P.S. I love you guys  & gals.  Give mad props to the author of this on youtube if you dig it.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61RJGQcG_sM&feature=player_embedded

Machete (2010)

I’ve been waiting for Machete since it was a mere trailer. Initially Machete was a spoof trailer at the start of the Grindhouse double bill. Even as a trailer it looked friggin awesome now, several years later, here it is – full length, and it’s a cracker!

The story is as anti-Mexican and anti-serious as it can get: The highly skilled Federale Machete is hired by some unsavory types to assassinate a senator. But just as he’s about to take the shot, he notices someone aiming at him and realizes he’s been set up. He barely survives the sniper’s bullet, and is soon out for revenge on his former employers, with the reluctant assistance of his old friend [...], who has become a priest and taken a vow of nonviolence. (IMDb.com)

The movie has everything that an exploitation movie should have, and more. It combines the best elements of the best exploitation (and blaxploitation) movies of the past and rolls them in to one big ol’ cheesy burrito.

Our man, Machete, is a man of few words. Then there’s the hot accomplice (Alba). Sluts with bare boobs (Lohan, barely recognisable in one shot where she has her clothes on). A nun with a gun. A chick with an eye patch… the list goes on.

It may be a Hollywood production, but it doesn’t skimp on the OTT action and gore. There’s decap’s, severed limbs, the whole gamut of injuries and deaths. Even injuries by weed whacker (no, seriously, there is).

Trejo is perfect as Machete, he just looks leather faced and mean. Alba looks nothing like your average immigration cop but, hey, every movie needs eye candy! Steven Segal is great as the giant Mexican drug lord type dude and Don Johnson (yes, that Don Johnson) is awesome as the mad Mexican murderer protecting his ‘daddies land’. The hitman, brought in to eliminate Machete is even played by effects maestro Tom Savini!

I reckon Machete is easily the best action/exploitation film I’ve seen from Hollywood. My previous favourite was Planet Terror, but Machete out does it by a whisker due to it being in the ‘real world’ yet still being corny enough for my liking. Watch it. Watch it NOW!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Trailer:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIxcVzwLR1k

This new trailer has some new scenes, no full facial shots of Freddy yet, but some iconic scenes from previous films such as Freddy’s hand in the bath (which was in the first trailer) but in trailer 2 we also see the scene where Freddy is pressing through the wall which was also in a previous NoES movie.

Freddy’s voice has also changed, thankfully, in the first trailer it was quite emotionless and robotic, in trailer two is sounds more like Haley did in The Watchmen.

Anyway… go have a looksy!

The Wolfman (2010)

Sigh, another remake of a golden oldie classic. But wait, this one is actually pretty good!

First, let’s start with the obligatory plot line. As you can imagine, it’s nothing brain wracking:

Lawrence Talbot, a haunted nobleman, is lured back to his family estate after his brother vanishes. Reunited with his estranged father, Talbot sets out to find his brother… and discovers a horrifying destiny for himself. Talbot’s childhood ended the night his mother died. After he left the sleepy Victorian hamlet of Blackmoor, he spent decades recovering and trying to forget. But when his brother’s fiancée, Gwen Conliffe, tracks him down to help find her missing love, Talbot returns home to join the search. He learns that something with brute strength and insatiable bloodlust has been killing the villagers, and that a suspicious Scotland Yard inspector named Aberline has come to investigate. (from IMDb.com)

The movie begins with Lawrence Talbot being asked to return home to help find his missing brother. The brother is then found dead, mutilated by ‘a beast’, but some theorise that it’s a killer hiding his tracks. Lawrence eventually has a run in with this ‘beast’ and is bitten in the fracas. Then begins his werewolf curse. Now, while the plot isn’t full of twists and turns, it does have some nice parts which I didn’t expect. And it’s there I’ll stop with the plot line stuff, as I really don’t want to give anything away.

Anthony Hopkins plays Lawrence Talbot’s father and is excellent in his acting here, I’d easily put it up there with his Hannibal Lecter. The other actors are good, but in The Wolfman none can hold a candle to Hopkins.

Special effects, done by Rick Baker (American Werewolf in London), are what you’d expect, top notch. Initially we don’t see much of the transformation sequence, but later on in the movie we’re treated to a full on transformation in an asylum (part of which is shown in the trailer below) which is awesome. There’s plenty of blood in this too, it seems that Hollywood is finally realising that having some good gore in a film will actually help it. There’s an impaling, a couple of limb chops, plenty of slicing and the obligatory decap or two.

There’s plenty of action although possibly a bit too much of the roof-hopping super-hero-type stuff in the middle, but that’s excusable. So, to sum up: this is actually a pretty good remake! There’s action, gore and werewolf transformations, ya can’t ask for more than that!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Trailer (in HD no less!):

Futuristic blood harvesting at its finest

Daybreakers is the latest movie to hit theaters that is looking to stake a claim in the vampire media frenzy that has taken over both the big and small screens.  From Twilight (I need an acid bath every time I so much as type that name) to True Blood, the bloodsucking freaks have been a big hit with audiences looking for dark, but ultimately romance driven narratives injected with some supernatural herbs and spices.  Out of this pit of shallow pandering to the adolescent and deeply delusional, Daybreakers has come forth to deliver a vampire movie with a fairly metallic set of testicles with some brains to boot.  Extracted from the minds of the The Spierig Brothers (who made one of the best and funniest zombie flicks of  the oo’s called UNDEAD, a film I should definitely review for y’all!  Or fuck it, grab it now and watch it, it’s worth it!), Daybreakers throws us into the year 2019 (inferred from that fact that in the film they refer to 2009 as being 10 years ago) where vampires have become to dominant species on planet Earth, and the few pockets of humans who are left are on the run from the vampires military who hunt them down for sustenance.  The humans aren’t the only ones who are fighting for survival however, as it is made clear early on that without blood or a blood substitute, vampires devolve into these hideous, almost zombie like bat humanoid creatures who will feast on anyone or anything that they come across.  This is where Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) comes into play, as he is a brilliant hematologist tasked creating a blood substitute that will eliminate the need for widespread human re-population.  Sprinkle into this mess some interesting, albeit subdued, statements about the Big Pharma culture that is currently present in the United States as well as our military industrial complex and you have a nice little self-contained flick that doesn’t require you to completely shut down your higher brain functions in order to enjoy it in full.  Not to mention, it has a pretty nifty cast too.  Did I mention Willem Dafoe is in it?

Holy shit, they are arming Willem Dafoe. GET THE FUCK DOWN, NOW!

And while I your attention squarely on Mr. Dafoe’s general creepiness (read: AWESOMENESS), let’s take a moment to expand on how the acting helps to make this ride a bit more pleasurable.  Dafoe doesn’t get nearly enough screen time for my liking (although if I had it my way, it would be a one man movie starring Willem Dafoe), but what he does with him time is captivating, especially when you come to realize he ISN’T the bad guy for once.  His character is a southern man, nicknamed Elvis, and I’ll leave it at that.  Trust me, he just about makes it worth the price of admission.  Ethan Hawk, as mentioned earlier, plays Edward Dalton, a man torn by his sympathies towards humans and his obligation to his company and boss to find a solution to the blood scarcity.  Sam Neill is Charles Bromley, the hot shit head cheese of a major corporation that service specific vampire needs.  He also happens to be Dalton’s boss and is quite the motherfucker.  The rest of the cast is relative nobodies, but I found all the performances to be pretty on target in finding a balance between playing it straight enough to make this universe believable, but not overselling it to the point where it gets melodramatic and overly weighty.  There are even moments where some fun is had, and it seems like the Spierig Brothers haven’t lost that goofy and sharp sense of humor that is so evident in UNDEAD.  One thing that seemed to compress the acting was that 93 minute length of the flick, which meant that once the film really got its proverbial engines revved and red-lined, the sprint to the finish felt a bit too fast, and some of the richness of the characters was lost in the mad dash towards the endgame.  This most likely falls into the lap of the producers, studio, and editor however, not the actors and the Spierig Brothers.

Stuff bleeds real good in this movie.

Inside that hour and a half however, the Spierigs flex the muscles only people who have seen UNDEAD know they have.  Not only do they write and direct their movies together, they are also seasoned special effects creators, both of the practical and computer generated disciplines.  Often times, they will combine prosthetic effects and CGI (like in the scene pictures above) to create fairly convincing visuals that don’t look like too phony in either direction.  That being said, this film isn’t quite the gore show that UNDEAD allowed itself to be, but let it be known that there are some downright nasty scenes in this one, and when the blood does flow, it flows liberally.  Shifting from effects to lenses, the Spierigs also craft themselves a nice looking film, complete with lots of sterile looking scenes which paint the vampires, at least initially, as a much more organized and civil spin-off of humanity.  There is a lot of white and blue lighting and tidy organization to the environments the vampires have erected and furnished for themselves over the years, as if being orderly and docile in appearance and demeanor can make up for their savagery and nearly cannibalistic impulses they need indulge in for mere survival.  The film is paced pretty well, with my major grievance being that the finale is just a bit too rapid for my liking.  Some clever camera angles and flashy shots help to round out what otherwise is a pretty straightforward and smartly captured film.  Kudos to the Spierig for finding a middle-ground between the unabashed fun they had with UNDEAD, and the undoubtedly more restrictive world of “Hollywood” film making.

And you thought cocaine was expensive.

When Daybreakers came to a close, I felt like I wanted to see more from that vision, and that is normally a good thing in my book.  The world the Spierigs have shaped for themselves in Daybreakers is a really interesting one which I wouldn’t hesitate to dive into for a second time.  Granted, the story ends in a way where enough safe assumptions could be made and the book could be shut on the plight of the vampires, but there is enough stuff going on behind the scenes that it made want to see how far the Brothers Spierig could stretch out this idea.  As it stand now though, it is a find piece of quality mainstream horror/action/thriller fare that is very deserving of having genre vets and indie hounds sink their teeth into.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars