Things which hopefully go straight-to-video
Yes, it is time!
Screamers II: The Hunting
Okay. We had a Canadian low-budget action movie featuring the Robocop guy and a basis from a PKD short story, Second Variety. I can't imagine the first movie being a success, but still, ten years later, someone decides to do a Screamers II, set in the same type of gravel mine landscape but with slightly fewer ruins, and with lots of cheapo tunnel shots which looks like they're shot in the basement of a moderately sized office building. I think Canadians are to blame again.
What, story? Yes, you see, these Screamer robots who cut people to pieces like homing chainsaws, also make humanoid copies or something. So there's a ten year late distress signal from Sirius-B, the Screamer-infested warzone planet, and seven brave volunteers including a spunky female second-in-command go there with a rather small ship to "rescue the survivors" before the planet is hit by a conveniently appearing Size Ten Magellanic Storm or something like that. Asteroids.
This is a stupid, badly scripted movie so packed with genre cliches you wish the Screamers had a go at the script before someone shot it. It feels very ad-hoc and things barely make sense. There's a serious amount of gore but the action is rather sucky, the amount of Aliens analogues is embarassing and the end is predictably awful. And Lance Henrikssen shows up with some sort of energy gun and corny suit, which would have made more sense and entertainment value in Fallout 3.
Death Race
Remember Corman's classic Death Race 2000? I think that was banned in Sweden for a while, making it a sure hit for the Video Violence-addicted youth of the 80's, when we watched movies like Commando and Cobra because they were illegal. Anyone having seen those two movies probably can guess that that's like the only attraction with such crap. Anyway, the original Death Race had some sort of weird 70's political message and a lot of dark humor, plus Stallone in one of his least remembered roles.
Anyway, that movie is a profound and visionary political thriller in comparison to Paul WS Anderson's 2008 remake of Death Race which essentially is one of those prison movies where convicts kill each other in order to please the crowd. I'm sure Van Damme has made at least one. What director Anderson does here in order to improve the genre is add in cars with guns, so it is a bit like a very boring Car Wars game meeting a bad prison movie (I don't think the original Death Race was a prison movie?), and instead of having cool actors like Carradine and Stallone which Corman had, he has to do with Jason Statham who's admittedly tough but not very fun and Tyrese Gibson who's, not very fun either although he's funnier than Statham. There's a lot of driving and crashing and shooting, but it's very dull after a while because that's basically what happens, and you have that weird computer game movie feel to it all which I guess might have to do with Anderson's experience in shooting Computer Game Movies. And the female co-driver convicts are of course looking more like something out of Maxim than something out of Cops, but I guess that's what you expect.
I didn't think it could happen given what we're talking about here, but it does feel like Anderson is making more and more stupid movies with time. Maybe it's a Luc Besson syndrome.
I guess I should say something good about Death Race. Hmm. Well, there are some nice stunts but it is all wasted by the idiotic plate at the end telling people not to try the stunts on their own. Come on, the target audience for this one are likely three years too young to drive and if they are old enough to drive and stupid enough to find this a great film to emulate I think that... ...oops. I almost became an eugenics proponent there. Sorry, ignore that tasteless rant.
Screamers II: The Hunting
Okay. We had a Canadian low-budget action movie featuring the Robocop guy and a basis from a PKD short story, Second Variety. I can't imagine the first movie being a success, but still, ten years later, someone decides to do a Screamers II, set in the same type of gravel mine landscape but with slightly fewer ruins, and with lots of cheapo tunnel shots which looks like they're shot in the basement of a moderately sized office building. I think Canadians are to blame again.
What, story? Yes, you see, these Screamer robots who cut people to pieces like homing chainsaws, also make humanoid copies or something. So there's a ten year late distress signal from Sirius-B, the Screamer-infested warzone planet, and seven brave volunteers including a spunky female second-in-command go there with a rather small ship to "rescue the survivors" before the planet is hit by a conveniently appearing Size Ten Magellanic Storm or something like that. Asteroids.
This is a stupid, badly scripted movie so packed with genre cliches you wish the Screamers had a go at the script before someone shot it. It feels very ad-hoc and things barely make sense. There's a serious amount of gore but the action is rather sucky, the amount of Aliens analogues is embarassing and the end is predictably awful. And Lance Henrikssen shows up with some sort of energy gun and corny suit, which would have made more sense and entertainment value in Fallout 3.
Death Race
Remember Corman's classic Death Race 2000? I think that was banned in Sweden for a while, making it a sure hit for the Video Violence-addicted youth of the 80's, when we watched movies like Commando and Cobra because they were illegal. Anyone having seen those two movies probably can guess that that's like the only attraction with such crap. Anyway, the original Death Race had some sort of weird 70's political message and a lot of dark humor, plus Stallone in one of his least remembered roles.
Anyway, that movie is a profound and visionary political thriller in comparison to Paul WS Anderson's 2008 remake of Death Race which essentially is one of those prison movies where convicts kill each other in order to please the crowd. I'm sure Van Damme has made at least one. What director Anderson does here in order to improve the genre is add in cars with guns, so it is a bit like a very boring Car Wars game meeting a bad prison movie (I don't think the original Death Race was a prison movie?), and instead of having cool actors like Carradine and Stallone which Corman had, he has to do with Jason Statham who's admittedly tough but not very fun and Tyrese Gibson who's, not very fun either although he's funnier than Statham. There's a lot of driving and crashing and shooting, but it's very dull after a while because that's basically what happens, and you have that weird computer game movie feel to it all which I guess might have to do with Anderson's experience in shooting Computer Game Movies. And the female co-driver convicts are of course looking more like something out of Maxim than something out of Cops, but I guess that's what you expect.
I didn't think it could happen given what we're talking about here, but it does feel like Anderson is making more and more stupid movies with time. Maybe it's a Luc Besson syndrome.
I guess I should say something good about Death Race. Hmm. Well, there are some nice stunts but it is all wasted by the idiotic plate at the end telling people not to try the stunts on their own. Come on, the target audience for this one are likely three years too young to drive and if they are old enough to drive and stupid enough to find this a great film to emulate I think that... ...oops. I almost became an eugenics proponent there. Sorry, ignore that tasteless rant.