Too bad Boris Karloff isn't playing the Frankenstein's monster, but still two out of three is quite impressive to be honest, though I guess it wasn't that big of a task to get them in the movie as all of the franchises were owned by Universal as was the Abbott and Costello movies. Anyway Chick (Abbott) and Wilbur (Costello) are working at a postal office and one day they get two crates for delivery to the Museum of Horror. Turns out those crates contain the not so dead bodies of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Dracula plans on resurrecting the monster and plant Wilbur's brain on it for more control. Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man, joins the party in hopes of stopping Dracula and his devious plan, but as it seems every night there's full moon things don't work out as planned. Abbott seems to be the brains of the duo while Costello is the goofier one always getting into trouble, but they both get their equal share of laughs. I really liked the chemistry between them at times it was like watching an old married couple going at each other. Another character that stood out was Dracula as Lugosi gives out quite a great performance in this one. What made this movie stand out from the other horror comedies of it's kind was that it didn't directly make fun of the monsters, they could have just as well been in a horror movie, it's the duo around them creating the comedy. That works surprisingly well. The comedy is a mix of crazy goofball action, slapstick and witty remarks. And especially those witty remarks really cracked me up. Even though time hasn't been kind to this one, I must say this was one of the better horror comedies out there and probably the best of it's time. I was truly entertained and got some very good laughs.

80%

Abbott and Costello Meetthe Mummy (1955)

Abbott and Costello are in Egypt and get mixed up with a murder of an archaeologist and a plot to raise the mummy of Klaris. Even though this movie had it's moments and actually couple of hilariously funny scenes, it's extremely repetitive from the Frankenstein one. The scene at the archaeologist's office was almost like an exact copy of the one at the Museum of Horror from the previous one with the same jokes just a different surrounding. Sure it still managed to squeeze a few laughs from me, but I started to worry that these characters don't have that many jokes in them as there were very familiar scenes later in the movie as well. However there were some quite original ones in there as well, so it's not a total miss. The start was not that easy as it seemed so similar to the previous one, but towards the end this movie kind of found its place. So in the end it was merely an ok comedy. Even though I didn't like this one that much I must say I'll definitely will be watching more of the Abbott and Costello movies in the future as they truly are a funny pair of characters.

50%

The filmography of Michael Bay

I was thinking which director's filmography I should go through next and at first I thought I'd take some other master of the art out of the best of the best. But then I thought it's not good to just focus on the brilliant directors as watching a masterpiece after a masterpiece tends to raise the bar too high for everyone else. So that's why I decided to take a look at Michael Bay. The man who is associated with explosive hyper active action, racist type casting without any character development and idolizing Americana. Not forgetting helicopters flying slow motion in the sunset, the light streaks and flares to spice up dull conversations or the camera that just doesn't stand still for a second. I must say I have a hate/love relationship towards the man. At best he does properly funny action movies which are very entertaining, but at the same time he has no idea how to tell a good story or build drama or characters for that matter. Even the action has been bad in his later films where it's just a CGI mess with no sense of what's going on. But I must say they are still fun, intentionally or not. His commercial and music video background shines through his movies, and that's what they basically are, a mix of commercial product placement and music video. So for what ever it's worth here's Michael Bay's filmography.



Bad Boys (1995)

His first movie actually already has everything he became famous for. There's the sunset, the low flying helicopter, no character development, product placement, light streaks and big explosions. The story is simple crap and surprisingly even Bay himself has said that he didn't like the script. But that's not the point in this movie, it's the action and the comedy. Which it has plenty of both. The chemistry between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is quite great and they actually put up a buddy act that's one of the better ones I've ever seen. And that's the real driving force of this movie, without it this would be just another crappy B-action flick. Speaking about the action, it's nice to see that at start Bay didn't have his hyper active shooting style and the action actually makes sense on screen. So yes the action worked quite well also. What didn't work in addition to the thin story was the character development. Or the lack of it, there is absolutely none. Luckily the characters are so strong to begin with that you really don't need it that much, but that did leave the characters way too one dimentional to bring any drama into the action. The main duo is certainly great and Joe Pantoliano and Tcheky Karyo were quite ok as well. But the damsel in distress, Tea Leoni, was completely useless, her role was basically to look good. It's actually hilarious in the end where she's inserted in all those slow motion shots where the two cops walk with their guns drawn. Just what's her purpose there? Well that gave me laughs, even though I guess it wasn't intended that way. Despite it's quite serious flaws, it's still an entertaining and especially fun action movie. So it does what it's supposed to do even though it doesn't give you anything extra.
66%



The Rock (1996)

Say what you will but this is one of the best action movies ever made. Having said that, this movie is also the movie where Bay first introduced his frantic editing style with most of the shots not more than 2 seconds long and rarely visiting the same angle twice. Something I've later started to hate from the bottom of my heart. But for some reason this is one of the very few movies where it actually doesn't matter at all. This movie is just tons of fun. The overly cheesy patriotism of USA turns into comedy and supports the movie as an extra comic punch very nicely. And believe it or not I really like the story behind all the explosions. I don't mean the story of a lab rat and an old fart fighting a team of highly trained marines, that's pure comedy, but the driving force behind the characters. The bad guy is actually a good guy with a noble cause but with bad means for it, the old Brittish agent wrongfully imprisoned for most of his life and even the lab rat were all genuinely interesting characters. Something you can rarely say in a movie like this. The casting is one of the best of it's kind, Ed Harris, Sean Connery, David Morse and even Nicolas Cage back in the days when he at least still tried to put some effort into acting. Add to those the old legends like John Spencer and Philip Baker Hall and of course my favourite hero actor from the 80's, Michael Biehn, and you have a stellar casting. Another thing that I absolutely love about this movie is the soundtrack, Hans Zimmer's best by far and one of the best I've ever heard. Pure brilliance every note of it. The movie has some idiotic moments that are not saved even by the comedy, but to tell you the truth I can't remember them even though I've seen this movie about 10 times already. That's saying something about the entertainment values. And even though this movie kind of populised the highly annoying fast cutting in action movies, I still can't stop liking this movie, it just works.
98%



Armageddon (1998)

So after making one of the best action movies of the 90's, Bay decided to make a movie about rednecks saving the world. I could write a novel on how hideously horrible this movie is, but to be honest it stinks so much that I don't want to waste my time and energy on it too much. First of all the whole concept of the movie that astronauts, some of the world's smartest and most technically trained men, couldn't drill one god damn hole in the ground is just silly beyond belief. But no, rednecks are the guys who can drill anything, drilling holes is an art after all, so they rather send them in space. The rednecks are of course stereotypes with no depth at all to them, you have your over protective father, reckless hero type, a cowboy, a divorced father with a gambling problem, a sex addict, a dumb fatso who lives with his mother and a big black man right from the days of slavery. It actually made me angry how insulting this movie is towards people, if Bay's world would be the world we live in, then please just let the asteroid wipe us all out. And it's just not the rednecks and the racism towards black people and rednecks themselves, the Russian cosmonaut was just as appalling. It says a lot about the movie that Billy Bob Thornton, a great actor but quite characterized as a redneck, is cast as the director of NASA. Fuck yeh! Ok, so the characters are horrible and even though there are some good actors in this most of the cast is horrible as well. Though at most parts I blame the script and the direction, not the cast. Of course Ben Affleck is hopeless no matter what, but for example I have never seen Steve Buscemi giving out a worse performance. He's a fucking character actor, usually playing himself, so that has to be an achievement. And when I say the script is bad I mean it stinks so bad it makes dog shit smell like roses. Just one example, the pilot pulls a gun on Harry and Chick says "What are you doing with a gun in space?". Nothing wrong with that except that they have freaking miniguns on their spacebuggythingies. Oops, guess they forgot... Well it's just one example out of hundreds, but as I said I'm not going to waste more time on this shit. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen and actually now seeing it for the second time it borders on being brilliant as it really is so bad that it becomes funny. But I'm not going to give it that honour just yet. Though one thing I must still mention, for some weird reason this movie is in The Criterion Collection, a collection of historically important movies from around the world. The Rock (1996) is in there also from Michael Bay and that I can understand why as it really is one of the best action movies, but why this movie is in there I have no idea. Maybe those people at Criterion have a very twisted sense of humour or something.
1%



Pearl Harbor (2001)

Ok, this movie is supposed to be some kind of a big homage to the soldiers of the war and the people involved with it. I saw an overly long cheesy piece of crap that does nothing even remotely like that. It's just about the same as if Bay would have taken a dump on the entombed U.S.S. Arizona. The thing is that the only sympathetic characters in this movie are the Japanese, now I must say I was surprised that they weren't depicted as monsters and for that I have to give it some credit. But really everyone else seems to be one dimentional obnoxious idiots. Anyway, the movie starts off with a quick buddy establishment, we are given glimpses of the past to make us belive that Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett are good friends. Well I kind of missed that part which should bind them together, at a later point it didn't matter much as they are supposed to be mad at eachother, but then they are supposed to be buddies again and it just doesn't work. The buddy bit just a small problem compared to the "romance" that is what I would imagine a 12 year old girl might write in her diary. And we have to endure this torture for the next hour or so. I can see that they are trying to go for the 40's romantic movies with that, but really why would someone even try to do that? The modern audience expects a bit more depth to the romance than they did back then. The concept of a romance hasn't changed one bit since then, but the way people buy it surely has, so I just have to wonder what the hell were they thinking with this horse shit. So then the bombs start to fall and all hell breaks lose. Luckily the sound effects were loud enough so people who fell asleep in the first hour and a half should wake up by now. But what we get is not a dramatic recreation of the attack, there's certainly no drama in it, hell there's no feeling at all. It's nothing but an explosive war masturbation by Bay. I can imagine him getting all excited like a little kid about all the shit he can blow up while making it look as "cool" as he can. What's "cool" about an attack that killed more than 3000 people? Well unfortunately after the overly long action sequence the movie isn't over and we have to endure an hour more of this utter garbage. There of course needs to be a payback from the attack so the movie can end with an up note, not that there was any tragedy in the attack in this movie in the first place, but lets just imagine there would have been for good sport. Well the two "buddies" are supposed to bind together again, but again I missed it. Was it after they beat eachother up and woke up in the car? Was it while they were killing the Japanese in the air? Was it when they got recruited for the secret mission? Or was it when Doolittle asked them if everything was ok? I mean come on, the viewer has already lost every bit of interest to these characters at this point so why even bother going further. Well they bomb some Japanese factory, Hartnett gets killed, Affleck gets the girl and USA kicks ass, woo-fucking-hoo. They conviniently "forgot" to mention the real reason why Japan surrendered, the two a-bombs. But then again as that would make the audience see how the mighty US of A answered a sucker punch with quite an inhumane act of monstrosity and you can't have that in a movie about heroes. Saddest thing of it all is that the total amount of money spent on production and promotion of this movie roughly equaled the amount of damage caused in the actual attack. They would have made a better homage by spending that money on the veterans themselves and some new history books for the schools.
2%



Bad Boys II (2003)

Bay takes another swing at the Bad Boys and of course the budget is now a lot bigger so there's tons more of everything. After the last two monstrosities this movie actually feels like a breath of fresh air and seeing it right after Pearl Harbor (2001) it feels like a masterpiece. But it's certainly not a masterpiece, it's just an ok action flick. So how does it compare to the first part? Surprisingly well actually. The chemistry between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is still there, even though it not as funny as it was in the first part. They are clearly trying too hard at parts and it goes a bit overboard, but they still have their moments and give out plenty of laughs. The story was still crap, but maybe a tad better than the first part. Not like anyone would have expected a realistic take on things anyways so it doesn't matter that much. I didn't like the main villain, played by Jordi Molla, he was lacking charisma needed for the part and thus it was kind of a miss. Rest of the cast is quite ok with some familiar faces from the first part. Even though it can't top the first part in the buddy act, the action in this one is so over the top that it's crazy. There's three huge car chases all well worth mentioning. The first one with the car transport truck is quite great with all of it's carnage. The second one is brilliant in it's macabre dark comedy with all the bodies flying around. But the third one is just insane with the Hummer crashing into everything in it's path. Total destruction and that's what I liked about this. Michael Bay likes to blow shit up and call me crazy but I enjoy watching that money burn. So this is a good sequel and even better than the first part, but still it's lacking in too many other departments except action, so it's nowhere near as good as The Rock (1996). The saddest thing is that after this movie the big budget R-rated movies pretty much died. Well they didn't die, but only a very few were made since. Which is a shame of course.
69%



The Island (2005)

After the explosive violent and surprisingly brutal fun ride Bay went back to the more easy going action. This is a story about a man and a woman who find out they are clones, made only to act as spare parts for the people who ordered them. The company which breeds the clones assures the public that the clones are vegetables without any feelings, but yet they must raise them as "normal" humans because of some nonsense about the parts not working if the person is kept sedated. The two clones escape and set on a mission to uncover the whole business of cloning people for medical purposes. I actually liked the story quite a bit, the moral dilemma of taking "spare parts" from a copy of yourself to extend your own life. Also the vanity of mankind that a woman would buy a copy of herself to give birth to a baby so she could keep her form. But that whole cloning dilemma isn't really a new idea and actually it was ripped straight from The Clonus Horror (1979). Now this movie is actually better than The Clonus Horror (1979), but as this movie doesn't mention any connection to it, it's basically the same as a stealing the idea which kind of watered it down. Anyway into the nice idea there's inserted this absolutely ridiculous action adventure plot that is just too silly to keep the interest up. Sure there's tons of action and explosions, it's Michael Bay after all, but I really got just bored watching it as there was no feeling to it. Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson try to do their best with the crappy dialog they are given and do a fairly ok job regarding the script. Rest of the cast were quite disposable. The ultra fast editing gets very boring and the movie looks like a Michael Bay movie looks, tons of light streaks, overly saturated contrasty imagery and the camera doesn't stay put for long. Quite a waste of time and money.
23%



Transformers (2007)

I loved Transformers as a kid in the 80's. I had pretty much all of the toys and the cartoon show was the high point of the week. Then of course I grew up and got other interests so Transformers was left behind. Even though I knew I wouldn't be the target group of this movie anymore, I still wanted to see it. My expectations for it were very low, mostly because of Michael Bay. And surely enough it wasn't a good movie, but much to my surprise it wasn't a bad one either. This is a movie I would have loved to death when I was 10, it has everything I loved in movies back then. But now as it takes a bit more than explosive action to get my attention I saw a bit too many things I didn't like. First of all this movie is racist. I mean if a guy like me who is whiter than white from a country like Finland can see that, then there really has to be something wrong with it. All the black people in this movie are portrayed as one dimentional stereotypes who are there just for entertainment values for the white folk so they can feel better about themselves. Even the robot, Jazz, that's clearly another black stereotype is the only one to be killed. Only black person who doesn't seem to be type cast is the soldier with the credit card, though his character's biggest moment is screaming "left cheek!" over and over again after which he disappears. Not exactly a world image you want to give to your children. That being said I still liked Bernie Mac as the used car salesman, he was simply hilarious. And in general the comedy in the movie was actually quite good. John Turturro's character was also hilarious and he did a great job with the part. Shia LaBeouf was also a nice surprise and pulled off the hero role quite well. Which can't be said about Megan Fox, sure she looks great but can't act at all. Also Jon Voight was quite bland, though the dialog given to the character wasn't helping the part one bit. Then the main thing, the robots. Well I think they looked somewhat ok. I mean I would have hoped for a bit cleaner versions of them, now they just had too much going on in details that it was hard to make sense of them. But that being said they did look a lot more realistic than the smooth cartoon or toy versions. The reason why I would have hoped for a bit cleaner versions is that they are never really introduced apart from Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. Now they just tend to blend in with each other and it makes it sometimes hard to tell them apart. And that's where one of the major problems of the movie lies, the way the action is shot. It's just one big CGI mess. There's tons of stuff going on and it's shot with a hyper active shooting style, that results in a total chaos which makes absolutely no sense at all. Sure the kids might like it, but the thing is when you have no idea who hits who and where, you really lose interest and just watch the fireworks without any idea of what you are supposed to see. And what's up with the Autobots, am I the only one who thinks everyone else but Optimus Prime were completely useless? Sure they shoot, do flips and set up a show, but mostly they just got their asses kicked while Optimus was the only one who managed to actually kill the Decepticons. This movie also features one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen, right up there with Jar Jar Binks, that little robot that just doesn't seem to die. So there are huge problems with the movie, but still I didn't get bored and had some fun with it. It even managed to raise the little kid in me as I almost cheered when we see Optimus Prime for the first time. But unfortunately in the end it's still a bad movie with some quite good moments.
42%



Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Didn't see this one when it came out, but decided to watch it now as I'm going through Michael Bay's filmography. Being a sequel to a big action movie it of course tries to top it by being even bigger. There's more robots, more army, more action, more explosions, more goofy characters, more product placement and more "Bayhem". And of course the robots are bigger, the army has bigger weapons, the explosions are bigger and the goofy characters of course are a bigger nuisance. But the movie just doesn't go bigger, it also goes smaller with tons of smaller little robot critters which are there to show how diverse their race is or some other nonsense like that. Just as I had declared that little robot in the first one as one of the most annoying characters in the history of movies, this one goes better. There's actually 3 robots that all are way more annoying than the one in the first part. There's the "twins", two robots that make you want to go and get a can of gasoline so you can burn yourself from the misery of watching them. And for fucks sake they even have goofy teeth, one with a golden tooth for that matter, what the hell does a robot do with teeth anyways? That little toy car robot is no better, even worse actually, but luckily it spends quite a bit of time in a box so we don't have to watch it. Apart from those the new robots seemed quite ok, even that old fart Jetfire who was also idiotically stereotyped, but at least he didn't make me want to go on a killing frenzy. But as before it really doesn't matter much how good the new robots were as you don't really see them, only glimpses of them spinning around while fighting. So the annoying CGI mess action continues right where it left on the first part and is actually even worse on this one. Most of the time I had no idea what was going on when shit blew up and CGI mess was spinning on the screen. I'm not a young kid with ADHD so I can't keep up with this lightning cutting pace. Then again if it was a bit slower and smoother it would bring out all the mistakes and inconsistencies of the action, so I kind of understand why they use it. But instead of covering up the mistakes, maybe they could have just properly planned them and shot them in a way that they would look good. That's Michael Bay's worst problem (well in addition of being a racist and sexist and all the other stuff), he just can't direct action. I actually watched the extras of the blu-ray i rented and there was a big segment on this huge explosion that made the Guiness book of records as the biggest explosion ever shot with live actors next to it. In the movie it's nothing special, you've watched non stop effect assault for the last 30 minutes with a hideous fast pace cutting. So when this big bang comes it looks like a nice breath of some easy action, not spectacular or huge or anything like that, only that it's nice that we actually get to watch a shot more than 2 seconds. On the extras however it looks absolutely brilliant, but in the movie it's simply lost in the "Bayhem". Not going to go into the story, it's what it is, not like you could write anything about the meaning of life in a movie about transforming robots so lets leave it to what it is, entertainment. The cast is the same and those who were good on the first one are good here as well and Megan Fox didn't learn how to act in the two years in between so nothing has changed. I must mention the huge amount of mistakes there are in the movie. It clearly was rushed to get finished as you see the cameraman's shadow on multiple occasions and that one slow motion explosion where Megan Fox goes transparent is just something hideous. Also many of the effect shots are very poor. For example when the Devastator is digging up the machine from the pyramid, the falling "stones" look like something I could do better on my own computer. I would love to bash this movie to the ground for the horrible piece of garbage it is with all of it's product placements and formulaic exploitative nature. But I still found it to be somewhat entertaining, however a good movie it surely isn't.
30%


After watching all of the Bay movies again I must say I'm more on the hate side, despite him making one of the best action movies of the 90's and two fairly good action flicks. The thing is that the shit he has also poured out smells so bad it tarnishes the glory of those few good ones. Well anyway that's something to think about when Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) comes out. I'm not going to see it in the theatre as I'm planning on keeping my promise of not watching any sequel/prequel/comicbook/cartoon/toy/remake/etc. movies in the theatre this year.

Two wars of the worlds

I bought the special collector's edition of The War of the Worlds (1953), even though I really don't like the movie that much. But as it had the radio play by Orson Welles as an extra I had to get it. Which by the way is quite brilliant and must have been some influence to the fake documentaries that try to add realism to their story with the format. So then I ended up watching the movie and even the remake too. I apologize as I must spoil both of the movies a bit on how the invasion ended, as that makes quite a bit of difference between the versions.



The War of the Worlds (1953)

There had already been some alien invasion movies, but none at this scale and the movie ended up becoming quite a hit. Even more so than the H. G. Wells' novel it's based on. Martians are running out of habitable space so they decide to invade earth for some more space. They come down with meteors carrying these hovercrafts which spit out laser beams vaporizing human flesh and blowing up the buildings. Humans try every weapon in their arsenal but seem to be unable to harm the machines and an imminent extinction awaits. That's the basic story and we follow it with a scientist so we get all the info we need and of course there's a woman in there as well to get some romance going. And there's also a narrator that keeps us on track during the movie. Like most of the 40's and 50's sci-fi movies this also over explains everything to a point where it becomes quite ridiculous to watch it now in this time and age. The thing is that this movie is not so goofy that it's fun, but it's still too goofy for you to get into the mood. I mean there's a good setup which is followed by some completely hilarious outcome or the other way around. Meaning it's a bit hard to get into the movie. If you can look past the effects and technology there is however a nice story underneath. But I really hated the ending with all of it's god saved us crap which actually missed the whole point of the book. Even though the book has the same fate for the aliens that they die of a bacteria or a virus, it's not god that killed them, it's the human evolution. The book actually questions the whole existence of god and as it has that natural selection theme of survival of the fittest it ranks religious people on the weak side. But then again I understand why they didn't include it into the movie as at that time it was blasphemy to make fun of religion and Hollywood wouldn't have any of that. So the movie has it's moments but I've never liked it and this another viewing didn't really help the matter in any way.
35%



War of the Worlds (2005)

I know I bash remakes quite hard, but I do believe there are some movies that could be remade by the right people to make them better suited for the modern way of life. Old sci-fi movies for example sometimes suffer from their goofy effects and if the story itself is still relevant that would be a good genre for a remake. I mean some old sci-fi movies should be left alone for example if the effects are not essential to the movie and they work just as great with whatever they have or if they simply don't have a good story worth telling again. I really thought this could have been a great movie for a remake and in the hands of Steven Spielberg it could actually work. But it really doesn't. The movie has tons of great stuff in it but it also has an equal amount of utter garbage too. First of all the greatest thing, the aliens aren't Martians anymore, which of course could have been a bit hard to digest nowadays. I really liked the idea that the movie focuses on this one family in middle of it all as it enables a lot more dramatic depth to the story, but at the same time I didn't like the fact that they seem to be the only people on the planet who know what it's all about as in their journey just so happens to have all the climatic events of the whole situation. Better aproach than the original's wider view of things, but still it kind of tells us all the same things in the end. People criticize the movie for not having sympathetic characters, but I actually liked it, it's a bit twisted that the aliens feel more sympathetic with their big friendly eyes than Tom Cruise with his one expression performance. But that also backfires as the drama the story actually sets up is kind of lost as you just don't feel for the characters. There are tons of examples of great scenes that follow or are followed by a bad one. For example the airplane crash which was quite brilliant, but it just so happened to destroy the whole street but somehow managed to miss the car and leave a nice path for it to drive through. The scene in the hill where the son fights the father to get a chance to see USA kick alien ass would have been quite brilliant in all of it's dramatic content, but too bad it wasn't set up at all and the scene ends up being cheesy as hell. One of the best scenes of the movie is where the father blindfolds his daughter and tells her to close her ears and sing a lullaby while he goes to kill a man. Devastating scene, but again the whole setup was too silly for it to work properly. The effects do look quite great and were surely worth the update. I thought it was a great idea that the alien machines were buried underground all along. Even though people usually don't like that idea, I see it that they were here millions of years ago, killed the ruling population back then (dinosaurs?) buried their machines and moved to the next planet. Of course they were smart enough to bury them deep enough and nowhere near any gas, oil or water resources underground. Yes, I understand it's a bit far fetched, but it didn't bother me at all. Most people seem to also criticize the ending that it was germs that killed the aliens, I think it's great. I mean germs evolve just like humans did and since the aliens used human blood to feed from what better way to spread a disease. I don't see that they died of a common cold like many people suggest, I see that they got some nasty virus that hasn't been on this planet for long, like some variation of HIV for example. I mean a flu virus most likely was already on the planet when they last visited and buried their machines. That actually brings me to another idiotic part of the movie, the whole god saved us nonsense in the end. Even though it was way more subtle than it was in the original movie, it still misses the book's point. I mean if the movie really wanted to say that this was all part of "god's" plan, then he must be one sick bastard, first sending the aliens to kill millions of humans and then finishing it off with a total genocide of the alien race with a virus. Yay, now that I think of it, I kinda like god, maybe I should become a religious nutcase as well as they seem to have all the fun. Anyway the movie is quite hypocritic also with it's god saved us nonsense as it also says that the alien machines have been under the ground for millions of years, yet the bible says the earth is no more than 10.000 years old. Did god plant the machines under the ground? Oh my god, could there be an error in the bible? Go figure, all I know it's utter nonsense. But anyway, the movie has it's good moments but unfortunately there's an equal amount of bad moments so in the end it's just another brainless effect flick. And yes, call me crazy but I think this is better than the original, though of course not as good as the book is.
50%

Stuff to die for

The Stuff (1985)

When I saw this back in the 80's I didn't like it, but as I stumbled across the trailer of this movie I though I'd give it another try. I was expecting something so bad that it would be great, but ended up getting a lot more than just that. The plot is that miner find weird goo underground and of course they need to taste it. Turns out it tastes great, so they decide to sell it as a dessert pudding. The stuff turns out to be quite addictive and soon everyone is eating it more and more until they end up eating nothing but the stuff. An industrial spy, an unemployed cookie company manager, a young boy and the advertising campaign creator of the stuff ads start to investigate what's going on. They soon find out that the stuff is turning everyone into consumer zombies. The idea sounds silly, but I really love how it's criticizing consumerism and big corporations. The stuff is a metaphor for drugs and you can just imagine how every food producer in the world would love to put some highly addictive ingredients in their product so people would keep coming back for more. But even though the story is great, the movie has it's flaws. It's badly acted and the comedy is kind of uneven, at parts it works great but at parts it's quite bad. Sure at times it goes so bad it's actually great, but the overall mood is a bit too uneven. Never the less it's still somewhat of a gem in it's company as it's a somewhat fun good bad movie that actually raises great points and even manages to be thought provoking at times. This is actually one of the few movies which I'd love to see remade, so Hollywood here's your next remake, go for it.
78%

Battle: do we really need to see this same old crap again?

Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

I must say I really have no idea why I went to see this one. I knew I would most likely hate it and curse myself afterwards because I wasted my money on this crap, but still I went. Guess there was a part of me thinking that just maybe they would once make a good sci-fi action movie and this movie surely had some potential for it. I liked the idea that it's a war movie but the human army is just fighting alien invaders, but as so often this also was filled with utter brain numbing nonsense. I mean a movie which would follow the chaos in the eyes of a military unit would have been just fine, but first of all this movie falls for the old trap of over explaining. I mean aliens are quite fantasy in them selves, do we really need to know why they are doing what they are doing? And do we really need to get it spelled out for us? And why the hell do we always have to follow the guys who turn out to be the biggest heroes of the whole war? Bah. So basically it's a movie that follows the same script as any of it's kind, first the humans take a beating, then the common man rises and finds the weakness, they fight back and kick alien ass. Woohoo, America rules, marines are kick ass, god bless the army and all that shit... And it really didn't help that the movie looked like a stock studio movie without any finesse to it. It felt like the director had no sense of how to frame the story just slapping the camera where ever it ended up in. The acting was not great either, but then again the dialog they were given didn't surely help it. Intriguing idea fitted with a bad script told straight forward without any idea results in a bad movie.
20%

Going off the grid

TRON: Legacy (2010)

Didn't have my expectations up going to see this one. I thought it's going to be audio-visual eye candy with nothing more to offer. That's what it was, but it wasn't a pleasant watch despite it looking and sounding nice. The story is painfully stupid, the dialog was idiotic and it's quite badly acted as well. As a 20 minute short this would have been great, but as a full feature it's just too dull to keep the interest up. I mean I love eye candy, but if it's in a context where absolutely everything else appalls you the end feeling is quite bad. Even though it's been years since I saw the original I got the feeling this was better, but can't say for sure. Good movie it surely isn't, even though I have to give some credit to the music and visual side of it.
40%



TRON (1982)

Well I haven't seen this in about 15 years, so it might have some nostalgic camp value nowadays, but to be honest I'm not too interested in watching it again. Last time I saw this, it was ridiculously stupid. The story didn't hit me at all, I thought it was idiotic nonsense, the costumes were goofy, the dialog was retarded and it even managed to be quite boring. Sure the look was funky and weird enough to make it seem quite original, but that's really not worth watching the whole movie.
35%

The dilemma of intelligent stupidity

Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

The eleventh movie from the Hammer Collection is quite a dilemma. On the other hand it's stupid as a boot and campy like the worst of them, but on the other hand it's quite clever, interesting and thought provoking. It's the third part in the Quatermass series and the only one in this collection. This time professor Quatermass is called to investigate a strange object and skeletons found underground in a London subway tunnel while they were extending it. The bones seem to be around five million years old and appear to be of some pre-human nature. The object is of an indestructable unknown material and seems to be some kind of container or something like that. This being a Quatermass movie it's of course aliens again and the horror starts. The effects are horrible at best and make it at parts quite hard not to laugh at them. Parts of the story are simply stupid and a bit too much "out there". But still it's definitely not a bad movie. There is quite a bit of good things in the story as well. At parts it's almost ingenious and quite thought provoking. The mood is guaranteed Hammer quality and the movie is properly scary at parts. The cast is great with good performances by pretty much all of them. So basically this movie works well both ways, it's at the same time a hilarious campy fun ride and a properly scary interesting sci-fi thriller. That's what I would call quite an achievement and a movie well worth watching. The picture quality on the DVD is not bad and again there are no subtitles and only a trailer as an extra.
79%

Dream a little dream...

Inception (2010)

Well finally had the chance to watch this on BD as I missed it on the theatres. Being raved about it by all my friends some praising it to be the best movie ever made, I had quite high expectations. It turned out that I hoped way too much as it left me quite cold. The biggest problem was the story which was more like a Swiss cheese with all of it's plot holes. Also the dilemmas the story raised were not exactly interesting, leaving the movie emotionally very shallow. The emotional driving force a man's quest to return to his children was very superficial and thus left way too shallow to be interesting enough. Another problem was the industrial mogul's son played by Cillian Murphy. Nothing wrong with the performance, but the character was a bit of an miss, to me he seemed like a good choice to be running his dad's empire so the whole "planting" lost a lot of it's edge. So the emotional storyline and the characters were way too superficial for a movie like this. Other than that the story worked quite well and I liked the way it used the dream "layers" to it's advantage. Sure it opened up a whole lot more plot holes, but that didn't matter so much. The movie looked and sounded nice with some quite impressive scenes. Though I was a bit disapointed on how plain the dream worlds were. Sure they were supposed to be as close to real world as possible but on the parts when things went a bit different I would have hoped a bit more imaginative take on them. The movie was also a bit too long and even though the whole technology and theory behind the dream stealing was left nicely vague, there was a bit too much explaining monologue for my taste. All in all an interesting and entertaining thrill ride, but unfortunately it has so much more potential than what was used that it falls into the vast void of barely above mediocrity movies.
70%

Look up! The Brothers Strause are coming for you!

Skyline (2010)

Had the chance to see this at a preview tonight and as I kind of liked the teaser I saw, I was happy to go and see it. Well I guess I should have looked a bit more into the movie before that. When the title credits rolled I saw something that gave me the chills. The infamous sounding name The Brothers Strause. Now where had I seen that before? Couldn't figure it out at start and on we went to the story. We are given a hasty introduction to the characters and quickly rushed to the main thing, the annihilation of human race by aliens. We witness this grand scale event through the eyes of few people hiding in the penthouse of a tall skyscraper. Lots of eye candy in form of digital effects are slapped into the eyes of the viewer, but the story seems quite thin and the characters are even thinner. Then it hit me, Strause, AVP: Requiem! I nearly screamed in terror after that, not that the movie was scary but the guys who made that hideous excuse for a movie were now consuming my time again. I managed to calm myself down as I was seated in the middle of the row I didn't want to disturb my fellow viewers by leaving. Even managed to get myself into thinking, maybe, just maybe there will be some hope for this one. Well it turned out there wasn't. The story is paper thin with basicly no drama at all, just a series of sequences leading to the end "twist" while not forgetting to show off some pretty effects in between. The characters are given dialog as interesting as reading the phone book. So the characters are mere posers and the actors portraying them are not making it any better. The movie looked nice and the effects were pretty, but come on it can't be that hard to put a bit of an effort into the story as well? Kind of like getting a nice big beautifully wrapped package on christmas, but when you open it, it's filled with horse shit. And the ending, well there is none, it's left nicely open for a sequel with this ridiculous alien with a human brain fighting back to save the damsel in distress. Oops, did I spoil it? Believe me, you won't care. Some points for the effects and I'm going to do everyone a favour, just look at the effects here and skip the movie, saves you a lot of time.
11%

Killing in the name of the lord

God Told Me To (1976)

When I began watching this I was expecting a fun campy exploitation flick, but was quite surprised how good the start was. It had an interesting story and held me watching with a good grip, at some points even raising some quite good questions. It was a murder mystery with people going on killing sprees and claiming "God told me to" as their reason. Sure it had that B-movie feel to it right from the start, with horrible acting to boost, but it was still quite interesting. So it set my hopes up for the end quite nicely. Well turned out in the end it went to the campy exploitation I was expecting before the movie. The nice setup and dilemmas set by the start were quite forgotten and it turned into a sci-fi nonsense with alien abductions, virgin births and even a guy with a slimy vagina on his stomach. Like the newspaper guy said; "Anarchy leads to chaos, chaos leads to reason, reason leads to sience" simple, eh? So the beginning worked nice as a proper quite interesting movie and the end worked somewhat ok as campy trash. But as a whole movie, it was just barely ok.
56%

A whole lot of Predators

Predators (2010)

Well right from the start I have to say that this is the best sequel to the original. But it's still not even close to being as good as the original. First of all the cast is a bit off, I mean Adrien Brody, a very good actor but a mercenary no way, he just has that accountant look to him that doesn't suit the role. Laurence Fishburne was also a big miss and I almost laughed when he was telling his background, certainly not a good choice. The rest were kind of ok, though I would have hoped for a bit more bad ass characters and the most bad ass of them all gets killed first. So kind of a miss on that department. The story was actually surprisingly good, given that it imitates the first part quite often, but still best out of the other "sequels". The "twist" with one of the characters was quite predictable, but I guess it was kind of meant that way. The action was plenty and entertaining, though there is a bit of over explaining and stupid dialog to get the slowest of viewers into it. The setting looked nice and the "upgrades" the Predators had were slight enough for the true fans. In the end you're left with a barely ok sequel and promises of more to come. In a way I wanted to like it more as it has so many things right, but still it feels a bit pointless.
61%

And here's a quick look at the other Predators.



Predator (1987)

Well what can I say? One of my all time favourite sci-fi action movies and a true classic in it's genre. Macho power from here and out there. Simply perfect.
99%



Predator 2 (1990)

Took the Predator to an urban setting and made it more like an action figure with tons of gadgets. Story had a bit too much going on and didn't really get the most of the juicy surroundings. Certainly not the worst sequel ever made but far behind the power of the original.
58%



AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)

Ok so you have one of the best sci-fi action movies and one of the best sci-fi horror movies, put them together and what do you get? A total butt rape of both franchises apparently. This movie fails to deliver on every aspect and really makes me wish it would have never been made. Some points for Lance Henriksen and the few nods towards the originals.
12%



AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem (2007)

So after a horrible crossover they decided to make another. Needless to say it was even worse...
1%