DVD Review - Whiteout

Yesterday (25/01/10) saw the release of Whiteout on DVD and Blu-Ray starring the lovely Kate Beckinsale.

Beckinsale plays Carrie Stetko, a US Marshall based on an American outpost in the icy wilderness of Antarctica. Winter is approaching, bringing with it deadly storms and six months of darkness, and Carrie, having just handed in her resignation is looking forward to heading back home and away from the cold in three days time. Sadly her trip home becomes secondary when she is sent to the scene of a body found in the snow and finds herself investigating the first murder on the continent. She has 72 hours to solve the case and find the killer before she is stranded at the base for six months, but the circumstances of the death have much deeper roots than originally predicted. With a murderer who is willing to kill again, and storms that cause near blindness, Carrie could literally be near death and never know it.

I originally put Whiteout on my list of films to see at the cinema when it was first released and I can’t for the life of me remember why I didn’t see it. It certainly captured my attention when I saw the trailer the first time round. In any case, I’ve seen it now and though not the best crime thriller of the decade, it kept me on hanging on till the very end.

The movie could be considered to be a hybrid of sorts between a slasher and a crime thriller. The elements are there to allow the audience to follow the trail of evidence but whilst wearing the hat of detective, the audience is also witnessing the killer removing further people from the equation. Unlike a standalone crime thriller where in general we would follow the story via the crime scenes. The comedy consequence of this hybrid is that while shouting out wild accusations at the screen regarding any new character that pops up and slowly backtracking as their involvement becomes less and less likely:

“He did it, definitely!”

“Well he’s definitely involved in some way, I’m certain”

“Ok he’s not involved but that other guy definitely is!”

You’ll also be verbally questioning Carrie’s decision making:

“Why is she going out there!?”

“Don’t go there on your own!”

Tension is running high throughout the movie and in an effort to avoid the cliché; at times I was really on the brink of my sofa, something that I would attribute to the setting of the events. There is a real feeling of isolation thanks to the close confines of the outpost buildings and the horrendous storms outside. Despite questioning her judgement, as the only US Marshall on the continent, Carrie has to take a lot of suspense-filled solo walks into the abyss of her surroundings, unable to see more than six inches in front of her face, with a killer on the prowl, which does nothing good for your nerves.

The movie is based on a book of the same name written by Greg Rucka, a book I unfortunately have not read, which presents me with a problem; I don’t know how close the movie is to the original material. Though an enjoyable watch, the movie is a tad clumsy in dropping hints as to the identity of the killer or those involved, something that I would hope was a direct result of the direction of the film and not a result of the original text. I didn't have the killer pegged from the start but I had declared my suspicions over one character almost immediately and I was found to be correct, which ruined it a little for me. I like twists, and bluffs but Whiteout sadly doesn't have any.

Other than that slight disappointment it's a pretty solid film. It's a slightly above average story that has ups and downs in terms of quality but it's not awful. It also isn't perfect so for me it sits firmly in the middle of my scale. I give it 3  fur-lined jackets out of 5.

DVD Review - Sorority Row

Today (Monday 11th January 2010) saw the release of teen horror Sorority Row on DVD and Blu-Ray, which was playing to cinema audiences in September last year.

In Sorority Row a handful of sorority girls take a break from pillow fights in their underwear and plaiting each other's hair to play a prank on the brother of one of their number. While well thought out, the plan goes slightly too far when it results in the death of one of their group, Megan.

Deciding that it would be better for everyone if no-one knew of Megan's death, the girls hide Megan's body and crack on with college as if nothing happened. This is of course until they start to receive messages suggesting someone knows what they did, followed by a number of brutal murders of those involved.

Essentially Sorority Row is a slasher flick and despite my lighthearted synopsis it isn't actually a bad one. I feel that when removing remakes of old slasher films from the equation, there really haven't been all that many worth getting excited about in recent years. In fact the last one I remember really having any love for was "Scream". This is no "Scream" but it is certainly the closest to it out of all the latest slashers.

Sorority Row houses the essential elements of any teen slasher movie, namely the attractive female characters; many of whom wearing tight clothing or sometimes towels, the subtle hints at possible suspects leading the audience on a wild goose chase when trying to decide who the killer is, and of course the varied and gruesome deaths. What it unfortunately does not possess however is a satisfactory conclusion in the form of the "Killer Revelation". It might well be that you watch Sorority Row and class the killer as a stroke of genius because it took you so long to work it out, however to me, a killer who skips under the radar for as long as the one in Sorority Row does is someone with a rather poor motive and thus is an unsatisfying murderer. The movie is based on a book and I get the feeling that the book might have afforded more time to the character who turns out to be the killer, whereas the film skims over them a little.

Despite my dislike of the identity of the killer, I was pretty pleased with Sorority Row overall. It certainly gets the award for most original murder weapon (a multi-tool tyre iron) and the premise of the movie, i.e. the prank gone wrong, is quite a fresh plot in my opinion. Well as fresh as something can be that is based on a book. In any case, you'll enjoy Sorority Row if you're a fan of cheesy teen slashers. If not, and intelligent crime thrillers are your bag, you'll probably like Sorority Row about as much as I like typing "Sorority", which as yet has not been written correctly first time.

It gets 2 tyre irons from me. It would have sat at 3 if not for the terrible killer/motive.

DVD Review - Family Guy: Something, Something, Something Darkside

Family Guy is the hit US cartoon about Peter Griffin, a tubby, crude family man, his wife Lois, an overly tolerant mother of three, Meg (the ugly one), Chris (the fat one) and Stewie (the evil genius), and the family dog and intellectual, Brian. Full of references to films from the 80's, old TV Shows, current celebrities and flashbacks to stupid things Peter has done in his life, the show has carved out a huge fan base and in comparison to it's most similar competition, namely The Simpsons, is infinitely funnier and much more daring.

Family Guy has amazingly been axed twice by it's network but has bounced back from huge DVD sales and is currently in the middle of Season 8. In 2007 the creators of the show released "Blue Harvest", the family guy parody of Star Wars: A New Hope and after it's success are now about to release "Family Guy: Something, Something, Something Darkside" on Monday 28th December 2009.

This new addition to the Family Guy Star Wars Parody Saga is based on Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and is another home run for the creator Seth Mcfarlane and his team. Stewie as Darth Vader is consistently funny and Peter as Han Solo is hilarious, especially when watching him absolutely murder classic scenes from the original. Especially the scene where Princess Leia tells Han she loves him.

At 52 minutes long it's a race through the story but that's a good thing! At such a short duration, it is very easy to head straight to the extras after watching the film and indulge in the commentary, or the brilliant Family Guy Fact-ups, which is essentially a run through the film in the style of Pop-Up video on VH1 with different facts about the show popping up throughout the movie.

The great thing about Something, Something, Something Darkside is that as it gets released on DVD it allows the creators to push Family Guy a tad closer to the edge in terms of profanity and offensive references. It still sits at a 15 rating but it allows the funny to be even funnier.

If you're a fan of Family Guy already, there shouldn't be a reason why you don't love this latest parody of the Star Wars Saga. If you're new to Family Guy, it may not be the best point to start as there are a hell of a lot of "in jokes", in fact there are "in jokes" in "in jokes" but once you've watched a Season or two, you'll come to appreciate the brilliance of Seth Mcfarlane and the transition of the characters to our favourite Star Wars characters.

Something, Something, Something Darkside is the product of genius TV show, and there is nothing like the feeling of knowing the Family Guy creators have spotted the same weird element or funny scene in a movie that you have yourself. This one gets 4 out of 5 Stewies from me.

Check out the US Trailer:

DVD Review - Sunshine Cleaning

Monday 16th November sees the release of "Sunshine Cleaning" on DVD and Blu-Ray. Starring the lovely Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, the movie sees two sisters Rose (Adams) and Norah (Blunt) embark on an unusual business venture, motivated by Rose's desire to put her son through private school and Norah's desire to maintain a job. The two open Sunshine Cleaning, a biohazard and crime scene cleaning company and find a deep connection to the people they are cleaning up after along with a few new friends and a couple of hurdles.

I always like to sit down and watch a "nice" film every now and then to provide a well earned break from the usual horrors and thrillers. Sunshine Cleaning is definitely one of those "nice" films. It is a genuine and lovely tale of family and the strength of the bonds between the members through life's tragedies.

I was engrossed from start to finish in willing Rose's life to turn around and go her way for once, in watching the endearing dynamic between Rose's son Oscar and his grandfather, and watching Norah's relationship with an unintentional friend. I loved the innocence of it all. Seeing Rose reach a point in her life where she decides on a change and embark on this journey with no knowledge of what it will entail was delightful in its naivity and watching her overcome the obstacles in her way with the help of her sister and father was a beautiful illusatration of how important family are.

Unfortunately though, I have to criticise the movie on one point, and that is the repetitive feeling of incomplete story lines. All of the character plotlines are wonderful and as I said, engrossing, however none gave me any fulfilment at the end. They seemed very quickly tied up in order to conclude the film and I found myself wanting more. Some didn't even feel tied up at all and were left for one to assume their conclusion, which is something I'm not a fan of.

Other than that, Sunshine Cleaning was a refreshing and original story of one family's ups and downs and I found myself emotionally going up and down with them. Recommended to anyone who wants about an hour and a half of escapism into the world of an inspirational family. It gets 3 Biohazards out of 5 from me.

DVD Review - Blood: The Last Vampire

Monday (02nd November) saw the release of Blood: The Last Vampire on DVD and Blu-Ray.

"Blood" tells the story of Saya, a half-demon, half-human slayer of demons who live among us disguised as humans and have walked the earth since an ancient war. Working in conjunction with "The Council", Saya slaughters demons in pursuit of the ultimate goal of facing Onigen, the oldest demon and the one who killed Saya's father.

"Blood" brings back the winning formula of a vampire killing other vampires using martial arts and a samurai sword, which I'm sure is still fresh in everyone's mind thanks to Wesley Snipes. The benefit of this one though is that the slayer is an attractive asian girl in an extremely stereotypical outfit.

It was a bit of a rollercoaster ride to be honest, but in a much more literal sense than my usual use of that phrase. It started out a little shaky at first with me questioning how good it might be due to the first few lines of dialog. It soon got on track though and I found myself pretty engrossed and enjoying myself until a tiny disappointment halfway through as a result of some particularly poor CGI. After that though I quickly started loving it again but then it ended, and I my only reaction was "Oh" in astonishment.

It's a short movie by today's standards, lasting a mere 91 minutes, and it feels like there is a hell of a lot of story to tell other than what we see in the movie. Whether there is further story written in some comic somewhere I honestly have no idea but this felt way too compressed. I wanted to know more about Saya's journey, way more about The Council and even more about Saya's father and Onigen but everything is neatly packaged up into this 91-minute ball that offers no room to delve into the intricate history of the world in which the movie is set. All of this explains my reaction at the end of the film. I really expected there to be more, a lot more.

That being said the movie is 91 minutes of some thoroughly enjoyable action involving the decapitation and dismemberment of swarms of demons by a lethal Asian 400 year old schoolgirl. There are the usual gravity defiant acrobatics of most martial art movies, which were more tolerable than most I've seen and the blood flows pretty freely, though I'm still trying to determine if the look of the blood in the movie was intentional, or it just accidentally looked completely unnatural.

The movie is based on an Anime movie of the same name released in 2000, which I haven't seen so I can't apply any comparisons in that area but this movie definitely has it's Anime roots on show in the form of the look and the pace of the action.

The movie is let down by some terrible CGI and some less than convincing performances but I have to say I quite enjoyed it. I'm no longer disappointed that I missed it at the cinema as it's certainly a DVD only movie but I liked it a lot and it's biggest let down was the fact that I wanted to know more! I'll be giving this one 3 samurai swords out of 5.

DVD Review - The Keeper

Monday 19th October 2009 saw the release of "The Keeper" on DVD and Blu-Ray, Steven Seagal's newest attempt at remaining a legendary Hollywood ass-kicker.

In The Keeper, Steven Seagal plays an LA cop who after nearly being killed by his greedy partner, flees to New Mexico to work as a bodyguard for the daughter of a wealthy businessman. When mobsters kidnap her, he hunts them down to rescue her and protect her.

I was brought up on Steven Seagal movies, sitting watching arms get broken and knives get thrown into necks with my dad was one of the many highlights of my childhood. In fact I haven't watched a Steven Seagal movie since I was a kid, so to me, those older movies like Marked for Death, Out For Justice, and Nico remain classics in my eyes. Unfortunately, having now seen The Keeper, I have resigned myself to a life of never re-watching those childhood favourites and that resignation is completely out of fear; fear that I will see that Steven Seagal's movies were all in fact terrible just like The Keeper.

I suppose I was hoping that The Keeper would rekindle my love of Seagal's slap happy martial arts, and to an extent it was enjoyable watching the big man break some bones, but it wasn't enough to get any love from me. It's very difficult to enjoy a movie with such absurdly poor acting. It was like watching the world's worst soap opera, it was chock full of wooden speech. It's a sad state of affairs when Steven Seagal is the best actor in a movie.

Even worse than the performances was the soundtrack. Imagine elevator music, or the soundtrack to The Sims playing over a dramatic scene and you've got the soundtrack of The Keeper. Possibly the worst continuous cases of mismatched music I have ever heard.

The movie can't be without praise. I must praise Seagal for still doing what he does. He's not the most energetic of martial artists, but he packs a punch and it's very satisfying watching his particular style of brutality but he ain't half overzealous. I'm not sure a broken arm and a kick to the face is justified by some playful flirting with the girl he's guarding.

This movie is generally a poor exercise in keeping Seagal in circulation. It certainly feels like a sign that he should hang up his three quarter length jacket for good. I can only muster 1 Casey Ryback out of 5 for this one unfortunately.

DVD Review - Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Out for release on DVD and Blu-ray on Monday 19th October 2009 is "Horsemen of the Apocalypse" starring Dennis Quaid (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Pandorum) and Ziyi Zhang (House of Flying Daggers).

It has been likened to a few classic horror movies, Saw, Se7en, Hellraiser, and even the genius TV show, Dexter. Dennis Quaid plays Aidan Breslin, a detective currently grieving over the loss of his wife and trying to rebuild the relationship he appears to have lost with his two sons, Alex and Corey. He is normally pulled from pillar to post by his job and has very little time to spend with his sons, but even more so now that a serial killer, or four, are on the loose. It soon becomes apparent that the murderers are fashioning their kills in accordance with the biblical prophecies of the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and it falls to Aidan to find out who the Horsemen are and who their next victims are going to be.

If John Doe didn't envy Detective David Mills' life, if Jigsaw had never played that first game with someone, if Dexter didn't have a dark passenger to satisfy, Horsemen might rank up there with the decent crime thrillers. Unfortunately, all of the above three, Se7en, Saw and Dexter do all exist and being name dropped as possible comparisons for Horsemen is probably the worst idea anyone ever had. Referencing these three means the first thing I did was think of them while watching Horsemen and constantly found elements that the above three all do better.

It's not a bad movie, it just isn't great. The backstory of Detective Breslin grieving over his wife is laid on ridiculously thick, yet with all of that being rammed down my throat, I just could not sympathise or relate. Quaid is not particularly convincing in his role and the movie was hardly a journey following the tracking of a killer. I don't actually recall Breslin solving anything until the end. The solutions to his problems seemed to just fall into his lap, he didn't really puzzle over the evidence in the case and didn't appear to arrive to conclusions himself, it all just seemed so easy and ran it's course naturally.

I still don't understand the purpose behind any of it. I couldn't possibly tell you why any of the deaths needed to occur in the eyes of the Horsemen and more importantly I couldn't tell you why the whole pattern of events had to have any relationship to the Four Horsemen. I may well have missed it during a speech by one of the characters, which is a possibility as I was still reeling from the annoying fact that I guessed the twist long before it happened. It just all seemed a bit pointless to me.

The movie also failed to "flow", which I found to be a huge problem. I would put this down to a lack of dialog. There were no real scenes of just dialog, leading to revelation. There was nothing in between scenes of Breslin finding a solution to a problem, or at the scene of another death. I find this difficult to explain but I would best describe this lack of flow as if the director had a sheet of paper with a list of plot points that needed to be covered, and he just filmed each plot point, ticked the relevant box on the sheet and moved on to the next one. Which is why the movie is pretty much filled with transitions like:

- Breslin receives a phone call informing him of a new murder.
- Cut to Breslin at murder scene.
- Cut to Breslin at morgue
- Cut to Breslin in police station summarising evidence
- Cut to interaction with kids
- Cut to Breslin receiving a phone call informing him of a new murder
and so on...

When compared with the dialog in Se7en, the length of the scenes of crime scene examination, the conversations between Pitt and Freeman, and the time attributed to telling the story, piece by piece, Horsemen falls way short of such quality. It almost felt like I'd missed the first half of the film and because of the poor transitions and lack of decent dialog, I felt like I was missing parts halfway through as well. It makes the movie difficult to even recollect.

Aside from the above, Horsemen did have a couple of noteworthy death and crime scenes, enough to rival Saw or similar, but unfortunately a couple of gory bits do not make a great movie, which is why I can only give it 2 Horseshoes out of 5. It really did try hard, but it just wasn't in the same league as the movies it likened itself to.