Cinema Fails
Review: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
This installment of the franchise attempts to instill the one thing it absolutely did not, under any circumstances, need.
Realism.
Up until this point, every installment, including the 2001 remake, has been in the realm of the pulp. (I just realized I missed Rise, which Hulu doesn’t currently have).
This movie tries to be pseudo-hard fiction. An experimental retrovirus designed to treat Alzheimer’s is being tested on chimps. It mutates into something which kills most humans…and grants chimps super intelligence.
Only some of the apes can talk. The rest use sign language, which apes are quite capable of learning. Some of this feels like a cautionary tale about lab animals. Some chimps want peace, some revenge.
Other than the jarring genre switch, which I wasn’t too keen on, this is my kind of a story, literally. I’ve written books in which the enemy is those who want war, not any given side, and this movie is in the same vein. Some of the humans want peace, too.
But ultimately, those who want war win, despite everything. (Did the apes really become civilized when they discovered defenestration?)
The conflict starts as being about land, but is ultimately existential. Is there room for more than one dominant species? Caesar says yes. Kobo says no.
My heart wants to say yes. My gut…yeah.
Cinema Disaster Mythica: A Quest for Heroes
The Mythica series is…interesting. At some levels, it’s a bit unfair to call these movies “disasters” because a lot of thought went into them and the scripts are pretty decent.
The movies “star” Kevin Sorbo…he’s in each one for about five minutes to lend his name. I don’t feel that improves them.
They also appear to have been based off of somebody’s D&D campaign, and were funded by, yes, Kickstarter.
There are six movies, but it took me a while to find the first one.
The real star is Melanie Stone, who plays Marek, an escaped slave girl with a lot of talent for magic (she appears to be a sorcerer rather than a wizard).
(Note that of the six movies in the series only two have the same director).
One point I do give them is that Marek is physically disabled and at the start it’s handled well. Unfortunately, they ruin it later with “If you were a better person, the goddess would heal you.” Knock it off! That’s not a message disabled people need, like, ever.
The fight choreography is also terrible, but the ogre is pretty good. They must have spent a good chunk of their microscopic budget on it. I also like how they make a cleric asking for divine intervention visible on screen.
The actors, though, are competent…
This isn’t a good movie, but it’s actually a pretty decent popcorn flick if you can handle the level of tropiness. The plot is pretty much all D&D tropes. It’s honestly enjoyable as what it is (except for the ableism…and they were doing so well, too…)
But it’s also not the new Dungeons & Dragons movie.
Black Sails 1.1 “I.”
Arrr! I never got around to this when it was first released, but it’s supposedly pretty good and there aren’t that many pirate shows.
I will say even for 2014 and a TV budget the exterior shots of the ships are kinda bad. Everything else is pretty good (although the lesbians look pretty gratuitous as of right now).
We have a mutiny, we have a treasure ship, we have a pretty solid female character in Eleanor Guthrie, trying to control a pirate port.
It’s pretty decent for what it is, so far.
And no, there are no episode titles. At all.
Cinema Disaster: 4 Horsemen: Apocalypse
No, this is not a Bible movie. It’s an Asylum flick about a weird supervolcano phenomenon in Brazil, not known for supervolcanoes, that’s going to create a nuclear winter and destroy all life on Earth.
This is typical disaster movie exaggeration, but there’s no excuse for the rest of the bad science, which involves locusts, using bombs to stop a volcano, suffocating fungi with oxygen…
…and at least one situation where a character distinctly read the script, calling for a mycologist long before anyone knows that there are, in fact, fungi.
(The 4 Horsemen show up as a shroom-induced hallucination).
As disaster movies go, the plot itself isn’t bad. And I do give them points for one thing. It’s rare in B-movies for a Black actor to get a good role, and they give a Black woman a major, non-stereotyped character who survives the movie. Kudos on that one.
It’s also not offensive to Christians, particularly, although the horsemen stuff is tacked on for absolutely no reason and it would have been a stronger movie without it. On the other hand, they do have devout people interacting with scientists in a very positive way.
This could have been a decent mid-range disaster flick if these people had any idea how, well, anything worked. But as everyone involved apparently failed high school science, it is definitely relegated to sucky.
I made it for 80 minutes before I had to raid the stash. Alas, not of shrooms…
Cinema Disaster: Raptor Ranch
This alliteratively named movie stars the equally alliterative Lorenzo Lamas. Sort of. The real star is Jana Mashonee, who is actually a pretty decent Final Girl. She’s also Native American, although the movie appears to start with her being eaten by a dinosaur while doing a ceremony in the woods. This didn’t work…
In a couple of scenes, it really stars her breasts.
This movie is on IMDB under its alternate title of “The Dinosaur Experiment.” (I’m also seeing it listed as just Dinosaur Experiment).
How is this old guy on a ranch raising dinosaurs? Where did he get the DNA? This makes no sense.
None of this makes no sense. The bus breaks down, but Abbi is able to start it. (My comment: She’s the Final Girl, she can do things like that).
As they say where I come from, this movie “Doesn’t make a blind bit.”
It does come with a fun sequence where a guy doesn’t notice the dinosaur “sneaking” up behind him and continues to not notice it even when everyone else is trying to get him to turn round.
Oh, and a nice, big, satisfying explosion. No dinosaur movie is complete…
Utahraptors are labeled velociraptors, but that’s a trope at this point. And the primary dinosaur is blue, an obvious callback to Jurassic Park. It doesn’t quite manage to be a parody, though, in no small part because of the scenery chewing overacting that approaches Shatner levels in a few places.
It’s got its moments as a popcorn flick (and the appropriate sequel bait ending), but…again, why are there dinosaurs?
Also, I believe Texas is out of Bigfoot’s range…
Cinema Disaster: Scorched Earth (2018).
This is the 2018 post apocalyptic bounty hunter movie staring Gina Carano. It is not the 2024 foreign language heist movie with this title in English. It is not even the 2023 post apocalyptic…
Yeah, it’s a popular name, but this is the one with Carano. And it’s…a western.
Not a bit like a western, not influenced by western tropes, but straight up a western. There was an apocalypse. That’s why everyone (including the horses) is wearing respirators and occasionally we see a weird storm.
It has no impact on the plot or the interactions with the characters. It’s just…a western.
Up to and including not only conflict over a silver mine but a fight in said mine that involves a mine cart, a shovel being used as a weapon and, of course, dynamite. Oh, and there are posses and sheriffs.
As a western, it’s not actually that bad. As science fiction, it’s a western.
There’s some delightful scenery chewing by both the bad guy (Ryan Robbins) and the mentor figure (John Hannah). Carano uses a hat as a disguise, and it works. There are lots of inappropriate horse noises.
This should just have been a western. It would have been a better movie without the pretense of science fiction clearly thrown in to…sell it? Westerns were very unpopular in 2018, after all, and aren’t doing that much better now.
I call things like this flying bus stories, in this case, though, it was a flying apocalypse story.
Should have been a western and if you watch it with that in mind, you’ll probably enjoy it.