Atlantic Rim (2013)

Mishmash mockbuster Atlantic Rim: A rim job to forget.

Jackie Moore

At a glance:

It's bad enough that Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim is this year's Battleship ... and now to be ripping that off? The very determined and unapologetic Atlantic Rim (2013) a.k.a. From The Sea a.k.a. 5,000 Fathoms Deep a.k.a. Attack From Beneath is yet another less-than-glorious product from mockbuster maestros Asylum and this time, they've culled and compiled and enough robot vs alien stock footage to release the suspicious scion before the movie proper even! If you complain that this is a cheap knockoff that rides on the buzz of another movie, then you're clearly missing the point. The plot, you ask? You shouldn't.
Bad news on the doorstep:

"So guys... what time is lunch around here?"

The movie does alright for the first third and then fizzles out. Token character exposition and sequence after sequence of frantic mayhem goes some way towards keeping up pretenses but really, it goes tits up once enough dialogue is overlapping for you to figure out that they're just going through the motions. A bizarre romantic subplot serves only to indicate how hard they were trying to stretch the idea. Several laughably poor performances here, Jackie Moore standing out. Graham Greene is almost laughing underneath that smugness!

"Awww come on girl... it ain't that bad."

Perennial wonderment:

I'd like to see a serious lawsuit one of these days but that would only give more recognition to the bastard nation of mockbusters, wouldn't it?

Reminds me of:

Armageddon (1998), minus Liv Tyler's panties on a golf club. Oh and seeing David Chokachi again reminds me of sneaking up to watch Baywatch on late night TV as a kid.

Watch out for:

Crash. Bang. Wallop. Zap. Whatever.

Cast member Treach a.k.a. Anthony Criss, formerly of rap group Naughty By Nature. Well, a brother's gotta eat.

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Maybe if they had spent a bit more time on it, results would've been better. However I do applaud the business acumen. Folks only have themselves to blame if they paid a penny towards a download or a DVD. It's a shyte economy out there, what can you say.★

Dark Skies (2013)

"Hey son, did you copy this drawing from Insidious, Sinister or Mama?"

"Psst... should I draw aliens or demons tonight? Over."

At a glance:

Top-of-the-flops director Scott Charles Stewart (remember Priest and Legion?) returns to try again in a PG-13 sci-fi thriller called Dark Skies (no obvious link to the 80s TV series of the same name), starrin Keri Russell (Waitress) and Josh Hamilton as the Barretts - nervous parents on the forefront of an alien invasion into their suburban home. There's J.K. Simmons too, playin Agent Mulder with a fedora. Gee thanks, you overly-informative long trailer, you.

Bad news on the doorstep:

I believe the lesson in this movie and contemporaries like Insidious, Sinister and Mama are all painfully the same - if shit goes down in your house and you don't know what it is, just check the kids' drawings. Oh look, it's a ghost/demon/alien. Mystery solved. Saves us 45 minutes of diagnostics. The movie? It had a few promisin set pieces but is undone by an unconvincin, rather straightforward resolution. There's an unexpected theme of social anxiety from world economic collapse in the script but this does little for the story. By and large, derivative and unrewardin. As the end credits rolled, the woman next to me at the Toronto premiere went: "Huh? That's it!?!?"

Keri Russell looks ready and able but this movie ain't gonna do much for her.

Perennial wonderment:

Recognise the older kid with Bieber hair? That's Dakota Goyo, the kid in Real Steel with Hugh Jackman.

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Undeservin of its wide release. Another underwhelmin also-ran. Rent it if you're bored.★★

Bonus material:

"Mummy, if the aliens come, would you please wear a bra?

The Watcher In The Woods (1980)

"She had to. She had to push you down to get you loose from the branch.
She saved your life."

At a glance:

What an age it was when Disney made horror movies to spook kids out. John Hough's Watcher In The Woods, a troubled adaptation of what I understand to be a very dark 1976 novel by Florence Engel Randall, went down the annals of cinema history for bein pulled from theatres after its initial release in 1980, for havin a CGI endin that was "laughed off the screen" in the words of the director himself. It was re-released in 1981 after bein re-edited with a revised endin. Many remember this movie from their childhood but me, so I thought I'd give it a go, since I've just been just catchin up on older horror movies like The Sentinel (1977) and Ghost Story (1981). Story? It's about sisters Jan (Lynn-Holly Johnson) and Ellie (Kyle Richards) who move into a manor owned by Mrs. Aylwood (Bette Davis) and get haunted by Karen, a girl who disappeared inside a chapel near the village 30 years ago.

Bad news on the doorstep:

Lynn-Holly Johnson ruined it.

There's a good account on Wikipedia where you can read all about the muddled state of affairs regardin its 1980 release but that doesn't tell you how very poor the actin was indeed. Save for Bette Davis, everyone's performance, especially lead girl Lynn-Holly Johnson, was so ham-fisted to the point of destroyin all tension and mystique, never mind the debate about which endin was used in what version. Many people recall this movie from their childhood and single it out as bein a truly traumatic memory, so I guess that's just a pocket of culture I missed out on. I remember not sleepin well for years after watchin Stephen King's It (1990) so that's probably my replacement.

Perennial wonderment:

If they could do it back then, why not now? The movie in most dire need of an endin rewrite and re-release would be The Devil Inside (2012), no doubt. Still very bitter over that one!

Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?

Apparently it would've been Disney's first ever PG-rated flick but due to the delays and reshoots, The Black Hole (1979) took that honour instead. Anyway, the out-of-print 2002 Anchor Bay DVD release used to go for US $200 and that's the one with the most features, so unless you're willin to spend, you'll most likely get yourself the cheaper 2004 Disney release. The Watcher In The Woods (1980) has some academic importance but nothin compellin here for the horror movie fan. Jog on. ★★

District 9 (2009)

At a glance:
Catfood-chompin aliens, inter-species prostitutes, gangland riots and a hard-hittin, nail-bitin (literal) lead performance from a guy who ain't even a pro actor - that's what makes Peter Jackson's District 9 the thinkin man's action movie of the decade. When the game-to-movie Halo project fell through, the LOTR strongman producer got a white African man's short film turned into a heavily-marketed R-rated docudrama with exceptional CGI - the kind that makes you feel guilty for endorsin Transformers. Director Neill Blomkamp's days in apartheid Joburg, SA, inspired this alternate Earth where real-life immigration issues deceptively underpin a story about prawn-like aliens stranded on our planet with nowhere to go. Unlike other alien movies like ID4, they aren't exactly hostile but behave more like frustrated refugees with sanitation problems. Narrated through a shaky Blair Witch Project account of Wikus Van De Merwe, a gawky government aide who turns from law-abidin family man to one-armed national traitor when he's exposed to alien fluid that changes his DNA.
Reminds me of:
1998's Dark City and Rufus Sewell. However when lead Sharlto Copley steps into a robot suit to pursue justice, we're taken 30 years back to when Sigourney Weaver did the same and kicked alien ass in the celebrated landmark Alien. The feelin is even greater considerin that we're rootin for a hero who isn't exactly a likeable fellow!
Watch out for:In Malaysia, lead character's Afrikaans-accented English must be so otherworldly because his fucks ain't detected by local censors. Muppets.
Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?
A sentimental sci-fi about how ordinary men (or aliens, for that matter) end up doin extraordinary things when pushed to the edge, exposin the global hypocrisy of having set right and wrong in legal or moral terms. There are CJ7 father-son moments in this movie, together with the character struggle of a pasty-faced pencil-pusher who just wants to see his wife again. If this doesn't force you to reconsider how we treat foreigners, then let's all pray for Peter Jackson and a District 10. ★★★★

CJ7 (2008) @ 长江七号

"What do you mean it's voodoo, Miss? It's just a green alien!"

At a glance:

Most brand it as essential Chinese New Year viewin. Expectations for Stephen Chow Sing Chi’s CJ7 (2008) are high, not only because it’s been some time since Kung Fu Hustle (2004) but because the marketin strategy drivin the movie has been aggressive. The Hong Kong funnyman has gone from strength to strength since bein introduced to Western audiences. The resultin concern for fans of Chow is that he is now under undue pressure to deliver to those markets. Notice how Shaolin Soccer (2001) marked a departure into less dialogue-heavy filmmakin and Kung Fu Hustle was more style over substance. Older fans of Stephen Chow would know that this is certainly not his forte. It is his exaggerated absurdist humour and precise comic timin that make the man. In CJ7, Chow’s direction is no longer in doubt – he has abandoned the idiosyncratic Canto-specific comedy that brought down houses in movies like Justice, My Foot! (1992) and Flirting Scholar (1993). Look at that stupid green dog alien thing. Stephen Chow is now officially Hollywood savvy.

No money, again.

Bad news on the doorstep:

Reportedly made on a US$20 million budget that probably went mostly to the CG, the concept behind CJ7 is cut from the same cloth as movies such as E.T. (1982) and Free Willy (1993), while Chow still finds time to combine his trademark elements of cruel humiliation and impossible surprises. However, the celebrated exaggeration and deadpan expressions we have come to love about Chow are now very much gone. This is where the older generation of Chow’s fans will be severely disappointed. Special effects aside, the responsibility to carry CJ7 seems to rest purely on the small shoulders of the young girl actress (Xu Jiao, who plays Chow’s son) and the alien elements of the movie. She does an admirable job but sadly, her talent just about makes the highlight of the film. Other peripheral characters like Kitty Zhang's school teacher and that fat guy in Kung Fu Hustle hardly do anythin. Chow himself isn’t prominent in the film.

One day, I'll laugh again.

Reminds me of:

The time I brought me mates to TGV CapSquare, the only cinema in the Klang Valley that had tickets for it.

Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?

Seein Chow as the disciplinarian coolie father who puts his son in the best school while starvin on the construction site is interestin. However, the story is too short for any real message other than the bite-sized morality lectures. It comes off like a well-designed kiddie movie meant to appeal to as many people as possible across the world. So we’re left to make the best out of the experience. CJ7 will undeniably push Chow’s name on more foreign fronts. The rest of us, especially the older ones, will be left to rue the good old days when Stephen Chow and Ng Man Tat were still talkin to each other. ★★