Review – Maggie

Somehow they’ve multiplied two positives and ended up with a negative. Schwarzenegger movies are generally lively and entertaining. Zombie movies are generally lively and entertaining. But put them together and apparently we end up with a ponderous think piece about a farmer caring for his daughter as she slowly joins the ranks of the walking dead. This amateur-hour production from a rookie director and a rookie screenwriter plays like Old Yeller if the dog was a teenage girl and also a zombie. See if desperate

New on the site

Faithful readers know the drill. It’s been months since I posted new reviews. But recently I’ve had a productive spurt. This probably isn’t all the movies I’ve seen for the last six months, but it’s all the ones I remember seeing. The rest ... well, if they were less memorable than this set, perhaps the lack of reviews is for the best.

• Gone Girl 
• Tucker and Dave vs. Evil
• The Beast (1988)
• Jupiter Ascending
• The Book of Life
• Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
• 12 Years a Slave
• Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
• The Boxtrolls
• Big Hero 6
• How to Train Your Dragon 2
• Willow Creek 
• The Houses October Built
• Django Unchained
• Wild
• Edge of Tomorrow
• Dracula Untold
• San Andreas
• Inherent Vice
• Ouija
• American Sniper
• The Purge: Anarchy
• Inside Out
• Penguins of Madagascar: The Movie
• Hercules (2014)

Fortunately recent reads were generally better:

• Wild 
• Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
• Finders Keepers
• Blank Spots on the Map
• The Scarlet Gospels

It’s like a whole other country

Fade in to a picnic table in the middle of a grassy park. In the background children are playing on a seesaw. Satan is sitting at the table, his golf shirt and casual jeans spotless and immaculately pressed, his hair carefully sculpted to draw attention away from his horns without completely hiding them.

Satan: Hello. You might recognize me from your children’s album covers or perhaps my many successful business ventures and runs for public office. I’ve bought time during the show you’re watching to talk to you about a subject near and dear to my heart: Hell.

Cut to close-up.

Satan (continues): My home has gotten a bit of a bad rap over the years. (Sarcastic tone) It’s a land of evil and darkness, a pit of eternal torture, not an ideal tourist destination. The only time Hell comes up in conversation is when the drive-thru moron who forgot your french fries needs to be told where to go. (Sincere again) Well, I’d like you to start seeing Hell in a whole new light.

Cut to a montage of shots from popular movies and TV shows.

Satan (voice over): Upcoming Hollywood releases. The networks’ fall line-ups. Nearly everything on high band cable. Where do you think that kind of quality entertainment comes from?

Cut to a montage of clips from American Idol and music industry awards shows.

Satan (voice over continues): Where would popular music be without singers who hail from my neck of the woods?

Cut to a montage of shots of well-known talk radio personalities.

Satan (voice over continues): And if the Hell border should ever close, your airwaves will fall silent in a flash.

Cut back to close-up.

Satan: So the next time you’re about to mention my home town because you just hit your thumb with a hammer, stop and think about just how much Hell does for you.

Super: HELL. Nor am I out of it.

I’d walk a mile for a Morlock

Awhile back a friend was driving down Kansas Avenue when he happened to see a Morlock driving the car next to him. Or at least he thinks it was a Morlock. It had stringy, white hair. It had a shriveled face. It looked like it had never seen the light of day.

Trouble was, it was smoking a cigarette.

This prompted a discussion about whether or not Morlocks smoked. Certainly we never see them doing so at any time during the George Pal production of The Time Machine. But that doesn’t definitively answer the question, because all the Morlocks we see in the movie are at work. They’re on the Eloi-boiling production line, and of course in the food service business you can’t smoke on the job.

Further, I’ll bet Morlock smoke breaks are short. Eloi boiling seems like the kind of job where if you and your co-workers wander off for even a couple of minutes that you’d have the boiling foreman all up in your business.

“You Morlocks need to keep busy. I can’t have you Morlocks loafing off. If the boss comes up here and sees you loafing off, he ain’t gonna yell at you. He’s going to yell at me. So get back to work. Those Eloi ain’t gonna boil themselves.”

Thus they only get to really bust out the Winstons and relax in the car on the way home.

Asylum Architectural Digest

It’s been awhile since the 8sails staff watched Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell, and a question raised by the picture is still nagging at me: why would anyone build an insane asylum with a secret room in it?

I can practically hear the conversation between the asylum director-to-be and the architect.

Director:  I’ve examined the plans, and everything looks good. I just have one question.

Architect: Yes?

Director: This room here, what is that?

Architect: That’s the secret room. See, we put in a complex spring mechanism in the wall, and it opens a hidden door from this room here.

Director: I see. And why exactly do we need a secret room?

Architect: Eventually all insane asylums end up with a mad scientist either as a patient or a member of the staff. And inevitably the guy is going to start doing crazy experiments on the patients. For that kind of work you really need a secret room.

Director: I guess I just thought this was going to be a day room for the low-risk patients.

Architect: Do you want a mad scientist to start cutting up bodies and stitching their parts together in the middle of a day room for low-risk patients?

Director: Well, no. I guess not.

Review – Hercules (2014)

Here’s another production that dwells in the nether realm between epic action movie and SyFy crapfest. It’s also yet another cynical, postmodern reimagining of a classic hero recast as a mercenary who defeats foes through trickery and help from assistants. Still, the effects and battle sequences are enough to supply what the average audience member is likely to expect. Mildly amusing