Reviews

If you look carefully while watching "Cottage Country", you can see a decent (if derivative - more on that shortly) pitch black horror-comedy trying to break out, but unfortunately a combination of a bad script and terrible direction sink any chance of it making an impact. To begin with, the movie looks and feels like one of those cheap Canadian made for TV drama series. Yes, I know the movie was saddled with a low budget (provided by us taxpayers!), but I have seen plenty of movies with budgets as low (or lower!) than what this movie had, yet all the same looked much more slick and professional. Second, the amateur cast of no-names playing the various characters simply aren't all that good; obviously the director wasn't able to push the cast to give more energetic (or appropriate) performances. The biggest problem with the direction, however, is that throughout there is seldom any energy or building of momentum. Instead, the movie for the most part just chugs along slowly, without the situation or characters gradually getting more and more out of control.

In fairness to the director (and the cast, for that matter), the production is saddled with a screenplay that desperately needed a few more rewriting sessions before filming started. It's clear that the 1998 American film "Very Bad Things" was a big influence on this movie - among other things, there is the strikingly similar way a Jewish character gets mixed up in the plot, and the movie ends in a way that strongly resembles the end of VBT. In fairness, the movie does mostly do its own thing... but not in any real compelling way. The various characters aren't likeable (or unlikable in interesting ways), and the story plods along for the most part without each subsequent scene getting wackier or more complicated. At times the movie seems afraid of going full-throttle.

In short, the movie is pretty much a complete failure. The reason why I'm not giving it the lowest rating is that it's the rare Canadian film financed by the government where the director did NOT also write the screenplay. If the director had written the screenplay, it would almost certainly have been more self-indulgent and even less watchable than it is now.

"Renfield" isn't a complete bust - it has a few good gags, my favorite being the use of footage from the Bela Lugosi "Dracula" movie. There are also a few action sequences that have some punch. Unfortunately, the narrative of this movie is a complete mess. Here are some examples of this:

• Nicolas Cage only makes a few (brief) appearances in the first half of the movie

• Other characters who disappear with little or no explanation, and reappear much later with little to no explanation as to what they had been doing between their screen appearances.

• Turns in the story and characters that have little to no explanation. For example, it's not clear why TWICE its justified that the crime lord hooligan is released from police custody. Plus, after the second time he's let go, there is the fact that plenty of witnesses saw him commit crimes, and their witnessing would certainly make their way to the press. Also, why does Dracula suddenly disappear upon meeting the crime hooligan, and then later come back to the same spot to continue his conversation with him? Why don't the sister's FBI cronies get involved when proof positive evidence is discovered?

The narrative and character motivations and actions of this movie are so messy, I think there are three possibilities for what happened: (1) The movie was SEVERELY cut down in the editing room, (2) Major reshoots were ordered by the studio, or (3), both number one or two.

Actually, I think the more likely answer is (3). I can't believe that such a mess of a movie was deemed theatrically releasable. It should have bypassed theaters... as well as streaming services!

It didn't take long into watching "Mind Rage" when I saw that it was an obvious attempt to replicate the "noir" movies of the 1940s and 1950s. While in color, it is photographed and lit in a way that those black and white noirs came across as, the music is very noirish in tone, and the camerawork and other directorial touches feel right out of the cinematic golden age. I do applaud the director and everyone else working really hard to emulate classic noir, but unfortunately the results don't really work as well. I think the main reason is that the movie also mixes in a lot of modern elements to go along with the noir elements, from the costume design to the R-rated sexual elements. The movie ends up feeling like two movies were edited into one. This might also explain why there are some really murky elements to the story. (For example, a character suddenly has a bandage on his face in one scene with no explanation, and the bandage is never seen again later in the movie.) There is an unexpected twist at the end, but the more I think about this twist, it more seems like the screenplay was trying to avoid dealing with much of what happened before this twist. Still, you don't see a movie every day that has both Charles Hallahan and Dennis Christopher in it, two underrated actors who do a decent job here. If you must see the movie, the best thing to do just before starting is to prepare yourself for an extreme curio instead of something more akin to full blooded entertainment.

Fred Dryer was in one of my favorite 1980s TV shows ("Hunter") when I was a teenager. He directed several episodes of the series, and I thought his direction on those episodes was pretty solid. Years later, when I first heard word that Dryer had directed his first movie (this one, of course), I was really interested in seeing it. I didn't expect it to play in theaters, but I did anticipate a video release. However, it never appeared on VHS or DVD during the next few years. After a while, I forgot about the movie. But then just the other day when I was at the Tubi TV streaming site, I accidentally discovered that the movie was there after almost 20 years sitting on the shelf, and also found out that it had been released on DVD and Blu-Ray a year earlier. So curious, I sat down to watch it.

It didn't take me long into watching the movie, however, to realize the probable reason why it was never released on video - it is pretty bad. For starters, the movie's tone goes all over the place. Sometimes it's a thriller, sometimes it's a slapstick comedy, sometimes it's an action movie, sometimes it's an experimental film, and sometimes it's a look at various kooky personalities. The movie never finds a firm footing and stay on it. That may also explain why the storyline is (almost) incomprehensible. There seems to be a LOT missing from the movie. For example, Dryer's character kills several people during the course of the movie, but as soon as the victims are killed, they are immediately forgotten about and their deaths are never (or pretty much never) brought up again!

In fairness to Dryer, in the director's chair he does manage to coax acceptable performances from some of his cast. And despite the jumbled storytelling, he does manage to not only make some eye-catching visuals, he does manage to generate some real atmosphere. The surreal tone is unlike that of almost no other movies, and you also feel the isolation and parched environment. Dryer may have been trying to make a unique movie, but while I applaud his intent to make something different, the end results for the most part just don't work. Had he aimed for something more conventional, we might have had something here. But overall, the final results illustrate the most likely reason why Dryer has to date not directed another movie.

While I was cruising around Tubi, I stumbled across this movie, and I decided to give it a chance because its plot description sounded intriguing and promising. However, a few seconds into watching the movie, the credits state that the movie was funded by Telefilm Canada - a government film financer that uses taxpayers' money almost all the time to fund movies that no one wants to see for good reasons. I instantly predicted that the director would also be the writer (another common theme in Telefilm funded movies), and I was proven correct.

But I decided to stick it out, and I managed to watch the whole thing.... though I really wish I didn't, even though I watched it for free. Despite its premise, the movie is extremely boring. There is pretty much no suspense, and when there is suspense it's so low key that you will know that nothing bad is actually going to happen at the end of a "suspenseful" scene. The movie really moves at a snail's pace.

There are further problems. The movie actually tries to be funny at times, but the humor not only doesn't mix well with the drama, it's not funny at all by itself or with the other material. Also, the characters keep speaking dialogue that doesn't sound like anyone in real life would speak even under these circumstances, made worse that the cast can't seem to even make a valiant effort to try and sell the audience this dialogue. The whole production also suffers from the fact that the entire movie looks really cheap, with minimal production values and substandard photography. It looks like a low budget Canadian television show.

It's easy to see why the distributor only (briefly) released this movie to just three theaters in Canada. The whole movie is proof that Telefilm has got to severely cut down the projects it funds where the director is also the writer. The best thing that could be done would be to solicit screenplays from people that are just talented writers and not directors, choose the screenplays that are actually good, and then offer them to directors. Until then, we are just going to get more waste of taxpayers' dollars like this movie.

I have to admit that the premise for "Inheritance" is quite unlike any movie I have seen (or heard about) to date, and that I was kept interested in it to see how things would be wrapped up in the end. However, when the end credits started rolling, I didn't find myself satisfied. As others here have stated before me, this movie has quite a lot of holes in its plot. How did nobody know about the bomb shelter before? Why didn't the heroine's father leave her proper instructions about her "inheritance"? Then there are questions that come up at the end that the movie does not answer, such as the unmentioned fate of the heroine's brother, who simply disappears from the story. The performers do a pretty good job despite the weaknesses in the material, and the entire production looks okay despite a limited budget. I've seen worse on Netflix, I admit, but I think this is one acquisition you should only look at when you've run out of really good movies to watch there.

It didn't take me long into watching "Jexi" to get a strong whiff of deja vu. This story had already been done in the 1984 movie "Electric Dreams". Both movies involve a nerdy man getting a new piece of technology who initially helps him out in its own strange way, but when the nerd start a romance with a woman after getting help from the technology, the technology rebels against the nerd. Heck, both movies even take place in the same city, San Francisco! So the movie doesn't get any points for originality. But even on its own terms, the movie pretty much fails. In its core is a sweet and amusing story, but it decides to tell this story in a vulgar manner. Don't get me wrong, I watch (and like) R rated movies all the time, but for this particular story, the vulgarity seems way out of place, and as a result I didn't find the humor particularly amusing. Also, despite having a short running time (83 minutes), the movie feels somewhat stretched out. While this movie is a lot easier currently to track down than "Electric Dreams", I would strongly recommend you make the effort to find the original movie rather than choosing to watch this weak clone.

I'm not sure why someone like me chose to sit down and watch this family movie - I'm not a child, and I'm also not a parent. Maybe I decided to watch it since it was for free on Netflix. Anyway, I am glad that I did give it a go, because the movie was often quite fun. The voice actors seem to be having a lot of fun in their roles, and that gives the movie a very amiable feeling. Contributing to that feeling is a message (not delivered too thickly) that family is very important. Indeed, the protagonists really seem to care deeply about each other. which is a nice change from the usual strident animated family entertainment we get today. While the animation isn't extremely exceptional, it's colorful, and often giving some amusing production design. There are also a number of amusing gags, as well as some fast-paced action that add some real energy.

While I did like this movie (and I am certainly recommending it), I think it could have been significantly better. With a running time of about 105 minutes, the story seems stretched out at times. Also, there are plot threads and characters that don't seem to be terribly important, and just end up making the story somewhat of a jumble at times. Though there are also some times when we don't get enough information, one example being a central character whose eventual fate is never really explained, and the "rules" of the animal cracker box don't seem to be firmly set.

I've heard that the production was troubled by studio interference, so that may explain why the story at times seems kind of messy. Because of this, I don't blame the directors or writers for these story problems. Anyway, the movie is still enjoyable whether you are a child or an adult, so I say give it a look.

I'm into B movies, so when this came up on Netflix, I thought it might have enough action and thrills to make it worth sitting through. However, it didn't take me long to suspect that what was to follow was as badly handled in the opening sequences. For starters, the movie is really boring for the first 25 or so minutes. There is absolutely no way that establishing the situation and the characters should have taken this long.

Things do pick up a little after that point, but then the script finds new ways to be unendurable. For one thing, it soon becomes yet another clone of "Die Hard" instead of doing something more original. What makes this clone worse is that a lot of the plot turns are really stupid. Why aren't there more cops nearby where the witness is going to testify to come in should there be trouble? Would a power and maintenance room of a tall building be located on the top floor? Why doesn't the courier just pull a fire alarm to alert the authorities? Those are just some of the many hard to swallow things about the story.

The script is bad in another way. The dialogue, quite frankly, is really atrocious. It wavers between clichés done in many other movies before, and really awkward sounding statements. Making the dialogue worse are the actors to have to speak it. The acting in this movie is quite frankly awful. Gary Oldman gives a really weird performance, the witness character is extremely annoying, and the hired goons are stiff. Kurylenko isn't that great, though you do see that she's trying and may have the ability to give good performances elsewhere with the right material and the right director.

I guess the movie is not completely bad. There are some really intense bone-crunching action sequences as well a good amount of blood and gore spilled. But it's not enough to make it worth sitting through an incredible amount of awfulness. Instead of watching it... return to sender.

For several decades this film was always on my list of movies to watch, but for some reason I never got around to watching it until now. I'd had heard how hilarious it was supposed to be, though I didn't find it laugh out loud funny, just a silly but somewhat likable exercise. But at least it's more palatable than "R" rated movies in this day and age, because of its much different tone and pacing. What really surprised me about this movie was how leisurely paced it was, as well as being over two hours long. A modern comedy wouldn't take long to get down to business, but this movie takes its time; for example, Dudley Moore doesn't get down to Mexico to crash the honeymoon of his dream girl until almost half the movie has passed. But the movie never gets so slow that it's boring, and Moore does give a likable comic performance. Not one of the best comedies ever made, but perfect when you want to kick back and be lightly amused for a couple of hours.

I really don't understand why Bruce Willis keeps agreeing to do these quickie direct to DVD movies where he only appears for a few minutes. Granted, getting a few million dollars for just a few days of work would be tempting even to me. But after doing so many of these movies, Willis has severely damaged his reputation.

This particular one (yet another by the prolific producing team of Randall Emmett and George Furla) is, I admit a little better than usual. Willis, for one thing, shows up for about ten minutes this time instead of his usual five minute limit. (Though he continues to use the same awful sleepwalking performance he uses for these quickie efforts.) Production values are also not bad for a movie where most of the budget had to be designated to pay Willis his exorbitant salary. And occasionally there is a little suspense.

However, the movie is saddled with an incredibly dumb script, one that constantly brings up questions that are never answered as well as characters making incredibly stupid decisions. Do emergency doors really have internal locks that can make escaping from a building impossible? Why wasn't the entire hospital alerted when the fire alarm was activated? Why didn't any other security guards arrive after the security guard radioed to his command the request to send more security guards? Why did the heroine just stop at calling Willis' character when she got to a phone instead of calling other avenues of help? Why didn't she use the Internet on the computer to send the contents of the memory chip to the authorities?

I could go on and on for quite some time illustrating this movie's stupidity, but I think you've got the point by now. Even the (limited) merit to be found here and there is not enough to make this worth a look even for the biggest fans of B movies... or the few remaining fans of Bruce Willis.