Month: August 2022

Well, it’s that time again.  It’s time for your favorite Space Cadet to reveal what he’s recently bought.  I know there are people out there that are going to be wondering why I’m still collecting physical media instead of going fully digital and streaming.  Well, I’ve got an answer for you: *Whispers* Because I can.  True, I may run out of room to put all these discs, but it is NOT this day.  This day, I collect…movies!  As I’ve been doing for the past 20 plus years.  What can I say?  I’m persistent.  As before, when I pick up 4 or more movies on Blu-Ray/DVD I make a post about it.  Bonus feature: I got another Horror Pack box last week so you’ll be seeing what I ended up getting this month.  Well, time’s a wastin’, so let’s get to it.

Dune(1984) From Arrow Video

Boy, you want to talk about a movie that I’ve bought almost as many times as Star Wars.  David Lynch’s Dune is what many people consider to be a flawed masterpiece.  Frank Herbert’s famous space opera was thought to be un-filmable.  Well,  Lynch’s film didn’t really do anything to change that opinion.  I personally love the hell out of this movie.  It’s visually interesting with unique characters and an outstanding soundtrack by Toto.  Narratively, however, this movie’s a hot mess.  The book was loaded to the hilt with political and religious intrigue, wild ideas, and crazy concepts that are still talked about today.  You can’t really put something THAT dense into a movie that barely hit two and a half hours.  They glossed over so much.  It was such a massive disappointment that David Lynch has since refused to work on movies unless he had absolute control.  And honestly, Denis Villeneuve’s movie was better, even though it was only half the story.  But I grew up with this version of Dune.  Arrow Video has become probably my favorite Blu-Ray/DVD boutique company.  The effort they put into the visual restoration, remastering and special features is second-to-none.

Last Seen Alive

I love a good kidnapping thriller as much as the next guy.  But the problem with that particular genre is that a lot of movies tend to follow very familiar beats.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, if it’s done well.  Honestly, the only reason that Last Seen Alive works as well as it does is because of Gerard Butler.  He’s just fun to watch in everything that he does.  But the movie is basically a low-rent version of Breakdown.  It’s not the worst I’ve seen, but it ain’t the best.

Jurassic World Dominion

God, this movie really had the potential to be a game-changer when ending a franchise, but this movie really missed the mark.  At least, the theatrical version did.  I picked this up because the extended version of the film had 14 minutes of additional footage including the IMAX prologue sequence that was cut out.  I found that sequence and some other minor additions actually improved the movie’s flow quite a bit.  The issues with the script are still there, but the extended version of Jurassic World Dominion is the version to watch.

Last Days in the Desert

I’m not a believer.  I’ll just say that right now.  I never bought into the whole religion thing.  It’s also why I have issues with “faith-based” movies.  They have a tendency to get real preachy, and most people really don’t like that.  But I have no problems with movies where faith is a theme, just not terribly on the nose about it.  Last Days in the Desert is a very interesting movie.  It’s about Jesus who wanders in the desert because of some kind of spiritual crisis.  Wait, what?  Jesus Christ not being the perfect being that Christianity makes him out to be?  No, say it ain’t so!  The idea that the central figure in Christianity has a spiritual crisis is very intriguing to me.  It humanizes the man even more.  It also helps that Jesus is being played by Space Jesus, Ewan McGregor.  But, McGregor also plays the Devil, and seeing the two characters interact with each other is incredibly fascinating.  The film also stars Ciaran Hinds as the patriarch of a desert-bound family.  It’s a slow drama, but it IS a drama.  Ewan McGregor is fantastic, especially as the Devil.  This one is definitely recommended.

Horror Pack #2

Well, here’s the second box that I got from Horror Pack.  As I mentioned last time I got one of these, it’s a service where you pay 30 bucks a month and you get 3 random horror movies a month plus a Horror Pack exclusive disc.  The first box I got last month was fairly impressive with the exclusive being the worst out of the bunch.  This month’s box wasn’t nearly as impressive, I’m afraid, and that’s kind of the risk you take when you take part in a program like this.  So, let’s talk about what I got.

Ma

This is one that I hadn’t seen before.  I’d heard about how good Octavia Spencer was, but the film didn’t really catch my eye at the time.  Well, I actually really like this one.  It’s pretty good.  Predictable, but still good.  The real glue that holds this movie together IS Octavia Spencer.  This is unlike any other role that she’s played, and she’s clearly having a blast here, and I like it.  It’s about a group of teenagers that get a lonely woman, Sue Ann, to buy booze for them so they can party.  She invites them to the basement at her house where they can party with the stipulation that they don’t go upstairs or curse.  But she becomes obsessive and the darker side of her personality comes out.  I think this movie was a lot better than it had any right to be.

Brahms: The Boy II

I never really got into the whole “creepy doll” subgenre of horror.  You can thank Child’s Play for that.  Brahms is the sequel to the movie The Boy which features a porcelain doll.  I never saw the first movie, so that might inform you why I actually enjoyed this movie.  From what I understand, if you saw the original movie and liked it, this movie would piss you off.  It apparently retcons a lot of things at the end of the previous film.  Not having seen it, this stuff didn’t bother me.  The acting in this movie’s pretty great, though. Katie Holmes is pretty good.  The kid is outstanding and actually NOT annoying, which is unusual for a horror film.  Ralph Ineson from The Witch is also in this movie and he’s fantastic.  He’s always been fantastic.  I enjoyed the movie.

Woman in the Chair(Horror Pack Exclusive)

I had heard about this movie a while back, but I wasn’t expecting it to be available yet.  It actually isn’t available to the general public yet, so those who got this month’s Horror Pack got a pretty sweet deal.  This movie is about an ex-pat who lives in Japan that discovers a house with a woman sitting a chair.  She’s a ghost or apparition of some kind, but he gets a couple of investors involved.  As a result, they end up creating a little bit of a supernatural tourist attraction.  Things start getting weird when some people start losing their minds and end up in not the most pleasant of situations.  This is definitely a low-budget indie horror film, but unlike last month’s Dark Tales from Channel X, this is actually a pretty decent movie.  It’s fairly original in its concept and the execution(phrasing) is pretty solid.  Some of the acting is a little sketch, though.  But I really dug this one, and I hope more people get to see it.

Get Out

If I didn’t already own a copy of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, this alone would’ve been worth the price of admission.  This is an absolutely fantastic little film.  I’m not going to spoil it, but this movie takes some really bizarre twists and turns, but it’s also legitimately funny at times.  For a directorial debut, Get Out is an instant classic.  Daniel Kaluuya is wonderful here and Bradley Whitford almost steals the show.  It’s a lot of fun with some really interesting social commentary.  Jordan Peele now has three movies out, but this one is clearly his best effort.  So, yeah, I absolutely recommend it.

Well, that concludes this edition of Recent Blu-Ray purchases.  As far as the Horror Pack is concerned, it’s not nearly as impressive as last month’s.  Mostly, it’s because I already had Get Out, but the rest of the movies weren’t particularly shabby.  So, I’m looking forward to seeing what September brings me with the Horror Pack.  Thank you all for reading and I’ll catch YOU on the next episode of Recent Blu-Ray Purchases…or any other post that I’ll do next week.

Released: June 2022

Director: Brian Goodman

Rated R

Run Time: 94 Minutes

Distributor: Vertical Entertainment

Genre: Thriller

Cast:
Gerard Butler: Will Spann
Jamie Alexander: Lisa Spann
Russell Hornsby: Detective Paterson
Ethan Embry: Knuckles
Michael Irby: Oscar

When you watch movies as much as I do, you begin to notice certain…similarities between some movies.  Usually, it’s in the story-telling department.  Let’s be honest here: Original material in the film industry is really hard to come by, so most studios will rely on tried-and-true forms of story-telling to get butts in seats.  There’s nothing wrong with that, really, except when a movie bares a striking resemblance to a different film in the same genre.  Now, I’m not talking about similar movies like say, Dante’s Peak or Volcano.  Those were two very different volcano movies that came out about the same time.  No, that’s not what I’m getting at here.  I’m talking about copy-cat movies.  These are movies where a plot-line from a particular movie is identical to another movie in the same genre.  It happens more often that you would think.  Is it done on purpose?  Most of the time, no.  But when Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Spectre came out within months of each other, people couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the films.  Another case is The Raid and Dredd(2012).  These involve law officers scaling a building to take out a drug lord, only to be trapped and hunted down by the criminal element.  Very similar story-lines, but they were still different in how they approached it.  The kidnap thriller is notorious for having very similar movies.  How many different ways can you tackle a kidnapping story?  Narratively, it usually involves human trafficking, ransoms, or the occasional experiment.  Well, we got ourselves a new kidnap thriller for you today: Last Seen Alive

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A man and his wife are on a road trip(I love road trips)when they stop to get gas.  The wife goes into the gas station to get some water and she disappears.  The husband frantically searches for her, while a local cop has suspicions about the husband.  Sounds familiar right?  Where else could we have seen this kind of story?  Let’s see…there was a movie and its remake called The Vanishing which involved pretty much the same plot, except the original movie was much darker.  Oh, yeah!  Breakdown with Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan.  That’s right.  Except that movie had the car break down in the middle of nowhere.  Eh, details.  The fact of the matter is, is that Last Seen Alive is derivative of much better movies.  That’s not to say that this is a bad movie.  Far from it.  But there are mistakes made in the narrative that really shouldn’t have been made.  The opening scene makes the entire film predictable by almost giving everything away.  That’s fairly noob-ish.  That said, the film is very simple and easy to follow.  There are flashbacks that give explanations as to the current state of things between Butler’s Will Spann and his wife, Lisa, played by Jamie Alexander.  There are no wild twists, just a guy looking for his wife.  It’s a story that’s been done before and done better, but it still manages to entertain.

I’m a huge fan of Gerard Butler.  Even when he was playing Dracula in Dracula 2000 he had this unique charisma that just made him really interesting to watch.  Phantom of the Opera was one of his more interesting roles as the Phantom, and he did it really well.  But his real breakthrough was in Zack Snyder’s 300 and the rest is history.  When it comes to action movies, he’s definitely got it where it counts.  Dramatic performances is where I feel he struggled a bit for a while.  He’s definitely gotten better over the past few years, especially in Greenland.  I like Gerard Butler a lot.  Thankfully, he does a pretty good job here as a husband who is desperate to find his wife.  Jamie Alexander as Lisa isn’t given a whole lot to do.  Her character is the victim in this movie and while she makes appearances in flashbacks, her presence is really mute.  Russell Hornsby as Detective Patterson helps shoulder the movie with Butler.  His cop is empathetic, tough, and driven.  The performances are pretty good across the board.

The thing about thrillers is their ability to hook you and make you sit on the edge of your seat wondering what’s going to happen next.  Last Seen Alive really could’ve been something truly memorable, but the opening sequence almost ruins the tension.  The last thing you want to do in a thriller is to ruin the tension by giving away too much information too soon, and that’s what happened here.  That’s not to say that there isn’t tension.  There definitely is, but it’s constantly battling questionable writing that has certain characters making really dumb decisions that even desperate people wouldn’t make.  I like Butler in this role, and I think he does pretty well, but his character does things that are highly questionable, especially from a legal point of view.  Because of those issues, the verisimilitude of the film is diminished.  There is fun to be had here if you can suspend your disbelief more than you should.

I guess Last Seen Alive got some kind of a theatrical release because I see box office return for 3.4 million dollars.  It’s weird, because the movie doesn’t look like it cost anywhere near that much.  After looking at Box Office Mojo, it looks like it only hit theaters internationally.  It didn’t get a domestic opening here.  It just went straight to streaming/video.  For a Gerard Butler movie, that’s not really a good outlook.  I get it, he’s not the biggest box office draw, but most of his stuff managed to get a domestic theatrical release.  So, THIS is a huge step down for him.  I had heard about this movie last year when it was under a different name, Chase.  I guess that name didn’t take, so they traded one generic name for another.  I can’t imagine why this movie was released for the big screen.  The cinematography is not that great.  Yeah, you got some nice landscape shots here and there, but there’s definitely some shaky-cam shenanigans going on.  It doesn’t feel or look like a theatrically made movie.  It’s clearly a low-budget movie, and I get that, but I’ve seen some low-budget fare that look like big productions.  Catch the Fair One looks far more professional than this.

Do I hate Last Seen Alive?  No.  I don’t think it’s a terrible movie.  But there were some…interesting decisions made here that takes the movie down a few notches for me.  Still, it’s a decent ride if you can shut your brain off for an hour and a half.  I just hate seeing Gerard Butler being reduced to appearing in near direct-to-video stuff like this.  He’s the kind of guy that has a big screen presence and that’s what he deserves.  Is this movie worth your time?  Maybe, if you’re a fan of Gerard Butler.  But aside from that, I can’t really see this movie having any staying power with the general audience.  It’s fine.

As someone who clearly loves his movies, the idea of extended editions or director’s cuts sounds really good on paper.  However, I’ve seen a number of cases where having an extended version of the film makes it feel bloated.  I loved the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but they really didn’t add a whole lot to the overall story.  It was mostly character development and longer scenes of epic battle sequences.  That’s all well and good, but I got the same amount of enjoyment from watching the theatrical versions.  If a movie is really good enough, it doesn’t actually NEED those extended versions.  There IS the rare case when an extended or director’s cut actually improves the film in not insignificant ways.  Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven is a perfect example of that.  It reintroduced plot elements that made the film more fleshed out and give characters proper motivations for what they did.  Well, yesterday I bought Jurassic World Dominion on Blu-Ray.  This release comes with TWO versions of the movie.  You have the theatrical version and then you have the extended edition which includes 14 minutes of additional footage re-edited into the picture.

In my review of Dominion, I had issues with the narrative structure.  A lot of it didn’t make a lot of sense as it felt that stuff was cut out to bring the run-time down.  There were also some transitional sequences that didn’t quite work as well as they should have.  One of my other complaints was that the movie was TOO loud.  I think that must have been the theater’s sound system, because it gave me a splitting head-ache that probably affected my enjoyment of the movie to an extent.  Well, having seen the extended version of Dominion, I can honestly say that I actually like this movie quite a bit more.  There’s a number of reasons.  First off, the opening prologue that takes place 65 million years ago was restored.  This was shown as an advertisement for the film in IMAX theaters, but it never made into the actual movie.  First of all, it sets up a 65 million year grudge between the T-Rex and the Giganotosaurus at the end of the film.  This opening sequence shifted the focus of the film from the genetically engineered super-locust story-line back to the dinosaurs a bit.  Now, that locust story-line still isn’t that great, but it’s pushed to the side a bit more, and allows for a bit more character development in certain scenes.  There was quite a bit that was cut out of the film, which includes a bunch of smaller scenes of dialogue between key characters.  There’s also a bit more dinosaur action on display.  Some of the transitional sequences that I was complaining about were fixed.  The movie overall has a much better flow to it.  It’s more cohesive and less “bumpy.”

Overall, I would actually say that the extended version of Jurassic World Dominion IS the better version to watch.  That said, a lot of the issues that I had with the film to begin with are still there.  The locust story-line was very on the nose and it didn’t need to be.  Some of the characters just aren’t that good like Lewis Dodgson.  Obvious villain is obvious.  I realize that the Jurassic World movies were pretty blatant about their call-backs to the original Jurassic Park, but some of it really didn’t quite work for me, and they still don’t.  The film’s director recently tweeted out that “friends don’t let friends watch the theatrical cut.”  I have to agree.  The extended cut is, as far as I’m concerned, the definitive version of the film to watch.  Does it make it a perfect movie?  No, I would still argue that Dominion is the weakest of the Jurassic World movies and the franchise deserved a much better ending.  I’ve found the Jurassic World Dominion extended cut to be pretty decent.  Not great, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what we got in theaters.  That’s MY observation.  Also, just to reiterate: Seeing Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum on screen together again will NEVER get old.  So, yeah, Jurassic World Dominion is now available on streaming, DVD/Blu-Ray and 4k.  If you didn’t like the movie at all, it might not change your mind, but if you’re willing to give it a second chance, like I did, it might surprise you.  Check it out.

Released: August 2022

Director: Dan Trachtenberg

Rated R

Run Time: 99 Minutes

Distributor: Disney/20th Century Studios/Hulu

Genre: Science Fiction/Action

Cast:
Amber Midthunder: Naru
Dakota Beavers: Taabe
Dane DiLiegro: Predator
Stormee Kipp: Wasape
Michelle Thrush: Aruka
Julian Black Antelope: Chief Kehetu
Stefany Mathias: Sumu

Sometimes a movie franchise gets too big it loses its way.  It doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen.  It happens to some of the most beloved franchises like Star Wars.  The sequel trilogy was a mish-mash of bad ideas and sometimes worse execution.  But it’s also happened to franchises like The Fast and the Furious.  I even see the same thing happening to Marvel’s MCU with Phase 4.  There’s nothing wrong with a franchise being incredibly successful.  I celebrate that.  But sometimes that success can get in the way of good story-telling.  Studios with successful movies are always looking to make sequels that are bigger and better than the previous film, and sometimes they get hit with some cold water when those films don’t work.  Alien is a perfect example of this.  After one successful sequel, the franchise got not just one bad sequel(that I actually really liked, by the way), but two and two prequels that just didn’t quite work.  Predator is the other big sci-fi franchise that went astray.  I personally enjoyed the last film in the franchise, but by no means was it a good movie.  In fact, it was the worst the franchise had ever seen.  It left the door open for a sequel that people just weren’t going to have.  After Disney bought 20th Century Fox, people were understandably worried about was going to happen with Alien and Predator.  Well, I can tell you that with Prey, I think the franchise is in good hands.

Prey is set over 200 years before the events of the original Predator and follows young Comanche woman, Naru as she attempts to prove herself as a hunter.  After discovering mysterious tracks, she decides to track whatever made them and encounters a creature unlike anything she’s ever encountered before.  She also discovers that this beast is also a hunter, so it becomes a cat-and-mouse game to prove who will survive.  THIS is the kind of story that we need from a Predator movie.  It’s a simple and straight-forward kind of film.  But it’s also an underdog tale and a coming-of-age story.  The first 30 minutes are dedicated to character development, setting up conflicts within the tribe as well as the world around them.  It was incredibly smart of Dan Trachtenberg to take this movie and set in the early 1700s.  That way, you can’t cheat and have humans being to able take on an alien hunter with giant guns.  Making the Comanche the center of this story was also a good idea.  These people were born hunters that had to rely on what nature gave them.  So using that and human ingenuity makes for a surprisingly exciting film.

Casting actual Native Americans in this movie was really the only option for this kind of story.  This Amber Midthunder’s film, through and through.  Seeing her struggle to be more than what her tribe demands her to be is one of the most compelling aspects of the movie.  Everybody loves an underdog story, and this is about as underdog as you can get.  She has to rely on her smarts and the environment around her to outsmart the alien hunter.  Dakota Beavers plays her brother, Taabe, who obviously cares about his sister, but doesn’t feel that she’s ready to become a hunter.  This dynamic also sets up other conflicts within the tribe that are interrupted when the Predator comes callin’.  The guy they got to play the Predator brings a menace to the character that we really haven’t seen in a long time.  Dane DiLiegro is almost 7 feet tall, but the way he carries himself in the film makes him kind of scary, and that’s what we’ve been missing.  I don’t think anybody’s going to win an Academy Award for their performance in this movie, but they’re all fantastic.

Again, giving our hero disadvantage of not having technologically advanced weaponry was smart.  Naru had to rely on an axe that she swung around with a rope, which was really cool, but also bows, arrows, and the environment.  That said, Arnold’s crew from the original movie had serious firepower but that didn’t really help them at all.  Not against an alien that outsmarted them every step of the way.  Bringing that kind of back-and-forth to this new movie was the right move to make.  But they also made sure that the Predator didn’t rely on his gadgets a whole lot for a majority of the movie.  A lot of the time, you see this Predator just using his bare hands, especially against a bear.  That’s how bad-ass this thing is.  The action is really good and boy is it brutal.  While there’s a number of off-screen kills that happen, the kills are really creative here, especially with the weapons that the Predator has.  This is a very violent movie in the best way possible.  Seeing the Predator take on multiple groups of people single-handedly is awesome.  It also helps that the cinematography here is outstanding.  It’s one of the most beautifully shot movies I’ve seen.  The landscapes are breathtaking as this movie was shot on location in Alberta, Canada.

There are a few small issues that I had with the movie.  The third act of the film isn’t the strongest, but it’s still pretty good.  Some of the CGI, though, isn’t that great.  The bear in particular is painfully obvious.  There is also the issue of releasing this movie straight to Hulu.  I have an inkling of an idea why they did, and it’s understandable.  The response to The Predator(the fourth film)was brutal.  Nobody like that movie.  It was badly written, the editing was horrendous.  It wasn’t necessarily Shane Black’s fault that the movie was essentially taken from him.  Yet, I think Prey could have benefitted from having a theatrical release.  Maybe not super-wide, but in a more limited capacity.  Honestly, I hope this movie finds its way to Blu-Ray/DVD because I would love to have a hard copy of this movie to add to my collection.  As it stands now, it’s only available on Hulu. So, for the price of a gallon of gas, you get a month’s worth of Hulu goodness and Prey.  Overall, I LOVE THIS MOVIE!  It’s fantastic.  It puts a Native American culture in the fore-front while making it a brutal sci-fi spectacle at the same time.  I was not excited about this movie for the longest time, but then the trailers and the images started coming out, and I became more and more intrigued.  Prey is the best Predator movie we’ve gotten since the original.  The original film is still the best, mind you, but this is a close second.  Bravo, Disney.  Bravo.  I can’t wait to see what they do next with the franchise.  This is HIGHLY recommended, especially for Predator fans.