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pjmerrill
Reviews
Woke Up Dead (2009)
Bad is just bad, on the internet or on TV
Unfortunately, Heder only has a few minutes to convey a lot in these webisodes. Looks like it could have been a great "made for TV" movie or nice "B" flick. The acting is horrible (especially Heders) and the writing is childish. The idea seems solid, but a lot of execution is missing. Great camera work, good lighting, some decent direction, but most the characters lack anything of interest. They are cartoons of people but not funny.
Krysten Ritter comes off amazingly strong, though, and shows some serious skills like she did in "Breaking Bad." She looks to be a real a star on the rise with the right roles. Good for her.
I'm afraid that this is just another notch in Heder's acting decline. This productions is almost too glossy for this poor talent. Strange.
Love zombie flicks. Now let's see a good one!
Humanity's End (2008)
Trust me....there are no spoilers....
Big fan of "great" B movies, but this is a throwback that even I couldn't stand. Always on the lookout for the next Bruce Campbell, I had high hopes for this one.
I agree with one of the previous writers in that the opener "backstory" narrative was ridiculously long, as to be painful, and even worse - in a distorted "alien" voice (was that supposed to add some sort of legitimacy to this nonsense?).
Unfortunately this film took itself too seriously. Stick some Campbellesque slapstick in there and it had a chance.
Oh - title of the movie is "Humanity's End" - but guess what - it doesn't......shock...
The entire movie feels like you gave a college class half a million bucks to make a flick. The sets are good, some of special effects are passable, but that's where it stops. No acting, no writing, no directing - it is a mess from beginning to end.
Recommended for college students looking into cinema and those of us who love to dig through the "B"s. Not for normal human consumption. Cheers!
I Am Legend (2007)
Omega Man meets 28 Days Later
Let me say first that I am a huge fan of Will Smith, and I think that he did a great job in this movie. It's always a pleasure to watch him work. A fine actor at the top of his game. But I suspect that if you put Casey Afleck as the lead in this one, it doesn't gross 30 million in the complete run.
Hollywood appears to have given up on actors all together, and is moving into complete CGI characters for no reason at all. The main "villian" is a CGI character only categorized as a "monster." As are the rest of the villains. Impossible to develop, and used only for cheap theatrics (leaping up buildings, really?).
Backdrop: The human population is decimated by a man-made plague that wipes out most of the world in one fell swoop. The remainder are mostly flesh eating creatures, and there are a few survivors who, for some reason, are immune to the virus. For some unexplained reason, Smith is trying to cure the effects of the virus. What is lost, unexplained, or simply not thought of, is the why? The bad guys are never developed as sympathetic victims in need of cure. Thye are just monsters to be avoided or shot. Even that is underdeveloped.
Huge plot holes exist in the story, around nearly every corner. The villains are monsters who have lost the ability to reason, but can work together in groups to construct (unnecessarily) elaborate traps? It reminded me of an old Bond film.
Spoiler here: and why exactly did Smith not just get into the duct work with the woman and child? Apparently his (must have been nuclear) hand grenade was going to blow up the entire building, so what was he sticking around for? Apparently it was safe in the basement fire/duct work....with some sort of escape route too...
The whole film seems like a bad combination of Heston's Omega Man and 28 Days Later - both films that were actually better than this one. At least in Omega Man, they attempted to develop their mutants (cheesy lines and bad makeup, but they gave it a shot).
Once again, a Hollywood blockbuster based on pretty backdrops, heavy CGI graphics, and lots of things blowing up.
It's a good rental if you're in the Hollywood mood, but you'll be left with more questions at the end like, "did you think that one part (those seven parts) even made sense?" Ultimately, I believe that this movie, for all the cash that it is making, will be shelved as junk cinema. There are good action/drama high-dollar movies out there, but this isn't one of them.
Tin Man (2007)
Half-hearted script results in over-acted Oz-wannabe
I'm not sure about how exactly this production was rated so highly. The positives first, to be fair, I suppose: The sets are top-notch. Very detailed, and finely crafted. The special effects are probably where most of the budget went. Costuming was fantastic, and makeup was incredible in this made for television movie. For the Sci-Fi channel, this was truly a successful production. But that's not saying much, with the continuous stream of low-grade TV movies coming out of Sci-Fi for the last few years.
Neal McDonough's performance was exceptional in a production filled with cheesy dialogue and (at times) horrible acting. He was a real stand-out, and someone should consider giving him a shot at a lead role. He looks ready. I'm baffled at the work of both Richard Dreyfuss and Alan Cummings - obviously working well below their paygrades, I can only assume that the writing sank them both, as their performances were weak (in the case of Dreyfuss) and criminally cheesy in the case of Cummings "oh, a Tin Man, I should have known..." Zooey Deschanel is so annoying and utterly unbelievable as to nearly stop you from watching the entire film. I'm sure that the writing did her no favors. This appears to have been too large a production to put on her young shoulders.
I suppose the lesson that I learned from this production is that no special effects or pretty visuals can replace quality writing. The story is thin. A pun isn't a pun when you shout it several times in a scene. This is a film that tries to be clever, and then tries to explain exactly how it's trying to be clever, which is even more annoying.
If you've got nothing to do for six hours, or have some other work to do while it's on, it's a fine distraction, but you'll spend half your time rolling your eyes or find yourself saying, "really - you're going to go there?" Avoid if sober, over the age of 17, or have an IQ of higher than 90. Kudos to the costume crew, effects crew, direction, and camera work. Story and acting - weak weak weak.