Tekken Tops the 3rd Annual Straight-to-DVD Movie Awards

Video game adaptation Tekken has won Best Picture in the 3rd Annual Straight-to-DVD Movie Awards, also grabbing the best Sci-Fi/Fantasy award. Other winners include Tamer Hassan who won best actor for his performance in Bonded by Blood, which also took Best Director for helmer Sacha Bennett. Romola Garai won Best Actress for her work in Glorious 39. Ballistica took both Worst Picture and Title-S0-Bad-It’s Good kudos.

Here’s the full list:

Best Picture: Tekken

Best Actor: Tamer Hassan, Bonded by Blood

Best Actress: Romola Garai, Glorious 39

Best Director: Sacha Bennett, Bonded by Blood

Worst Picture: Ballistica

Best Comedy: A Matter of Size

Best Horror: Hostel: Part III

Best Action/Thriller: The Man From Nowhere

Best Family Film: Barbie: Princess Charm School

Best Documentary: Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

Best Sci Fi/Fantasy: Tekken

Title-So-Bad-It’s-Good: Ballistica

The Hunters Reviews: “Unorthodox but Enjoyable”

The Hunters is the debut feature from director Chris Briant, who also stars as Le Saint, a detective who uncovers a human game reserve near an abandoned fort. The reviews are strong, citing the slow build from crime drama into all out horror at the end, bolstered by solid characterizations.  Michael Allen at 28 Days Later Analysis calls it “very compelling,” noting the “strong visual style” and “great intercutting and use of impressionism.”   Horror Asylum’s Ian Martin says Briant “successfully moulds some very believable characters, without needing to feed us too much information on them.” Alice Nelson of DVD Verdict calls the film “unorthodox but quite enjoyable,” adding, “If this film is any indication, Chris Briant has talent as both a director and an actor.” She warns however, that “the synopsis is wrong everywhere you look, even on [the film's] own packaging,” and that Glee star Dianna Agron’s role in the film is grossly overstated in the advertising, “…if you’re expecting to get your Glee fix while watching The Hunters, you’re going to be sorely disappointed…”

In a stark contrast, IMDb users give the film 4.3/10 stars with 751 votes counted.

The Hunters is available now on DVD and Amazon instant video.

Warning: This is a red-band trailer.

Check Out a Gunfight from Sinners and Saints

In the upcoming action-thriller Sinners and Saints, Johnny Strong (The Fast and the Furious) plays a cop-on-the-edge investigating a homicide in New Orleans that involves a childhood friend (The Boondock Saints‘ Sean Patrick Flanery). In this clip, Flanery comes up with a pretty extreme solution for a hopeless gunfight.

The film, which drops tomorrow, also stars Kevin Phillips, Costas Mandylor, Bas Rutten, Clifford “Method Man” Smith, Kim Coates, Jolene Blalock, and Tom Berenger.

Carjacked: The Straight2DVD Review

Carjacked stars Maria Bello as Lorraine, an unemployed single mother who is going through a rough patch in her life; not only is she divorced but her custody of son Chad (Connor Hill) is being challenged by her ex-husband due to a bout of accidental negligence that almost got Chad killed. While stopping for gas, she is carjacked (natch) by Roy (Stephen Dorff) who has escaped capture after robbing a bank. His request is simple: drive him to where he needs to be to pick up the money and no one will get hurt. Naturally things get tense and hectic as Lorraine struggles to save her son from a man slowly revealing himself to be a psychopath.

Let’s just get this right out of the way: had there been two other actors besides Bello and Dorff in the lead roles, Carjacked would not have worked nearly as well as it did. The two use their enormous talents to elevate both their characters and the movie as a whole. Bello makes Lorraine into a sympathetic and even complex character, whose bad luck has turned her into an almost beaten down shell of a human being. And when it’s time to step it up, Bello even turns into a decent action heroine with proper motivation to gun Roy down.

As good as Bello is in the lead, Dorff is even better and if there’s one reason to watch Carjacked it’s definitely him. I like it when villains in movies are given things to do other than snarl and with Roy, you get to see almost two sides of him. In the beginning he even seems like a nice guy, bonding with Chad and handing out life advice to Lorraine. Hell, for a second it looks like the two are even going to fall in love. The way the character is handled, going from nice to evil in a split second, is nice as well allowing the audience to never forget that yes, he’s a sociopath and yes, he will kill anyone who crosses him. Like many, I remember Dorff mostly from his villainous turn in 1998′s Blade so it’s really no surprise that he fits perfectly as the antagonist here.

As good as Bello and Dorff are, Carjacked has its fair share of problems that derail it from being a success. The most glaring, at least to me, is Chad. I get that children tend to be annoying (coming from a man without kids, naturally), but Chad would make the others seem like saints in comparison. He’s constantly complaining and whining, rolling his eyes, and being an all around ass which makes Lorraine’s desire to save him feel somewhat dumb (again I don’t have children so I don’t truly understand the bond). When he’s finally ushered out of the movie thanks to a far-fetched but passable coincidence, Carjacked instantly improves. I can’t stress enough how god-awfully annoying he is. Same goes for the rest of the cast; there isn’t much in the way of impressive acting once you get past Bello and Dorff.

Carjacked, weirdly enough, also creates a situation that doesn’t exactly feel that dire. Yes they have been carjacked, but it’s not like Roy is beating them up or murdering people left and right along the way or anything. Frankly, it seems that as long as Lorraine just brings him to where he needs to go, everything is going to be fine. But then there wouldn’t be a movie, I guess. The trip itself also lacks any true tension until Lorraine rebels; they get through a police roadblock relatively easily thanks to the stupidest policeman alive and, once again, it’s not like Roy is actively harming them. And then there’s the fact that what seems to be a major plot point and foreshadowing goes absolutely nowhere. Seriously. It’s never mentioned again. You’ll know what I mean once you see the movie.

The problems of Carjacked keep it from being a complete success, but it’s still a decent rental. Bello and Dorff are good in their roles and their chemistry with one another as well as their own understanding of their characters keep this movie afloat amidst a thin plot with forced tension and one of the more annoying child characters to be in a movie in the past few years. The third act is all action too, and competently done, so it does build up to a satisfying climax. Carjacked doesn’t break the bank creatively, but it won’t result in watcher’s remorse.

Watch a Clip from Carjacked

Carjacked stars Maria Bello as a single mom who must fight to free herself and her son from a bank robber on the run (Stephen Dorff) who has kidnapped them both.  John Bonito (The Marine) directs from a screenplay by Michael and Sherry Compton.  In this clip, Bello attempts to seek help in the few moments of privacy she has during a bathroom break.

Carjacked arrives on DVD and Blu-ray on November 22nd.

Tekken: The Straight2DVD Review

When first asked to review Tekken (2010), I thought this is going to suck because:

1. I have never played any of the actual Tekken video games, either in the arcade or on the console;

2. I have only played a few hours of Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive on my Xbox, and never really enjoyed them because I am a button-masher with no patience to memorize combos;

3. I don’t care for mixed martial arts as from what I’ve seen, it is mostly two dudes rolling around on the floor, kidney-punching one another; and

4. Given that this was a straight-to-DVD release here in America, it was going to be low budget, poorly written, and poorly produced.

After all, the other movies based on fighting video games which I had seen that made it to actual movie theaters were pretty bad: 1995′s Mortal Kombat starring Christopher Lambert as Raiden the Wacky God of Thunder, and poor Raul Julia’s last film before his untimely demise, 1994′s Street Fighter, did not foretell an enjoyable experience in viewing Tekken.

Imagine my surprise then, after the opening credits (which unfortunately are marred by a horrible song with trite lyrics), when my genuine interest in the film’s story began to mount.

Am I actually enjoying this?

The first thing noticeable is the production value. Internet sources claim that the film had a budget of $35M, and that may be the most money spent on a S2DVD film reviewed on this website! Quickly, the writing quality becomes apparent too. This is no slap-dash job in terms of the characters and plot meant to serve up action scene after action scene. Now, they may be a little formulaic, but there are no real groaners in the dialogue, and combined with the strong acting performances, it’s all believable. You can feel that everyone is taking this seriously, and it benefits the film as a whole. If at any point, someone had phoned it in, the illusion would have shattered.

So why did this film fare so poorly, review-wise? Personally, I think it’s because the few reviewers who took the time to watch it either didn’t want to give it an honest attempt at entertaining them, or just aren’t used to seeing the dreck that comes across my desk here at S2DVD. Maybe it’s me though, strongly embracing something that’s made well and reasonably produced and written like a welcome breath of fresh air.

What else is good?

1. Luke Goss (in his second S2DVD review appearance!) gets to relax and speak in his native British accent. He’s good when he’s not playing a prequelized character!

2. Awesome actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa brings a much-needed gravitas to the movie. Another great performance!

3. Ian Anthony Dale = smoldering badass.

4. And of course, the lead, Jon Foo as Jin, brings to his role a fresh youthfulness for single-minded vengeance.

5. There’s a fight scene between two women, and at no point before, during, or after the fight does either woman call the other a bitch, which I find one of the most annoying and trite conventions in the writing of fight scenes between two females. Bravo, Mr. McElroy.

6.  The obvious attempt by the fictional Tekken Corporation to have the decor of the fighting ring change occasionally as it does in the actual games. Props to the set designer for that coolness.

7.  If you like good-looking girls, Kelly Overton is given every chance to look hot as fighter Christie Monteiro. She can act, too, though her part here is basically one-dimensional.

Screenwriter Alan McElroy’s established skills mean that this script is much more logical and thought-out than other S2DVD films, so I didn’t have many issues with the writing, except: 1) Jin’s girlfriend, Kara (Mircea Monroe), gets short shrift until she pops up at the very end to do nothing but cheer him on from the crowd, and 2) Where are the ring-side medics for this competition? The poor fighters get the snot kicked out of them, and then hardly get a band-aid for their troubles.

Should you watch it?

If you like the Tekken game series, you’ll probably appreciate a lot more of the inside baseball references to the games’ overall story that I did not catch (or you’ll get angry about changes to it and grouse about it on the Internet). If you like fighting movies, I think that it has enough to keep you interested. I can’t speak to the realism of the fighting techniques, but it looked like the actors did their own fight and stunt work. So if it sounds like your kind of thing, it would be a fun 90 minutes for you. It was for me.

Bloodrayne: The Third Reich Interviews: Uwe Boll and Natassia Malthe

With the recent release of Bloodrayne: The Third Reich, it’s time to hear once again from the filmmaker critics love to hate, Uwe Boll.  FEARnet has an exclusive interview with the director, in which he talks about the evolution of the Bloodrayne franchise, his response to criticism, and working with Rayne herself, Natassia Malthe.

FEARnet also has an interview with Malthe, in which she discusses how her dance background prepared her for stuntwork and the difficulties of filming a lesbian love scene (Uwe gives his version in his interview).

Fangoria also interviews Malthe, with the added benefit of the interviewer being one of the critics Boll famously boxed in 2006.

Bloodrayne: The Third Reich also stars Michael Pare and Clint Howard.  It’s available now on Blu-ray and DVD.

Watch the Opening Scene of Super Hybrid

Anchor Bay has released the opening scene from their upcoming car-gone-mad horror flick Super Hybrid, available August 23rd on Blu-ray and DVD.  In the film, a shapeshifting monster automobile goes all tear-ass on humanity.  In the opening scene, we see it claim its first victims.  Super Hybrid stars Oded Fehr, Shannon Beckner, and Ryan Kennedy and is helmed by One Missed Call director Eric Vallette.

Watch the clip:

And while we’re at it, here’s the trailer:

Tekken Trailer Released

Though it’s been circulating the globe for a year or so, video game adaptation Tekken is finally coming to the States on Blu-ray and DVD on July 19th.  Anchor Bay has a released a trailer in which we see Jin Kazama (John Foo) swear vengeance against Heihachi Mishima (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa—whom you may remember as the main baddie in another tournament-style-video-game-turned-movie)  for the death of his mother, entering a fight-to-the-death tournament to get the job done.  Much ass-kicking ensues.

Tekken also stars Kelly Overton, Ian Anthony Dale, Darrin DeWitt Henson, Gary Daniels, Cung Le, Roger Huerta, Tamlyn Tomita, and Luke Goss—who’s on his way to winning this year’s Val Kilmer Award for straight-to-DVD ubiquity.

Here’s the trailer:

See stills from Tekken.

Ballistica: The Straight2DVD Review

I may be losing my edge, but I don’t feel right laying into Ballistica today. I could also be tired, or just burnt out on bad movies. Yes, Ballistica is not really well written, produced, or performed (all with some exceptions here and there), but these people are making a living, and in these times, maybe that’s enough. For artists in any industry, film or otherwise, it is not easy when the economy is in the toilet, and maybe bad art is better than no art at all. So rather than running through the poor elements of the film and the sarcastic jokes that I could make about them, I’ll just focus on the most basic element of the movie, its title, and whether or not it delivers on its promise.

Ballistica, as explained by the film’s primary practitioner, CIA operative Damian Sloan (Paul Logan), is… well, actually I don’t remember if he ever really explains what it is, other than that it was invented by a Soviet defector in the 1980s and there are only a few people in the world who know how to do it. It is basically gun fu, the visually entertaining but realistically dangerous (to the practitioner) practice of gunplay where exaggerated and sweeping body movements and trick-shots (behind the back, etc.) are blended together to form a shooting style reminiscent of the more traditional martial arts. If you’ve never seen it, imagine the lightsaber battles from the horrible Star Wars prequels fought instead with guns (and minus the telekinesis and lightning). All fast spinning and jumping around, but with guns. Done well, it’s very cool looking (more on that in a bit).

So Ballistica must have a lot of gun fu in it, right? I mean they named the movie after the concept, so there must be plenty of discussion about its origin, the traditions of its practitioners, what is important for proper ballistica technique, and the philosophy behind it all. Plus, the producers even took the chance that people might confuse this film with 2002′s Ballistic, considered the worst movie ever by Rottentomatoes.com.

But no. Other than Damian’s terse history and a later character’s off-hand remark that there are “1,000 lessons” of ballistica, that’s it for any deeper sense of what this fighting style is about. So fine, no rich history. Then they must make it up with tons of actual gunfights, right? Our hero mowing down dozens of nameless goons to get to the main villain?

Nope, not really. Other than the practice demonstration by Damian 19 minutes in, there are only four other (what I consider “true”) uses of gun fu through the film: at the 11 minute mark, the 63 minute mark, a few minutes after that, and a few minutes from the end of the film. And it seems that out of all the terrorist organizations in the world, Damian is pitted against the one with two fellow ballistica practitioners. And these gunfights don’t last very long, so for 90 minutes of a film, you get maybe three minutes tops of actual ballistica fighting. And compared to the gun fu films that have come before, these fights are not the greatest examples of gun fu.

Seriously, read the Wikipedia gun fu entry and watch those movies instead, particularly John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow from 1986, 1999‘s The Matrix, and 2002‘s Equilibrium to get a better understanding of how cool gun fu can be, because you can’t find it here.

I mean, there are only two situations where gun fu shines: 1) when one person is pitted against a roomful of guys, and 2) when two trained gun fu-ers go at it. Otherwise, what’s the point? So a very basic screenwriting strategy would be to have your hero continually run into groups of baddie goons as he tracks down the villain who is trained like the hero. That way, you get a balance between mowing down guys in creative ways and one-on-one set pieces. But sadly, Ballistica doesn’t do much of that, instead focusing on more generic action subplots to take up time between the first and third acts. Like love, people quitting jobs, and dead relatives.

Tired of hearing about gun fu? Okay, I’ll talk about a few other things.

1. Screen veteran Robert Davi mumbles his way through his scenes, which would have been fine (that’s kinda his thing) if the audio was a little louder, and Martin Kove is tasked with little to do except deliver basic dialogue about getting satellites in position and taking out tangos as Damian’s controller back at HQ (though why the goofy Southwestern-inspired vest, Wardrobe Department?). It’s the 1980s kid in me that wanted inside references to either The Goonies or The Karate Kid whenever one of them was onscreen, but alas, I missed them if they were there.

2. Production designers, you don’t need to coat every flat surface with the CIA seal to let the viewer know that a scene takes place in a CIA building or office, or that the computer user is using a CIA computer. Sheesh.

And finally…

At the beginning of this review, I said that I wouldn’t be too rough on the film because of the hardworking people involved (Lord knows some people take what I say personally), but in the end, this film is ready for the guys at Rifftrax to take a swing at it. I don’t blame 99 percent of the cast and crew for this (well, maybe 97 percent).

See, as a writer trained in screenwriting (among other forms) and having shot, edited, and acted in student films and other small efforts (and no, you haven’t seen me (2:08) in anything), I know how hard writing a story can be. But that early time, before producers find funding, before carpenters build sets, before craft services lays out all the food, when it’s just a writer and the page, is when almost all of the problems with a film’s story can be fixed. Yes, film is collaborative, and shit happens over time, but it is up to the writer, as the architect drawing up the plans for the entire plot, to make sure everything is logical (to the best of their ability) before any scenes are shot. Everything that comes after is dependent on that story making sense in its very basic form.

That is why I focus so much on the writing in these movies, because revising a script is much cheaper than reshooting half of a film because it doesn’t work (or just shrugging one’s shoulders and putting out a bad film). And I know that sometimes even a great script can turn into a turd of a film because of what happens after the writer hands it over. I’m not saying every script has to be The Usual Suspects, but if S2DVD filmmakers want return customers, I feel that the screenwriters need to be the first to step it up.

Next Page »