Cyborg, Interrupted

Loyal readers may remember my utter glee at discovering a terribly entertaining straight-to-netherworld action flick called Gangland. It was an over the top thing of immense glory.

Little did I ever realize Gangland was essentially an unofficial remake/sequel to Canon's 1989's Cyborg, with Costas Mandylor and one of the guys from Step By Step step by stepping in for Jean Claude Van Damme while Vincent Klyn revived his long-haired, leather coat, no shirt, villain under a new name.

Such a discovery does not dilute my love of Gangland. I liked Cyborg well enough, so naturally, I headed to the vaults of Netflix's "Long Waits" for its very different sequel.

Quick Plot: It's 2074, and the world really digs cyborgs. Leading the industry is Pinwheel Robotics, an evil corporation way less fun than its name suggests. Pinwheel has a plan to eliminate their only rivals, the Coca-Cola to their Pepsi, Kobyashi Electronics. The plan involves sending a highly trained (in sex and combat) cyborg named Cash to Kobyashi, where she will detonate and explode all over the board of directors.

Lucky for her, Cash (young, pre-Hackers Angelina Jolie) has a fairy godfather of the television sort in Mercy, voiced with the luscious scene chewing lips of the one and only Jack Palance. Mercy can hop into different electronic devices to communicate and gives Cash and her human trainer-turned-lover-turned-best-named-character-ever Colton Ricks plenty of help in escaping. It's no Gibson Rickenbacker , but you have to give the Cyborg series credit for having fun with its characters' names.

Side note: Colton is played by a pre-Casey Jones, still Not Chris Meloni Elias Koteas.

Pinwheel's CEO dispatches an insane bounty hunter to retrieve Cash. Enter Billy "I've Never Been In a Good Movie But I've Sure Do Work A Lot" Drago in all his slithery glory, soon to be followed by a rival female cyborg bounty hunter. I haven't even reached the Koteas vs. Drago Mortal Kombat match that determines who gets to sail away to Africa!

As you can probably guess, Cyborg 2 isn't The Godfather: Part 2, but it sure is fun. Director Michel Schroeder keeps things moving, slowing down only for your token overly emotional soft focus love scene. The action is passable and has some fun twists. The cast ranges from fine (Jolie and Koteas) to hammily enjoyable (Drago) to glorious (Oscar winner Palance). You might think you know what it means to watch movies, but let's face it: you've never really lived as an audience member until you've heard Jack Palance aggressively whisper the word, "Cyyyyyyyyborg!"

High Point to follow:

High Points

Just one year after his triumphant, one-arm-push-up celebratory City Slickers Oscar acceptance, Jack Palance plays a cyborg. That in itself is special, but the relish with which he speaks every line is precious

Low Points

It’s hard to fault a film for being too earnest, but maybe after the glory of Gangland, I just wanted a little more goof and less romance to end all time

Lessons Learned

There are worse things than cyborg envy, among them, human envy and penis envy (and most likely, cyborg penis envy)

Infections can cause complications

In addition to sex and fighting, cyborgs are also very talented at knitting scarves

Because Any Excuse To Discuss the Ann-Margret Period Sheet Episode of Law & Order: SVU Will Not Be Missed

Our coda (SPOILER ALERT) gives us a bittersweet sendoff that shows how Colt and Cash have spent decades together alone in a random square of fertile land. 

As predicted, Cash remains in her 20something hot form while Colt has aged in human years...or, more fittingly, burn victim years akin to the Mattress King in Episodee 11.18, Bedtime

Rent/Bury/Buy

Cyborg 2 won't change your worldview or cement its place in your top 10 list anytime soon, but it's a fun little ride. The film reeks of that prized early '90s action/sci-fi style so if that's your jam, this is probably your peanut butter. It's not nearly as bonkers as Canon's first Cyborg entry, but it's still enjoyable for exactly what it is. It certainly makes me eager to find Schroeder's Cyborg 3, and not just because the cast includes Malcolm McDowell, Richard Lynch, William Katt, and, um, Kato Kaelin. Review coming eventually!

The One With Rachel Weisz

There are three things I knew about Dream House going in:

1. This was the movie wherein the beautiful and talented Rachel Weisz and the even more beautiful and talented Daniel Craig fell in love, creating a union that very well may destroy us mere mortals

2. This was not to be confused with (though for simpletons like me, would ALWAYS be confused with) the wonderfully wicked Hong Kong satire Dream Home

3. Anyone who watched the trailer knew the 'big twist,' one of those huge plot turns that apparently ruins the viewing experience

4. It wasn't going to be very good

Having not seen the trailer and having an odd fascination with cinematic horror that is not very good, I naturally queued it up on Instant Watch.

Quick Plot: Will Atenton is a big shot New York City editor handing in his resignation to spend more time with his wife and daughters in their new New England home. How big a shot is Will? Such a big shot that he has a whole staff carry his belongings out in those brown boxes that exist in every firing/quitting scene you've ever seen on film.

Before you can order a martini shaken not stirred, Will and his family are experiencing some strangeness at the homestead. Shifty neighbor Anne (Naomi Watts, because more talent should always be wasted) seems to be hiding something, but more pressingly, a batch of teenagers hold a black mass in the Atenton basement. Not surprisingly, we learn that the house was once the site of a tragic unsolved massacre wherein someone shot a mother and two little girls. All evidence pointed to the father, who has since been released from a mental institution.

Dream House was, to put it mildly, a troubled production. Aforementioned trailer reveals the film's huge twist (which in fairness, comes around the hour mark, so perhaps an argument could be made that it doesn't COMPLETELY ruin the film) and director Jim Sheridan apparently clashed so hard with the studio that he asked to have his name removed from the final product. Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz supported him by refusing to do any press for the film. 

Also, nothing in it really makes any sense.

This isn't a terrible film by any means. The actors are all professionals (though I have a personal aversion to hearing the normally lovely Rachel Weisz speak with an American accent). The visual style has some interesting things going for it in how it suggests the Atenton New England neighborhood as something a little otherworldly. The family dynamic is warm enough that I was fairly invested in their fate. The ingredients, if you will, were definitely there.

The problem, quite simply, is that nothing is mixed or cooked or combined or cobbled together in any way to make sense. After you learn the twist, there's simply so much that doesn't make any logical sense. For a small example, the mere fact that one can apparently walk from a secluded country home to the heart of town in the middle of a harsh winter and back again before sunset requires more than a fair share of suspension of disbelief. Unlike the trailer, I’ll avoid spoiling a key point, but suffice to say, Elias Koteas shows up as the most incompetent criminal this side of Shredder.

High Points

Hey, at least the ladies get some eye candy

Low Points

Look, I'm not really one to complain about an impeccably crafted male body on display, but the very idea that Will had that much time to work on his abs is a little dubious. Still, lady eye candy is nice in a genre typically catered towards the male gaze

Lessons Learned

Some types of jobs can be made much more foolproof with a picture or at the very least, a browse on Google Earth

There is ALWAYS time to maintain your Bond physique

One has no need for a car if living in the very pedestrian-friendly New England countryside

Rent/Bury/Buy

Dream House is, very simply, not a very good movie. It ultimately seems to be aiming for the same mature crowd as, say, The Skeptic. The tone doesn’t know if it should be genuinely dark and disturbing or grandparent-friendly, leaving the material to sizzle, grow cold, and eventually, become easily forgettable. There is some heart to the performances to at least keep some invested, but even on Instant Watch, this is a skip. Check out Dream Home instead. If nothing else, seeing both will free you from always wondering which title you did indeed watch.

Walken On Sunshine

How is it possible that I’ve gone nearly twenty years without seeing a movie that features Viggo Mortenson as the devil?

I disappoint myself.

Quick Plot: Young Thomas (The Other Chris Meloni, aka Elias Koteas) is just a prayer away from becoming an ordained Catholic priest when he's struck with visions of angels battling violently. It's enough to turn him away from the church and right towards the police force, where some time later, he takes on the investigation involving a dead body of true mystery.

The body, you see, has both female and male genitalia, unformed bones akin to that of an aborted fetus, Hebrew tattoos correlating with ancient biblical text, and no eyeballs. The coroner (played by Seinfeld's Bania, sans the Ovaltine) has no explanation, but Thomas can't ignore the evidence that just might suggest there are angels afoot.

Following a lead left in the hermaphrodite angel's apartment (nothing like casual Friday in the '90s), Thomas heads to a small town in Arizona to see what a recently deceased war veteran has to do with the action. Just ahead of him is the angel Simon (Eric Stoltz), who has some soul cup-in-ball action to do with a young Native American girl named Mary.

I haven't even reached the point where Christopher Walken shows up as Gabriel, a war mongering angel with shoe polished jet black hair and a handy human assistant who'd rather be dead (literally: Gabriel grabbed his soul in limbo following a paused suicide). Virginia Madsen joins the action as a friendly if underdressed elementary school teacher and just for good measure, Viggo Mortenson is a smooth-talking Satan with a hunger for rose petals.

I'm not going to lie: saying all of these things about a single movie kind of makes me want to explode.

In a good way.

I've made no secret that after my husband, Viggo Mortenson is tied with Clive Owen and Michael Shannon as 4th Sexiest Man Alive. You would think, perhaps, that Mr. Mortenson threatening to "lay you out and fill your mouth with your mother's feces" would bump him down a spot. You, good reader, know nothing.

Written and directed by Highlander's Gary Widen, The Prophecy is further proof that the 1990s was a strange, strange decade for horror. Like many a Miramax release, this one sat on the shelf for two years before it landed in theaters in 1995, surpassing any expectation by being a sleeper hit. Between Walken's nutty performance and the film's fairly grand premise, I can understand why.

Who DOESN’T want a film where Christopher Walken plays an angry angel who stops to cheekily tell schoolchildren to study math? The same film that has Not Christopher Meloni opening a lockbox to find a whole bunch of tanned human faces piled up like a businessman’s tie collection? Heck, by the time you toss in Amanda Plummer as--HOLD THE PHONE--an unbalanced psychotic, how can you want anything more?

High Points

I don’t know that it all fully comes together (I guess that’s what the bevy of sequels exists for), but it sure is fun to have such a grand, somewhat ridiculous story that makes God rather morally ambiguous happening about a good old fashioned horror movie

Low Points

Even if he IS played by Viggo Mortenson, there is something ultimately a little pushover-ish about Satan, eh?

Lessons Learned

Contrary to popular thought, getting a suicidal limbo-stuck slave to do your bidding is not easy

Like a movie theater and 7/11, Hell is indeed open on Christmas

Arizona teachers shop from the same clothing catalogs as farmers' wives

Freezers are for bodies, not beer

Rent/Bury/Buy

I don’t know what took me so long to finally catch The Prophecy, but I’m pretty darn satisfied that I finally did. The performances are zany fun, the plot is over the top, and the roses are eaten by Viggo Mortenson playing the devil. The film is streaming on Instant along with a few of its sequels, so I think it’s fair to make a prophecy that I will indeed be seeing more Prophecies in my future.

See what I did there?

Just Another 3-Letter Torture Film About Unhappy People

As Halloween bred its share of Intruders and Prowlers and Bloody Valentines, thus has Saw seen its children reproduce their own Hostels into Nine Deads into Hunger and so on. The rule is simple: assemble a group of strangers who are either miserable human beings, miserable in their current life choices, or a glorious combination of both. Have a somewhat less miserable morally compromised (though not in his own eyes) ringmaster assemble them into a dank and abandoned location in the name of teaching a lesson. Brainstorm a few cool ways to kill someone. Keep a cute final girl around until or after the final reel. Apply generic title (bonus points for it having multiple meanings) and BAM.

You will most likely end up on Instant Watch.

I have an odd affinity for these kinds of second generation wannabe Saws. There's something amusing about how obvious the ploy is, yet young filmmakers continue to get plenty of exposure by following these new rules of straight-to-DVD horror. It's the possession movie of the '70s, the slasher of the '80s, and talky serial killer stalking WB stars of the '90s. In twenty years, we may even find it cute.

Until then, we'll take whatever joy we can get. In this case, it's the fact that Casey Jones looks really tired.

Quick Plot: A sextet of unhappy, formerly or currently suicidal strangers awaken in empty cells under the watch of an angry man with bad hair and a gun. A few non-linear segments introduce us to our victims: a grieving mother, gambling addict, disgruntled cop, disturbed billionaire, guilty doctor, and heroin addled prostitute. Our Jigsaw stand-in's plan is simple: one player rolls a die while another is tied down to something ominous with the number rolled determining how extreme their physical test will be. Example: Russian roulette with the number of bullets based on the roll, or a man submerged in water for a matter of die-rolled-determined minutes. 

Sadly none are treated to a complimentary buffet trip or showgirls performance.

Die is not a special movie, although that doesn't make it incompetent. Director Dominic James achieves a very specific (albeit incredibly ugly) color palette and visual style for his film, from the dingy sweatsuits worn by most of the cast to the brown overcast that seems to emit from every light source. Likewise, the performances are all completely believable. While the characters themselves are fairly one-note, the actors are strong enough to leave convincing impressions that all have more layers underneath.

But you know, I--and I'm sure most of you--have also seen this film before. Maybe even seven times before, and one might have even been in 3D. Our creative killer's mission statement is all about rebirth through trial, but what's new about that? Didn't Shawnee Smith do it with a reverse bear trap to spare?

Die has no reverse bear trap, although it does prove that Elias Koteas is growing more and more into the world wearier form of Chris Meloni.

Now I'm sad that Koteas never guest starred on Law & Order: SVU. 

Such a tragedy has already made me forget what Saw ripoff I was talking about here.

I need to drink less. Or learn how to videoshop Elias Koteas into a scene with Chris Meloni.

Look! Something shiny.

High Notes

Die doesn't do enough with it, but I always have to give my respects to a film (particularly a standard genre one) that is smart enough to diversify its cast with a full range of ages

Low Notes

I challenge myself to remember a single detail about this film in 6 months

Lessons Learned

Heroin addiction will in no way deter your ability to learn a second language with impressive speed

Elias Koteas is not Chris Meloni. Or so they say

Sometimes we are more connected to perfect strangers than we think

(or so a gal can dream)

Rent/Bury/Buy

Die is streaming on Netflix Instant which is where it belongs. Like Hunger, this is one of the upper tier Saw descendents, but it's still a mediocre horror film with little specialness about it. Queue it up if you're in the kind of mood for competent, unexceptional horror. If you're like me, that feeling strikes you more often than it probably should. 

The best way to treat such a symptom, by the way, is by watching Law & Order: SVU.