The Cinema File #109: "Battlestar Galactica: Blood And Chrome" Review

[Note: Feel free to insert the obligatory use of the term "Frak" anywhere in the following review, at your convenience. - Management]

I love Battlestar Galactica. I love the original series, I love the Ronald D. Moore re-imagining, I love Caprica. Fuck, I even love Galactica 1980. So, when I heard that they were making another installment of the new series canon, a more recent prequel to the remake taking place after the events of the recently cancelled prequel series, I was about as excited as the middle clause of this sentence was needlessly convoluted. Over the course of its development, Blood And Chrome was at various points thought to be a possible pilot for a new television series, or a stand alone movie or webseries, and now that I've seen it, as much as I want this franchise to continue, I can't say I would have been all that enthusiastic to see this particular iteration expanded into anything more than a one shot.

The Cinema File #108: "Bloody Bloody Bible Camp" Review

Oh come on, like I wasn't going to watch a movie called Bloody Bloody Bible Camp as soon as I heard it existed.

As surprising as it might sound given the subject matter I sometimes cover on this blog, I'm not a big fan of slasher movies. I love horror movies, but I came to my love of the genre by way of science fiction and fantasy, and always gravitate more to supernatural creatures, Nightmare on Elm Street over Friday the 13th. That being said, I have a certain appreciation for the classics from which we get so many now well worn cliches. I love the first two Halloweens (and technically the third one too even though its not a slasher movie), though I've always been partial to the second Texas Chainsaw, which if you've never seen it is basically a broad comedic parody of the first one. I can easily enjoy a slasher flick if its done right, enough that I can also easily key in to a parody of one if its done right. Bloody Bloody Bible Camp does a lot wrong, so much so that I'm not sure if I can outright recommend it, and yet I have to admit that just in terms of my own personal tastes, I enjoyed it probably a little more than I should have.

The Cinema File #107: "Parker" Review

I've never really been a Jason Statham guy. It's not that I don't like him, as much as I find myself not really all that enthusiastic about the kinds of movies he does anymore. Much like how The Perks Of Being A Wallflower made me think about my own teen coming of age movies long past, with franchises like The Transporter or Crank, while I can enjoy them to a certain extent, they just make me wanna watch a Schwarzenegger movie, or a Stallone movie, or a Van Damme movie, or something from my own action movie canon that I've already spent years developing. Those classic films will be classics until I'm dead, and frankly, aside from the occasional nostalgic comeback vehicle like The Last Stand or The Expendables, I don't need a new action star to make any more of them. I mention all of this to preface my ambivalent reaction to Statham's new film Parker, which I might have enjoyed more had I been more inclined to.

The Cinema File #106: "Here Comes The Boom" Review

Bless you Henry Winkler, for consistently being the one bright spot in movies that otherwise suck massive dinosaur balls.

So I finally got around to watching Here Comes The Boom, the latest Kevin James vehicle designed to convince me despite all evidence to the contrary that he's a legitimate leading man. I waited for video, as I just couldn't justify spending the money to see it in theaters, and I have to say, that decision has been vindicated. In my Silver Linings Playbook review, I noted that it felt like they took an Adam Sandler movie, took out Sandler and his sensibility, and replaced it with indie quirkiness. Here Comes The Boom feels like they did the same thing, except they forgot to replace the Sandler humor with anything, and just shrugged their shoulders as everything fell flat. Okay, to be fair, it doesn't quite suck dinosaur balls. Its not awful, but its awfully bland, and I can't recommend it.

The Cinema File #105: "A Haunted House" Review

I didn't like this movie. That's probably not entirely unexpected, given its a modern day horror parody movie involving a Wayans brother, which as a class of film is only decent in comparison to the much, much shittier Friedberg-Seltzer canon (and let us not forget, the even less funny Breaking Wind). And yet, I didn't hate this movie nearly as much as I thought I would either. It's not funny really, or at least not consistently, and the few times I did laugh are far outweighed by the amount of jokes that fell flat, but there was a certain charm about the whole thing that surprised me. Maybe my standards and expectations were just so low, but I'd say that while still not qualifying as good, A Haunted House might just be one of the better examples of a Wayan's produced spoof.

The Madea Challenge! Part Four: Madea Goes To Jail

Parts One, Two, and Three are in the previous links.

I feel like the guy at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, when he goes through the insane hole and comes out the other side as a giant alien baby thing. I think at the end of this retrospective, I'm just gonna pop out as a sassy old black lady baby in space. No, wait, I'm pretty sure that was a profound, evolutionary experience in that movie. Maybe its more like the scary boat tunnel in Willy Wonka, only instead of a whimsical Gene Wilder welcoming me into a land of fantasy at the end of it, its a sassy black lady in a magical grits factory who tells me to raise my kids right and stop talking smack to my elders. I don't even know what I'm doing here anymore. Madea #4 bitches! - Madea Goes To Jail

The Cinema File #104: "Robot And Frank" Review

[Editor's Note: A previous version of this review noted Michael Emerson as the voice of the Robot. This has been corrected to Peter Sarsgaard. Not sure how that happened, I wrote this around the same time as I wrote my review for The Dark Knight Returns, and must have mixed up reviews some how.]

If movies have taught me anything else (and they haven't), it's that one day, man's reliance on artificially intelligent robots will spell our doom as the machines rise up to exterminate humanity. Of course, I suppose we would have to actually invent a truly artificially intelligent robot first, but in the meantime, we still have the luxury of finding the occasional would-be killing machine just absolutely adorable. Such is the case with the subject of today's review, the independent comedy Robot and Frank.