Rings -- 2005

This was a short feature included on the Ring Two Unrated DVD. This short totally measures up the The Ring. It has the same level of creepiness and fear instilled in it, probably since it has the same central plot....but with a big twist.

If you have not watched The Ring or don't know the solution Rachel discovered at the end, then this will spoil it. If you have seen it, don't care to, or don't mind knowing, consider yourself warned and read on.

As a result of having to make a copy and make someone else watch it and so on, these Ring clubs have developed around the country. Well, this kid watches the tape for someone else he know to save their life, but they dare him to last until Day 7. They tell him to video everything he sees and diary everything that happens so they can know too. Well, as he goes through the week, he has someone to show the tape to so he can live.

Watching it all play out and knowing the consequences of his dangerous game makes this short a wild ride to watch. If you haven't seen the Ring, though, it won't make any sense at all. He surfs other internet Ring groups and learns more about what he is in for.

I won't give it away, but this short lead directly into the teaser of The Ring Two, so you can watch this short first and lead it into the Ring Two and it fits perfect. This short is worth the acquiring of the DVD.

The Ring Two -- 2005 -- PG-13

I watched the Unrated Edition. As a sequel this poor film has to stand up to the sheer creepiness of the original and when compared, it pales. However, when considered as its own film, its actually pretty good. It does what so few sequels do, and that is take the old plot on a new ride. It handles the characters from the original and allows them continued development. It creates a really creepy atmosphere, and has its own share of scares and chills. It has good momentum throughout the movie, good development, and enough intrigue to keep you wondering without being annoyed that you don't know what is going on for most of the film.

It has some weak points, though. One is this elaborate deer attack that once you know what is going on (and watch the making of video that explains it) makes sense, but in the context of the film, really loses you. They explain that the deer react to Samara's presence, and any setup for this (even a barking dog beforehand) would have helped. A similar issue occurred in the Ring with a horse going crazy, so it works, but it never gets a sufficient explanation in this film.

The other problem is what I call Forced Conflict. This usually occurs with characters who like asking lots of questions, like detectives or doctors. This film has a psychiatrist who asked perfectly reasonable questions that the character could have simply answered to avoid all ramifications. Instead, the character clams up and refuses to answer even the simplest question: "Did you hit your son?" Why not answer this with a truthful resounding no? What does she say? "I want you to leave." To make this forced conflict even worse, the psychiatrist locks the character in her office to detain her for a moment while she gets coffee. The psychiatrist returns moments later to find the character escaped out the window. Can anyone say "You just incriminated yourself"?

This aside, it is a passable film when allowed to stand on its own. When placed aside the original, it doesn't measure up and feels like a sequel.

Red Eye -- 2005 -- PG-13

This was a film that had a really good beginning, and moved perfectly right into the big shocker on the airplane. The tension was really well done...for awhile.

After some time, it became kind of annoying that everything this woman did to escape was discovered every time, and in the most convenient ways possible. The guy was omniscent or something.

The entry into the third act was clever, but matters of convenience got in the way again as this guy managed to keep going somehow. It seemed a bit hard to believe in some ways, but I guess it worked. The subplot of the girl in the hotel was okay, and helped in a way to distract from the main plot, but not enough, so it was very easy to get bored with the single thing going on.

I will have to say that the final scene during the denouement of the whole film was simply golden. I laughed out loud.

Rent -- 2005 -- PG-13

I've been waiting years for this one. I got the cast recording of Rent in 1997, a year after it came out on Broadway. 

This is a heck of a drama on screen. The relationships are engaging when watching them develop from the sweetness of Collins and Angel to the touching uncertainty of Roger and Mimi to the controlling/flirtatious rocky back and forthness of Joanne and Maureen, it seems to cover the basic types of relationship types we encounter or have even been in before. And then you have Mark who is just there giving us the tale from his vantage point, it seems, as he works to film his movie. Through Larson's wonderful music, we feel the trials these characters go through and the heartbreaks as they endure them.

The stage-to-screen translation worked very, very well and it delivers a powerful performance with nearly every main musical number intact. Some of the more recitative numbers from the show were changed into straight dialogue, and two songs were cut; Christmas Bells, which is a favorite from the show and I wish they kept and Contact, which I'm grateful was gone. I guess it was a fair trade-off.

Another bonus here is after listening to the cast recording for so long, most of the main cast in the movie was from the original Broadway cast meaning that the voices singing were exactly the same ones from the 1996 recording. 

Yes, some of the subject matter deals with homosexuality, but that is not something rubbed in the face of the viewer; it's simply an element of the story such as space travel is for Star Trek...simply there and we move on. Will and Grace is 100 times more in your face than this show is about that topic.

So my bottom line is that this is still a wonderful show, and the filmmakers did a great job on the movie of it. The biggest danger is trying to make a movie out of a musical is losing some of the magic of the stage; it wasn't lost here.

The Ring -- 2002 -- PG-13

Dubbed the scariest movie of the year, this one lives up to its tagline. This is the tale of a videotape that right after you watch it, the phone rings and a voice tells you that you will die in 7 days. 

Strange things begin happening over the course of those seven days and for a PG-13 horror flick, it holds its suspense in classic thriller style. A character will look around a room and then stare into the camera...whatever they're looking for is where we (the audience) are, making us, of course, say "What is she looking at?" 

It's hard to say much about the film without spoiling the plot, but it is about a newspaper reported who watches the tape, and then works to unravel the mystery before her seven days are up. Though the video has some weird images, the film does fully explain the purpose and origin of each image, which is very impressive.

This is a scary movie and destined to give you some chills. The DVD even includes the entire video for your viewing pleasure, should you have the guts to view it without fear of your own phone ringing... 

And to answer your next question, it was 2:00 in the morning, the movie was freaky, so I didn't watch the video...

Ringu -- 1998 -- NR

This is a Japanese movie, and so not subject to review by the MPAA. I would put the rating at a PG-13 for shocking and/or disturbing images. Ringu is the Japanese version of the American film, The Ring.

Students who watched a cursed video die a week later all at the time. A reporter tries to unlock the mystery of their deaths and upon watching the video herself, also becomes subject to the one week curse. This film has good pacing, a creepy atmosphere, and decent characterizations. Their search for the truth encountered very few roadblocks, though, and seemed pretty easy to get through to the end once they were able to piece it all together. The seven day time frame, while continually immenent, seemed almost non-threatening and just "there" like staring at a timebomb as it ticks down.

A bigger beef I have is the odd psychic element. I had a similar complaint with Audition, so this might just be a "thing" for Japanese films. Much of the expository information they gained was done through intuition or psychic "flashes" by the characters who acknowledged these abilities as something they had right when they needed it.

This aside, it is a good film to watch, if for no other reason than to see where the Ring came from. Another point of interest is that while Audition was a film in Japanese with no other indicator of any other culture, Ringu is a Japanese film complete with apparent cultural idiosyncrasies specific to the Japanese. It was kind of neat to watch.

Rasen -- 1998 -- NR

This is the original sequel to Ringu, but when it tanked in Japan, the company made Ringu 2. Some like this movie, and some hate it for a variety of reasons. Most of the haters don't like it because it is barely the same genre of movie that Ringu is; rather than supernatural horror, this film is more of a scienific thriller, and believe me, that's a big jump.

Instead of creepy scary Sadako, Rasen has creepy sexy Sadako, whose spirit visits the main character, Dr. Ando, after he watches the cursed videotape and apparently wants to have sex with him. He and his science buddies are interested in finding a scientific explanation for how the tape kill people, and through finding a copy of the tape and a journal left by Reiko from Ringu, they are able to reconstruct the first film and move on to their studies. Dr. Ando believes his mission is to destroy the tape so no one else dies, and also to give him an opportunity to kill himself, since he is depressed over the loss of his son. It was a nice start with some creepy moments.

From here, it gets really convoluted, and this is just me judging it as a movie, not as a sequel. Through their studies, they believe that (and stay with me) by watching the video, your body picks up the DNA sequencing of a virus and the body constructs this virus which kills you. Reiko was an accomplice to Sadako (which is why she didn't die) and her notebook also contains said virus but a mutation of it. Sadako wants to return to the world, so when she comes to Dr. Ando after he watches the video, she gives him her DNA so when he sleeps with Mai (Ryuji's girlfriend from the Ringu), Sadako's DNA is passed onto her to grow in the womb and be reborn, not as 100% Sadako, but as a Sadako/Mai, both women's memories existing in Mai's new body reborn from old Mai who was killed or died or something. Sadako/Mai strikes up a deal with Dr. Ando to take his son's DNA and let his son be reborn through her if Ando will also do the work to let Ryuji be reborn through her too. (Insert long tedious scientific and psychic explanations to get it all to make sense)

The final idea of the story is Sadako wants everyone to feel her fear so they're going to publish Reiko's journal so everyone can read it, get the mutated virus, feel her fear, and take a new step in human evolution (or something like that). The subject was so heady that I'm sure this film is a direct adapatation of the book, since no one in their right mind would write something like this directly for the screen. I think the biggest weakness was fooling the target audience of Ringu that this film was for them, and completely missing a better audience that would have appreciated it. 

In my opinion, I think if I had the time to watch it a few more times, I might finally understand it, but in a single viewing (which is how I watch most films), it contains far too much information and has to explain too much for me to say that the film just left me anything more than lost and confused. I think the explanations are way too far-fetched and one would have to suspend disbelief too far to get into the scientific reasoning behind the legendary cursed tape. And then there are those mysterious psychic powers through which so much exposition is gleaned...

Ringu 2 -- 1999 -- NR

After the dismal failure of Rasen, the filmmakers regrouped to have a second go at creating a sequel to Ringu. What they came up with was a movie that has some scary points to it, but is fouled by a ton of rehashing of the first movie and some bizarre and ot always positive character moments.

We begin with Tai Makano, Ryuji's assistant/girlfriend wanting to figure out what happened to Ryuji and searching for Reiko as a result. Well, Reiko has disappeared, and no one, not even the guy who is working on the cursed tape story at her news station, knows where she is. So now these two set out to figure out what happened causing a huge recap section of the movie that could and should have been avoided. Like the American version, new stuff happens related to Sadako and the video where for some reason, people who never saw the tape have Sadako in their head and weird stuff happens around those people as a result. Of course, Reiko's son, Yoichi, is subject to these things even though he was "cured" of the cursed tape by it being shown to Reiko's father. The plot continues to thicken as we move along including throwing in some bizarre moves one might call twists.

One of the strangest has to do with Mai taking care of Reiko's son after something happens to Reiko. This is only strange in that Mai would have no attachment to her late boyfriend's son because she never met him. This is where The Ring Two has a leg up because Yoichi's American equivalent is protected by his mother as opposed to a complete stranger. The movie eventually follows the path of the original, and while the scares are more plentiful in this one, the victory for Mai and Yoichi is just weird and we're left open in the end for another sequel.

Overall, it is a decent horror flick, but still not on par with its big brother Ringu or its American cousin The Ring. It does have a glimmer, though, of the direction The Ring Two took, and the director of Ringu 2 did direct The Ring Two as well. A bit of trivia there for you.

Ringu 0 -- 2000 -- NR

The last installment of the Ringu series out of Japan takes us back 30 years to Sadako yamamura trying to make it as an actress while fighting the mystery of her past. Whether you've watched the previous installments or not, this movie is frightening either way. Genuinely creepy moments, and even though I had seen 5 Ring relates movies before watching this one, I still was glued to the screen, not knowing where the turns were going to take me. 

Yes, it's still Japanese with English subtitles, but this being my 5th movie to watch in this manner along with a German one as well, I was quite used to reading the dialogue while watching the action. Who knows, maybe I understood it better knowing every word spoken.

Part of the film was tragic as well. It uses the human tendency to never let the past go from anyone, especially if it can be used to their advantage. Sadako had gotten over what happened to her mother, and forgotten whatever she had done in long-gone experiments. She was just trying to get on with her life. Not everyone let it go, and set out to find and destroy her. Sure, she had her share of psychosis, but all that extra stuff just made it worse.

This is easily the creepiest of the Ringu series, even after the first Ringu, and holds a tight second to the American Ring. Watching this movie was like watching Star Wars Episode 3. I knew how Sadako was going to end up, but watching the path to get her was a ride worth taking.

The Ring Virus -- 1999 -- NR

This is the Korean version of the Ring story, and it has its own positives to bring to the tale. With these positives, it also brings its negatives as well.

First, like Ringu, it lacks the terror element of the American version of impending doom. You have seven days to live, sure, but at the same time you have nothing happening to you that reinforces that idea. You just have to believe it. Like Ringu, the only thing that keeps them going is their distorted face in the photographs. My question is always, Is that enough to drive someone that hard to learn the truth?

I do like the way the story unfolds from sctratch. Unlike the Japanese and American versions, we don't begin with a conversation about the video. We begin with the same opening scene, but it is with a lone girl. We don't know anything about her, or why she would have died. From there the movie unfolds very investigatively. The reporter has to discover the reason the girl died on her own, which is done very logically. In this version, the tape contains the details we need to understand the tape, including the cure...which is unfortunately taped over.

You can always tell which parts of the movie are likely parts of the novel, as the tedious and pointless well-emptying scene that took up time in Ringu was in this version as well. The Ring thankfully found another way to pass the time. The ending remained the same as well.

I think the movie lost a little something by not having the reporter in some measure of a relationship with her partner, but at the same time, the child played almost no role in this version either. Many of the investigative scenes ran slowly and tediously throughout the middle. There was no explanation why they would believe retreiving our psycho friend's body from the bottom of the well would work. In fact, in light of there being instructions on the video, it makes very little sense. Imagine reading, "In order to live, you must retrieve my body from the well and lay me to rest." Right.

This one omitted the time frame and made Eun-suh's (Samara/Sadako) a very recent event...a change that makes little sense in light of a hotel being erected on that very spot. It also gave her a bizarre trait, and had some very strange gender-bending overtones that added nothing beyond a reason for her to die...from a very disturbing relationship, I might add.

Overall, this version had enough positives to make it worth a viewing, but in my opinion, enough negatives to make it a third overall of the three versions I've seen. The investigative part at the beginning was a HUGE plus, and it was refreshing not to have everything handed over psychically, but it got slow and the bit regarding Eun-suh's "secret" was way too disturbing.

As a side note, this video has an English dub, so I set it for English. I noticed that the English subtitles were defaulted to on, and I almost turned them off before I discovered that the subtitles were telling some different info than what was being spoken. Maybe I marred my enjoyment of the film by this amusement, but I couldn't bring myself to turn off the subtitles. The first bizarre change between the dub and the subtitles was this: on the phone in the teaser, there is a guy in the dub, but a girl in the subtitles (don't learn this till much later in the film and it made things really confusing for a bit). The subtitles have really bad dialogue and gags, while the dub is much more crisp and better constructed. The subtitles contain exposition the dub doesn't. The subtitles have interjections that the dub doesn't. I think the movie is complete both ways, but it was amusing...

Red Planet -- 2000 -- PG-13

This film can be best classified as "typical sci-fi fare" with your run of the mill under-characterized adventurers, such as the outcast, the cute girl captain, the philosopher, and the other guys who we not only don't know who they are, but don't care either. Add to this some far-fetched ideas on how stuff works, and you've got this movie.

The plot is easy enough to follow. Go to Mars to figure out why the algae they sent up there to produce oxygen died. Apparently, they presented a theory of Mars producing carbon dioxide should feed some algae to the point that they will produce oxygen and therefore start a life cycle and build an atmosphere on Mars. Well, the oxygen levels went up for awhile, and then dropped, hence the need for a trip to find out why.

If you do want to see this film, I will avoid the plot point spoilers, but those points are far-fetched, to say the least. One that isn't much of a spoiler is a modem made into a radio, and as if that wasn't enough, they manage to hook the modem/radio up to another computer and download something through it.  Several moments that beg the mental commentary of "That's convenient" just add to the eye rolling drama.

The characters are just flat. I knid of knew the names of some of them by the time their inevitable deaths occurred, but nothing to cling to, relate to, or care about. They made some vain attempts to round out these guys, but nothing worked, and I'm not sure why. We sort of knew the main pair (the outcast and the girl captain), but only my own morbid curiosity of how it would finally pan out carried me through to the end.

Finally, there were these creatures on Mars. While I understand why no explanation could be given, one should have been concocted or something, because they broke the common notion of "no life on Mars," and while this is fine, you have to give the audience a reason to make it plausible. Who cares if it is possible or not, but you've got to have plausible. These things played an important part in the plot as it was, but beyond this they made no sense. If they had, it would have at least given this movie some measure of worth.

So what's the verdict? Well, there's nothing new or groubdbreaking in this films in terms of effects, plot, character, ideas, or anything. It's just, as I said, standard fare sci-fi, so if you like sci-fi and don't mind extreme suspension of disbelief, then you'll probably enjoy this film. Me? I don't hate any movie, and they all have their good qualities. I liked the ride for what it was, and there was a decent little mystery going on here, despite the solution did little but raise more questions. It wasn't the worst film ever made, and I do enjoy the occasional sci-fi flick, so it gets a solid "ok" from me.

RV -- 2006 -- PG

Wow, it's been a practically movie-less last week. Not sure what happened there.

RV is a family comedy involving an advertising guy who had planned a big vacation to Hawaii with his family until his boss tells him that he can't go, and now needs to give a presentation in Colorado. Not wanting to reveal the business trip but still wanting to take the vacation, he concocts an RV Trip to get them to Colorado and spend time with the family.

This is essentially a madcap type mis-adventure where the family tries to avoid each other, hate each other, and eventually bond before it's all over. The antics start a little stale but quickly escalate into downright amusing and funny. The poor RV (aka 'the rolling turd') gets tortured in the course of the movie losing its brakes early on for some silly (and plot-impacting) consequences further in.

The characters were drawn a bit thin with very little backstory and huge play on cliche character types. We have the rapping, weight-lifting little brother; the rebellious, "dad's a dork" teenage daughter who listens to hard rock; the stay at home mom who is spoiled; and the workaholic dad. While the cliches make it easy to make a connection to these people, the lack of originality makes the overall characters very unmemorable.

The moral message of the film is very easy to decipher, and in fact, I had it deciphered as soon as the plot was laid out. As soon as he announced the plan for the RV trip, I thought to myself, "If he just tells them what's going on, it'll make it all a lot easier for them to take." This message was delivered 60 minutes later. There was very little reasoning given for him not to reveal this beyond a slim mentioning that on the Hawaii vacation, he was not to work. If there had been some kind of whining and complaining about the working, it would have been a bit easier to take.

However, in the end, the movie was great fun, I laughed quite a bit, so the point of it being a comedy was well taken and a great success. The thin establishment of the main plot and forgettable characters hurts it a little bit, but the film is stil worth watching. It's very enjoyable which is really the point of movies anyway.

Room 6 -- 2006 -- NR

This film had a killer opening scene. Imagine a woman lying on an operating table. You hear voiceover of her saying she's not only awake but can feel everything. She can't communicate because her body is still asleep, but her eyes are moving. She manages to get the attention of the room, and is then told that they know she is awake. They start the first incision as she screams internally.

And that's about the best scene in the movie. It's also the most suspenseful. We get a lot of weird stuff going on here where people change into odd creatures and such threatening the girl and while it's undoubtedly freaky, it never regains the same atmosphere of that opening scene.

The story follows a woman, Amy, who is deathly afraid of hospitals due to a traumatic event that occurred many years ago that she never let go of. She and her boyfriend get into a vehicle accident where he is carted off to a hospital, but she is not told which one. She frantically searches with another guy who says his sister experienced the same fate to locate this hospital, but no matter where they look, they can't find it. The police treat the report as a prank, like many people have reported an ambulance carting away their loved ones before, and it's a big joke.

Throughout the search, she runs across several weird and demonic figures whose faces change into deformed messes and look really freaky. These demonic creatures continue to deliver the message to our heroine that they have him and she can't get him back. It's really very strange and does provide a level of intrigue in the overall film.

However, the film was peppered with flaws. While a solid effort was made to develop Amy's character, a lot of her continuing development was not done very well. She had a flaw that she needed to overcome to succeed in her goal, all of which were very good. Her hospital fear was actually more of a phobia, since walking into one seem to set her off. But when we learn why her fear exists, her overcoming was way too easy. Her completing her goal was also way too easy in the end. We spend most of the film watching her scream when one of the freaks comes to play.

Beyond her journey, the movie was pretty bad. The messy little plot gets more and more convoluted as we pass into it, and a lot of things happen that just don't make a lot of sense.

Her boyfriend had gone exploring and when he was brought back, he grabbed a flashlight to hide. Not a little flashlight. A huge silver maglight that cops carry around to beat people with. This went unnoticed by the nurse helping him...somehow.

When he was exploring, we got the movie's one and only nude scene which was just over the top and unnecessary. It could have been done better and more sinisterly, rather than trying to drag the sex element into the plot, which failed miserably.

When he was trying to escape, he ran around the middle pathways of the building. He would reach a cross and instead of heading for the exit door, which we can see only a few steps beyond him, he chose to go left and come back around by the main desk. He did this over and over. I started pointing out the exit, hoping he'd hear me or something, but he would nevr go for the exit, even though he was trying to get out.

I've been picking on the boyfriend, but the guy who lost his sister hasn't gotten much attention. He gets no development at all for being the other major player in the film. He shows up, does his scene, and disappears. Probably like Jerry O'Connell did on the set. There is little information given about him, so when his big ending is revealed, there's no real connection there to get a reaction. We did have a chase scene, and it was apparently his job to stand there and let the person he is chasing get away, since he didn't even try.

Without spoiling it, it's hard to relate my eye rolling for the climax and ending. Amy went through a lot of obstacles to get to her goal, which is a good thing. What's not so good is we had an idea of how long his scene SHOULD take already, and the cuts were definitely not syncked up. She would run around for 5 minutes, he'd have a 30 second bit. We end up with a 15 minutes run thru the hospital for his 3 minute scene waiting for her.

She did battle the demons of her past, but it seemed too easy. She reached her goal and that final room was also too easy. When they make their escape, it also too easy. Nothing stands in their way; they just run out. And I don't consider these spoilers since them making it out is a fundamental concept of the genre so that doesn't spoil much. But if I told you what happened next, it would be a spoiler. Let me say this: this type of ending is reserved for the least imaginative of writers; the type who can't figure out any other way to end it, so they throw this out for a "big twist." It usually comes off cheap and this was no exception.

So this movie had a decent premise: that of a hospital that doesn't exist. It had a decent lead: a woman who has a hospital phobia. Unfortunately, the execution was terrible and the plot didn't hold up under the weight.

Russian Ark -- 2002

Once this was over, I just had to say "wow." The most compelling part of this production was that it was a 90-minute film presented in a single, continuous take. It is the only feature film in history to do this. It was also shot in one take, which is, again, the only film in history to do this.

During the film, it really felt like you were following along with this guy as he was walking through this Hermitage Museum in Russia. He had a guide, or more like a companion, for a time which gave him someone to talk to, but for the most part, we were experiencing this from one person's POV the whole time.

The basic plot is a filmmaker finds himself in this museum and he travels through time while walking through this museum experiencing everything that happened over a 300 year history. If that sounds boring to you...well, that's kind of the crappy part. It kind of is boring.

Technically, the film is impressive. To coordinate everyone involved in the production to do everything all at once is a feat worthy of a great regardless of the story line, but judging the story just leaves you flat. The camera occasionally "looks" at something for an extended period, and you just want to move on. The traveller guy acts oddly at many places, and at one point trades raspberries with someone else who had kicked him out of a room. It was really odd. I guess the film would mean a lot more to those who know the history, but to me, I just didn't get it.

It was amusing at several points because the actors inadvertently take you out of the film by glancing at the camera. Maybe they're looking at the "guy" who's walking around, but he goes unnoticed most of the time. The end was odd when he was clearly walking backwards through the crowd and they had parted in front of him; you could see them closing the gap behind him.

So from a filmmaking perspective, this is a landmark film. A single take is nothing short of impressive for a feature film, no matter what the story is. But the story is mostly a documentary. So you trade one for the other.

Robocop -- 1987 -- R

I'd seen this quite some time ago as I vividly recalled the line, "I'll buy that for a dollar." Nice little film that follows the "superhero" formula where we get to see how this character came to be hearking easily towards future sequels.

We start with a future where a corporation owns the law enforcement. This corporation has a security division that is working to create a police robot to handle the dangerous situations. When the senior person's idea kills someone, a junior exec jumps with his Robocop idea and they just need a candidate (i.e. someone on the force to die). Well, the get one pretty quickly (they had estimated 40 days), and he gets hooked up to the machinery and becomes Robocop.

But all is not a cheery bed of roses. They sidestep the cliche of him going crazy and killing everyone, and instead go with a guy who remembers how he died and everything and everyone he lost when he did. It really works well to evoke some solid sympathy for our walking bucket of bolt.

While he is remembering, he takes down criminals all over the police, some of whom remember killing him. This sets him on a journey to find this guy and his cohorts in a sort of vendetta against them for killing him. He is stopped, though, by his prime directives for obeying the law.

It's a fun movie to watch, and works very well plot wise. Robocop was a rather well-rounded and sympathetic fellow, but not many of the other characters are. We definitely get some sympathy for him when everyone turns against him for doing what is right. It does get a little gory here and there, but it works well within the structure of the storyline.

So great flick from the eighties. Worth checking out if you're not sure what else to put on.

Reservoir Dogs -- 1992 -- R

Catching another flick of Quentin Tarantino that makes the top 250 list, as most of his films have done. He has a knack for creating a good story and good characters, and this was an early effort for him.

The plot involves a group of hoods who plan to heist some diamonds from a wholesaler. Everything is worked out before hand, and it seems all the bases have been covered. However, something goes terribly wrong. The cops are right there to nab them, and the shooting begins. There is a rat on the team, but no one knows who it is. There is no investigation here. We are placed on a journey into each character's life prior to the event to fin out for ourselves who is in it for who.

When it comes to plotting, this one is as unconventional as Pulp Fiction, but in a simpler manner. We get some literal BS-ing at the beginning to introduce us to everyone, and then flash right to the end of everything to make us wonder what the heck happened, and then flashback to each character's prep prior to the crime. Wonderful way to build a world, and a style that Tarantino does a lot in his films to ensure the audience stays interested in a very, very simple plot.

The film is played for the characters and dialogue. This is Tarantino's forte right here. This is the most important part of any film and he knows it, and it is milked to its fullest. We know each character by the time the end comes and though twists will happen, none of them come as a big surprise. Instead of being shocked and instead of playing into an inevitability, we don't really know what will happen, but when it does, it works.

I don't have any major problems with this one with the exception of some of the dialogue scenes running a bit too long on occasion, but this is a perennial problem in Q's films which balances out his strengths.

It's a classic flick in film history, and established Quentin Tarantino as a formidable force in the business. Definitely something worth watching, but not for the squeamish or bleeding eared.

Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run) -- 1998 -- R

While it's kind of a dumb title (the literal translation of the German title is Lola Runs), the movie is far from that as it combines some animation with lots and lots of running by the title character.

This is a fast paced, energetic film, that follows a woman who has 20 minutes to get 100,000 Marks to her boyfriend (which she has to practically generate out of thin air) to pay off a mobster or he is going to rob a store across the street from where he is waiting for her. Why does she run? Well, she had a moped, but it was stolen, which caused her to be late picking up her boyfriend in the first place, which led him to take a subway. Well, he skipped off the subway when some cops got on, and he left the bag of 100,000 Marks on the seat, and it was stolen by a homeless guy. So if they don't get this 100,000 Marks to the mobster, he will kill the boyfriend. Lola runs through the people she knows to figure out where to get 100,000 Marks on a moments notice (cause that's a lot of money), and she decides to go ask daddy, the banker. Got that? So begins the run.

The movie follows three different storylines, each with a different outcome. We start Lola's run here as she she runs down the stairs of her building and encounters a man and his dog. This encounter is different in each of the three timelines, and sets off what happens in each version. Lola runs across a variety of people on her run, and the time and circumstances of her encounter with them determines how their life goes from there (which we get as a quick series of snapshots right after Lola runs past them). Once each timeline comes to its conclusion and we get the outcome, we get a quick character moment between Lola and her man before the timeline starts over, and we get another version of what could happen if...

This is a fascinating alternate timeline sort of film that is unrelenting in its pace and energy. You hit the ground running right off (literally) and it doesn't stop until the credits roll...backwards. It begs to be unique and succeeds rather well. Through the timelines, we learn things about the characters that we are able to use in understanding things in the other timelines, though the characters, of course, don't have this privilege.

The characters aren't overly developed here, and in fact, since the film feels like a supercharged short filmed three ways, the development is sufficient to carry us through the simple storyline. This film is a rare exception in that to care about the characters, minimal development is required. We get some info about them in the beginning and then intermediary segments, but nothing really indepth.

So we have a film that attacks us with so much energy that it insists we keep up with it as it charges through its alternative storylines at break neck speed. It's a clever study that worked very well.

Return to Oz -- 1985 -- PG

We got this one from Netflix because we thought the kids might enjoy it. It scared the crap out of them. They didn't like the headless woman. They didn't like the Nome King. It was all very scary to them, making me, of course, kick myself for not watching it first...I mean, it says "Parental Guidance Suggested" for a reason, right. Anyway...

This is obviously a sequal to The Wizard of Oz, but don't get it confused with the 1939 musical classic, as this can be argued to be more based on the book than the movie that was nearly fifty years old at the time of its release (though we can't put it past Disney to release direct sequels to fifty year old films, can we?). Anyway, the movie musical was done by MGM, anyway, not Disney.

So we get Dorothy Gale, still remembering her tim in Oz, living in a half-finished house following the tornado that ripped up and destroyed everything. Aunt Em is concerned with Dorothy's obsession with this Oz place, and so she takes Dorothy into this psychiatric hospital in the hopes of ridding her of this fantasy. Well, Dorothy is none too pleased with having her head zapped by the doctor's new machine, so she takes off in a thunderstorm and ends up back in Oz. Once there, she finds everything to be in a shambled mess. The muchkins are gone, the yellow brick road is destroyed, and the Emerald City is completely devoid of its emeralds. She finds the tin man and lion turned to stone and the scarecrow in the custody of a creature called the Nome King who lives in the midst of the Deadly Desert. This is quickly becoming a story that shows off the sheer imagination of L. Frank Baum moreso than "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" ever hoped to.

But the film quickly follows kid pic formula with Dorothy getting together a large number of friends during her journey. Friends that cause more trouble than they're worth in most cases, but somehow serve to help her in her journey to get what she wants in total deference to whatever they may need. Frankly, I'd like to see a "friend" in these kid flicks be more about himself than the person involved (actually, Hoggle in Labyrinth comes to mind there). But here, they're all about Dorothy and helping her retrieve the Scarecrow.

The plot is decent, and I have to say the changeable heads of Mombi are actually rather clever, despite its freakiness. I think some of the plot happens way too easily. For instance, Dorothy willingly goes with Mombi even though they narrowly escape these Wheeler things who don't enter Mombi's place. Exactly how would that imply that Mombi is a good person? When the Gump falls apart, it is nothing short of coincidence that they are right over the Nome King's mountain. It is also interesting that Mombi has an underground path straight to the Nome King's mountain as well. In addition, some may recall that it took Dorothy a long time to reach the Emerld City the first time around, and yet now, she makes it in no time at all. Mombi also makes the journey from the City to the Mountain fiarly quickly as well. And then the way Tik-tok is "rescued" tops the list of unlikely plot coicidences.

Add a fair amount of dialogue cheese and you have a film that does well in creating a fantastic world, but only mediocre in making it believable. We are interested in Dorothy's journey through this world, but then snicker at the ridiculous mishaps they came up with to "complicate" the journey. So it's an overall mixed bag of a film that tries to be fantastic, but only succeeds in being ok. It's not bad, mind you, but just ok.

The Return -- 2006 -- PG-13

Now here's a mixed bag of a film. It feels like a drama masquerading as a thriller with a handful of shock moments. But as a drama it doesn't work either for a handful of other reasons...

The plot is rather simple. A girl is having dreams and visions about a place she's never been to and an event she has never experienced. We come to realize this event is the murder of the person through whom she is experiencing all of this stuff. So this girl is in sales and she lands the opportunity to get a big account from down in Texas, a place she has avoided for years for reasons unknown. She apparently has a friend who works with the bigwig of this company that her company wants an account with (I think it's a shipping company of some kind). While there, the visions get more and more powerful and she sees more of what had gone on before. The curiosity gets the better of her and she finds a clue in one city and moves to check it out to get to the bottom of the matter.

The story itself is interesting enough. The plot unfolds kind of naturally and gives us only little bites to nibble on but not enough to give it all away as we move through it. Moments that make it a horror/thriller are few and far between making it almost a drama, but without sufficient character development, it would hardly qualify. In fact, only the lead character gets much in the way of development. The guy she develops an interest in and was in her visions gets a little bit, but everyone else is just cardboard. The story does tie itself up fairly neatly at the end, though, and gives us a decent ending.

We do have our fair share of weird hiccups. The jacket from Netflix says there is a stalking boyfriend, but in the movie, this guy is a forceful co-worker who was upset she got the big account he always gets. He shows up down in Texas at one point and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense why he's there. His presence is fairly gratuitous, actually, and we could have done without him. A deleted scene reveals that he originally was the stalking boyfriend, and it was kind of creepy, but it was still gratuitous and unnecessary.

There was an obsession with a certain Toyota truck in one series of scenes. We saw the tailgate in one shot, and when the girl was walking through a parking lot, we see it two more times when she passes it...twice.

There was one jump point that was actually kind of amusing when I thought about it. When the girl looks down while sitting in front of a mirror, we see the face of the other person in the mirror overlapping hers. It's pretty weird. When she looks up, she jumps and the soundtrack hits, causing the audience to jump as well. Why wouldn't we jump when we see the face? Kind of odd.

So it makes for an ok little thriller. The story has some problems, and there are some points that don't make some sense, but on the whole it's ok. The deleted scenes and alternate ending on the DVD serve to further illustrate how all over the place they were on this storyline. It could have been a lot better if there had some measure of character development and fewer contrivances, but hey, that's the way with a lot of stories.

Resident Evil: Apocalyse -- 2004 -- R

Should I really bother reviewing Alien From L.A.? Nah, how many times can you comment on Kathy Ireland's bad (bad, horrible) acting? Let's go for something with a lot more cultural significance: RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE!

Okay, so this film picks up a little bit before where Resident Evil left off, and really does a decent job of filling in the gaps that were so prevalent and sequel-ready in the last film. In fact, from an action and interest perspective, I would go so far as to say this one was better than the last one in many respects. But we're also dealing with two totally different films.

Last time, we didn't know what was going on and were trapped in an underground facility just trying to escape. This time, we have escaped from the facility, but get trapped in a city very much aware of the consequnces of being so. Conspiracy theories run rampant here as the big-time Umbrella Corporation takes complete control and tries to stifle what is going on.

The plot comes across a lot clearer now that we've suffered through the first film, so this time, a lot more time is spent ironing out the details of what is going on and who is doing what to whom...of course, therein also lies the film's greatest fault. Plot, plot, plot...I could swear there were some kind of characters in this film.

Yeah, there were. About a million of them. Which ones do we pay attention to? Who is going to develop? Who is zombie fodder? Please, oh please, stop introducing new people! You're not giving us time to get attached to anybody! And so it went through the film. We could follow the lead character because we had her journey in the first film, and we even got (sort of) the guy she survived with. It was a nice moment. One of...um, one.

It all boils down to a decent action movie with lots of action moments and very little letting up on the engine for anything. A good effort was made to give the condition a back story and reason and to give us a plot to follow, but other than that, we get zombies and a big freakin' dude who is scary looking...and that no one will shoot at his head. Yeah, a big point is made to shoot at the zombies' heads, and when big, bad, and ugly shows up, the bullets are bouncing off his torso. Aim up! Aim up! Aim up! No one aims up. They all get wiped out. Ugh. And don't get me started on "we should split up to cover more ground." Who would do this? Seriously.

Anyway, it was a good follow to the first film that had sme decent progression. More effort could have been put in to characters, and we had our typical slew of idiotic actions, but to be honest, I'll probably watch the next one (which is due out September 21st in theatres) when it comes out on video.

And a final comment: I mentioned Alien From L.A. for a reason. In that movie, there is a funky shaped building that serves as the Law Center or something. That very building (or one like it) is City Hall in RE: Apocalypse. Pretty wild.