31: Rob Zombie's breed of rock-n-roll horror is back once again

Today, I look at Rob Zombie's killer clown/survival horror film 31, which I had the fortune of seeing at an early screening on September 1st. The early screening is now kind of moot considering it's now in wide release already.
And with this, I'm finally caught up with films I've seen in theaters this summer and fall.

Rob Zombie's 31:
Traveling in the countryside, a band of carnival employees are ambushed and kidnapped by a mysterious cult-like group of powdered wig-wearing aristocrats. The aristocrats, whoever they are, have selected the unlucky group to play their annual Halloween game they call "31". The sick game of cat-and-mouse pits the group against a string of increasingly dangerous foes, called the "Heads," who are random psycho-killers hired for big money by these aristocrats to dress up like clowns and butcher the people. They have 12 hours to survive, and the odds are not in their favor.
    Rob Zombie can either make a great horror film or a not-so-great one. Despite being a personal favorite of mine, I can see why many people don't care for House of 1,000 Corpses, as it is very stylized and weird. The Devil's Rejects is universally heralded as his best film, being a convincing and realistic take on the savage characters from Corpses. His Halloween films are at least unique and don't copy the originals, but I don't really like them too much, they're just too over-the-top for me. However, despite hating it at first, his next film The Lords of Salem is a terrific throwback to the hardcore, acid trippy horror cinema of the 1970s.
    So how does 31 stack up? Happily, I can recommend this to any fan of horror. It's full of bloody, over-the-top violence, mean and vulgar characters, and a striking visual style. Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Meg Foster, and Kevin Jackson are great as the trashy carnival crew. They are pretty unlikable sometimes, but you can't help but root for them against the much greater evil of the Heads and their masters.
    Speaking of, Malcolm McDowell, Judy Geeson, and Jane Carr are great as the aristocratic murder enthusiasts, with awesomely indulgent names: Sister Serpent, Sister Dragon, and Father Napoleon-Horatio-Silas Murder. They are smaller roles but are endearing and mysterious and it seems like the actors relish the tongue-in-cheek evil of the characters.
    Richard Brake, a highly underrated character actor, is fantastic as Doom-Head, the most dangerous of the hired killers and the one with the best lines. He is menacing and demented, with that grungey, country feel that many of Zombie's villains have. Brake's psychotic grin is incredibly frightening, and is evocative of the Joker (he would have made a far better Joker than what Jared Leto delivered).
    Ginger Lynn and the great Tracey Walter (Bob the Goon from Batman) have memorable cameos, and E.G. Dailey and Torsten Vorges have small but great scenery-chewing parts.
     Lew Temple and David Ury have slightly comedic parts as the excessively depraved and violent brothers Psycho-Head and Schizo-Head, respectively.
    Pancho Moler appears as Sick-Head, another hilariously vulgar and iconoclastic character. Moler speaks mostly in Spanish, un-subtitled, a creative choice I respected.
    The music in the film was pretty excellent, as Zombie as a great knowledge of rock and folk music that he employs perfectly in his films, and again, the visuals are pretty unforgettable.
    While not particularly scary, the film is violent, entertaining, and shocking, all things I expected and was satisfied by with this film.
    31 may not be Zombie's best or scariest film (those go to Rejects and Lords, respectively), but it is probably his most consistently entertaining since Corpses. It's crass, bloody, sick, a bit dream-like, and subverts expectations for typical genre conventions, and it's just a great time for the fall season. If it's playing in your area or offered on VOD, go out and see it, support a great indie film that was funded by the fans and is made by a man with true affection for the genre. 7/10 stars.

Fun fact: Saban, the entertainment group that distributed the film, was the group that distributed Power Rangers. Seeing their logo on my screen again triggered major nostalgia.

                                                 (Image: Wikipedia)

Suicide Squad and Sausage Party: August is always just a slew of disappointment, some are just worse than others

Today, I look at the (deservedly) universally hated Suicide Squad and the generally liked Sausage Party.

Suicide Squad:
After the disastrous events of Batman v. Superman (both the actual film events and the crushing disappointment), government agent Amanda Waller puts together a team of superhuman criminals and outcasts to face any major supernatural threats that may attack. When an ancient being threatens to destroy the modern world, this "suicide squad" is dispatched against their will to dispose of the threat. Meanwhile, team member Harley Quinn's psycho boyfriend and master criminal The Joker orchestrates her escape.
    This was a film I was excited to see after seeing the fun and over-the-top look of the film from the marketing. I was skeptical of Jared Leto as The Joker, but after hearing positive reception about his small role I was happy to see what he had to offer. I was devastated when I saw the film.
    It's a film that seems just mediocre when you first see it, but slowly you realize how much you hate it the more you think about it. At least that's what I felt.
    The cast are all just there. The only real stand-outs were Viola Davis, who was admirable as the ruthless and calculating Waller, and Margot Robbie, who, despite some cringey one-liners, was absolutely perfect as Harley Quinn, though her relationship with other team members was underdeveloped. Will Smith was good... as Will Smith. He was just miscast as Deadshot and they try to make this scumbag contract killer into a nice guy because he has a daughter, which somehow excuses his killing random people for money.
    Common just kind of shows up. For about 30 seconds. And then the Joker kills him.... for now reason (cause y'know, crazy).
    Adam Beach appears as Slipknot, the deadliest Squad member in comics, who is reduced to a cameo with one line before he disappears from the film in a comedically awful fashion.
    Jai Courtney does a fair job as Captain Boomerang, bringing a fresh take to the character in the vein of a chav/bogart punk that I found entertaining, despite, again, some cringey lines on his part.
    Ben Affleck has a cameo as Batman, and Jared Leto is absolutely terrible as The Joker. I've already elaborated on his performance before, so I'll link to an in-depth take on it here: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-not-like-Jared-Letos-Joker/answer/Matthew-Cotter-6?__snid3__=328470377&__nsrc__=1&__filter__=all
    Cara Delevingne seems to confuse her two careers, strutting about the screen as if on a runway and not saying or doing much instead of, you know, acting. Her villain entirely relies on her sex appeal to get by and that's kind of insulting.
   The rest of the cast are bland and the movie just comes off incredibly rushed (which apparently it was, as David Ayer, who had a much darker vision for the film, was forced to write in in 6 weeks and had most of it cut in reshoots to appeal more to the success of Deadpool by giving it a forced comedic overlay). Characters are given personality traits they've never before possessed (Killer Croc is now super in touch with his black heritage and is more a comedic relief character instead of a terrifying force of nature like he should be), and all motivations are rushed (even Jay Hernandez as El Diablo, the only character I really liked, is given a forced backstory which he tells in exposition only and even then it's just so the audience goes 'Oh, he had a sad life so now I like him.')
    The CGI effects are abysmal and confusing and the entire film is just boring and ugly to look at. The soundtrack reeks of "focus group" and all the songs are by mainstream artists and the most cliche music choices are made during the opening montages.
    Suicide Squad is trash. I'm not a Marvel fanboy, but I certainly would take anything (even Ant-Man) over this mess of marketing. DC just keeps making the same mistake: playing catch up with Marvel and fucking up their films as a result instead of slowing down and just focusing on making a good film individually. More creativity and effort went into the design of the posters than the actual film, apparently. 4/10 stars.



Sausage Party:
In a local supermarket, foods worship the idea that one day they will be chosen to be in The Great Beyond, a place of magic and wonder where they can finally have sex, as long as they are good now. One sausage, Frank, finally seeks to learn the truth of what lies beyond the supermarket after a store accident leads to a warning from a dijon mustard that the Great Beyond is a lie and what lies beyond is an unimaginable horror.
    Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg bring their most twisted film to date. Turning the CG animation world on its' head, they take full advantage of the medium to get away with sickest, most taboo stuff they can think of that would never skate by in a live-action film.
    The voice cast are incredible, and I won't list them here, because part of the fun of the movie for me was finding out who voiced certain characters. (Sammy Bagel Jr., my favorite character, is voiced by a well-respected actor which I found pretty amusing considering who this character is and what he does).
    The animation is of decent quality, having a nice, colorful palate and crisp imagery. Most of the jokes rely on food and sex puns, which gets grating at times, but there's enough cleverness to balance it out. The plot takes some incredibly unexpected turns that I found both ballsy and hilarious and overall the film was a great time (though I think it'd be better drunk or high, and I think that was the intention all along).
    Sausage Party is a fun comedy with some sly humor and an effective social satire on religion, surprisingly. I say just stop reading this and check it out for yourself. 6.5/10 stars.



(Images: Wikipedia)

Lights Out and Star Trek- Beyond: July's most most mediocre offerings

Today, I look at the horror film Lights Out and the sci-fi adventure Star Trek: Beyond, in an almost pointless game of catch-up due to my ridiculous hiatus I've been taking as of late.

Lights Out:
After a number of strange and frightening occurrences, two siblings (one a 20-something punk rock girl and the other her pretty bland younger brother) begin to fear that their mother has slipped off the deep end and there is a paranormal entity hiding in the shadows of their homes, stalking them as prey and puppeting their unstable mother along.
    David F. Sandberg, a Swedish director, helms this directorial debut which was inspired by his low-budget but still effective and charmingly simple short of the same name he produced in 2013. I think it shows in this final product which has a paper-thin, predictable plot which was a little too reminiscent of The Ring at times (a film I only recently saw and felt was grossly overrated).
    Teresa Palmer was a forgettable and cardboard cutout lead character. I haven't seen much of Palmer's work but I'm sure she's fine in other things, just here she was nothing special. Alexander DiPersia was the standard supportive horror boyfriend character and Gabriel Bateman came across as a low-rent Ty Simpkins from Insidious. Bateman wasn't anything more or less expected from the genre. Maria Bello was probably better than most of the cast as the on-edge mother character though her psychosis came off as more irritating than scary. Alicia Vela-Bailey (who's gorgeous in real life, funny enough) carried a certain presence with her during her screen time as Diana, so she was the highlight of the film. Lotta Losten (the star of the original short and the director's wife) makes a cameo in the opening scene echoing the original short.
    The plot felt too brisk and repetitive, and ultimately it was just that: a run-of-the-mill genre piece that will be forgotten within a year just with an added gimmick of the "the villain only exists in the dark" plot point. They do play with that concept pretty cleverly a few times, like the use of black lights, but I felt the movie didn't deliver enough story or substance to make me enjoy those moments as much as I could have.
    Now, while I mentioned The Ring was a very overrated movie, I appreciated the visual style of the film and persistent sense of unease and dread that purveyed the film up until the somewhat mediocre climax. For Lights Out, rather than sitting in fear of the next scare, I was bored, awaiting the next cued "Boo!" moment.
    Lights Out is not a very promising directorial effort from Sandberg, which is disappointing after the hype of the short film, with bland and run-of-the-mill characters, too many conventions and not enough originality, and a misunderstanding of what made the original short scary. (For a breakdown of that, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPRppNlfaX8) 4.5/5 stars.




Star Trek, Beyond:
Some time into their five-year mission, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise's boredom with the minutia and repetition of their day-to-day routines is interrupted when they become stranded by a strange alien attack, leading them to become separated on a mostly vacant alien world, only populated by a group of rogue creatures who have a vendetta against Starfleet.
    The first of these films to not be helmed by J.J. Abrams (who of course have moved on to Star Wars), it is instead directed by Justin Lin, known for his work on the Fast and the Furious franchise, and written by Doug Jung and cast member Simon Pegg.
    Feeling a lot more like an episode of the original show and with enough wink-winks and subtle continuity nods to make even the most hardcore fanboy's head spin, this is probably the most goofy and bland of these new films, and my least favorite, but it is by no means a bad film. It's not the best the summer had to offer, but very far from the worst.
    The cast are still very comfortable in their roles, and the bittersweet feeling of seeing Anton Yelchin on screen for the last time made me more partial to the film (one scene near the end feature a framing on Anton in the center of the frame and a line about "absent friends" that's almost chilling
considering the film was in post-production at the time of his tragic death).
    Idris Elba played a pretty bland bad guy, which was unfortunate for such a skilled actor, and one with experience in playing cold, calculating baddies (anywhere from Luther on Luther, to Stringer Bell on The Wire, to Charles Miner on The Office).  Sofia Boutella has a nice role as the supporting as the scavenger Jaylah. Joe Taslim and Lydia Wilson also appear.
    Leonard Nimoy and Yelchin are given heartwarming little tributes on this film, and they will be sorely missed in upcoming adaptations.
    The unveiling of Sulu as gay was not supported by George Takei himself and I felt it was an unnecessary PC addage to diversify an already incredibly diverse cast of characters.
    The music choices in the film felt appropriate and one final sequence set to a popular song from a previous entry was clever and fun. Ultimately, despite a few clever set-ups, most of the action had little to set it apart from the constant stream of blockbusters recently.
    Star Trek Beyond is essentially an average episode of the original series stretched out to feature length, and is a decent summer outing, but nothing more. It felt somewhat empty, so it made me sad it would be the final film of Yelchin's career. 6/10 stars.

                                                     (Images: Wikipedia)