COLD BLOODED
Sometimes a movie is just bullshit.
I’m all about suspension of disbelief in a movie, like a speeding bus being able to hop a 50-foot gap in order for the movie to keep going, because even as far-fetched as it sounds, the movie has locked me in enough that I don’t even care that the next step in the story is utterly ridiculous and could never happen. Sometimes you can get away with murder in a movie as look as you’ve laid the groundwork necessary along the way for that suspended moment to not seem so stupid as you’re watching it. But when you’re throwing idiotic ideas at me right from the start, you can’t ask me to push aside my brain in order to buy a premise that no reasonable or rational person would accept. That’s bullshit. That’s COLD BLOODED.
Right from the beginning, this Canadian flick pushes its luck, asking us to believe that DEVIL’s Zoie Palmer is your typical beat cop, assigned to guard duty in a hospital for a diamond heist suspect. I’m sure there are plenty of attractive female cops out there on the force all over the place, but not that let their beauty show when it’s time for their shift. Palmer, badly miscast, tries her absolute hardest to convince that she’s a legitimate officer of the law, but it’s an uphill battle that Jason Lapeyre’s film makes impossible for her to win. When her suspect, played by Ryan Robbins in full-on Morgan Spurlock look-alike mode, awakes from his comatose state, his first inclination is to ask her to come in and chat with him… you know to pass the time. And then she goes ahead and obliges such a request, because he promises her information related to the case. This is after he first makes a request for her to let him escape. What sort of dumb-ass cop would think this criminal was on the level to even entertain such an offer? And what are they going to talk about? If you guessed basketball, you’re right.
But don’t worry… things are about to get a whole lot dumber when Robbins’ crew decides to come looking for him in the hospital, to find out what happened to the diamonds and what happened to their partner. Are you serious…? Now…? They want answers now…? And what if this guy hadn’t just come out of his coma about 10 minutes ago…? Were they just going to sit around and wait for him to wake up? I’m sure that would have gone over well with security and the police for them to just chill for an extended period of time. As it stands, this is the most ill-prepared and bumbling set of criminals I’ve ever seen, as it consists of the ruthless William MacDonald, who makes up for his lack of smarts with a propensity for violence, nameless black guy and the whiny inside man on their original job who has no business showing up at the hospital, because I’m pretty sure he couldn’t get answers from his wife on what’s for dinner, let alone “Where are the diamonds?” from a clearly smarter criminal.
Even as the shit hits the fan and his old crew comes looking for Robbins at all costs, Palmer’s Officer Jade tries her hardest to hold onto some sense of justice, refusing to allow her suspect free to help her as she gets the absolute shit beaten out of her throughout the film. Here she is facing death, and she’s trying to maintain the law. Seriously… no one gets physically abused during this movie more than Palmer, and it doesn’t make her any less sympathetic, as it becomes hard to wrap your head around the characters in the film doing dumber and dumber things as the movie continues to progress. COLD BLOODED never manages to get anything going and turns into an exercise of guessing how dumb it could be, only to then have you set the bar even lower when it reaches that level. This is one to stay way from, unless you’ve been looking for a movie so disengaging, you can use that time to ponder why the floor of the movie theatre is always sticky.
A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING
For at least its first half, A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING presents an intriguing look at a man who lives in a constant state of paranoia. With Simon Pegg driving the material as a children’s author who hates the job but needs the money, there’s enough empathy and humor for a character dealing with crippling fear that he’s even scared there might be killers waiting for him in his refrigerator. Moving away from writing about cute talking hedgehogs, Jack (Pegg) has decided to work on a book about Victorian-age serial killers with designs on turning it into a film. However, with all the research that he’s done, he’s developed an irrational fear of being murdered to the point that he’s been walking around his apartment with a carving knife for the last three weeks for protection. He’s begun to suspect everyone and everything is coming to get him, from the carolers outside to the one person interested in his treatment that he’s due to meet.
When Pegg is trapped inside of his apartment, A FANTASTIC FEAR may be limited in what it can do story-wise, but Pegg makes the most of the material, pulling off a one-man show that’s equal parts funny and sad at the same time. The wild imagination which warps his thoughts turns the spotlight onto a man whose turning mad right in front of us for no real reason whatsoever other than he can’t turn his brain off. This is the type of person you don’t take to a horror movie, because they’ll have nightmares about it for weeks, while at the same time envisioning that similar events will happen to them, potentially committed by everyone they meet, from the mailman to the guy walking his dog.
Unfortunately, A FANTASTIC FEAR can’t spend all of its time with Jack in solitary confinement, so it forces him outdoors to the Laundromat, where, of course, he has more irrational fears… and this is where the film shifts from quirky to formulaic, from edgy to sentimental. A FANTASTIC FEAR begins to run out of gas, because there’s only so much material to be pulled from a guy who’s afraid of everything without it getting long in the tooth. How many things can one guy possibly be afraid of before enough is enough? There’s a subplot about a real life serial killer on the loose, which you know before long will cross paths with Jack, not to mention a bit of an examination as to what causes some of Jack’s fears, which gets a little too psycho-analytic, and it makes A FANTASTIC FEAR a bit too cluttered. However, at least for the first act, there’s enough laughs to warrant giving the film a look, and Pegg is charming as always to make the most of what is a very limited story.
DEAD SUSHI
I’m a sucker for low-budget creature features, so a movie about killer sushi…? I’m all over that one. Believe me… it’s as terrible as it sounds, but Noboru Iguchi’s DEAD SUSHI is so awesomely bad, you can’t help but be entertained by how outrageous it has the balls to be.
Forget about the script… there’s a homeless man hanging out behind some prestigious inn known in Japan for its incredible sushi. Somehow he’s the former head of the New Medicine Development department of a pharmaceutical company, and while he came up with some type of serum that revived the cells of dead animals, it had the unfortunate side effect of turning them into violent monsters. He was shamed and has been harboring a grudge ever since his firing. Now that employees of Komatsu Pharmaceutical have come to the inn, he’s been lying in wait (I guess, in case they ever decided to show up at this particular location… what a convenience) to exact his revenge by sending a killer squid capable of turning anything it bites into a bloodthirsty monster after them. And thus, the killer sushi, which, for some reason is capable of flying, is born.
Iguchi doesn’t even attempt to hide the fact that DEAD SUSHI is made for pennies, as the sushi look like something you would have grabbed from your local supermarket, only with plastic lips and teeth glued on… and that’s part of its charm. The film doesn’t try to dazzle you with special effects, although there are a couple of very nice make-up effects on display as the movie wears on. Instead it presents these very cheap-looking creatures and dares you to not have a good time with its ridiculous premise. I’m not sure how one can walk away from DEAD SUSHI without a smile on their face having glimpsed a picture that has sushi sex, sushi zombies, singing sushi, sushi nunchaku and a full-size Tuna Man.
The only complaint I have with DEAD SUSHI is that it splurges some of its budget on CGI blood spray rather than just ramping up the blood and gore factor with practical effects. For a movie made for next to no money, all of its available cash should go into blood, blood and more blood, so to see victims who never really lose a lot of their own at the hands of sushi outside of some repetitive sprays feels like a bit of a cheat.
DEAD SUSHI is the type of movie you’d easily put on late at night with no one else around and nothing else to do. I also imagine having a drinks during its run would enhance the entertainment value. However, I saw it by myself in the middle of the afternoon, and it had me banging on the table in front of me in hysterics over its preposterous nature. A fine piece of cinema DEAD SUSHI is not, but entertaining as hell, most definitely.
EASTON’S ARTICLE
If you were sitting online and received a mysterious message from the future that said you were going to die on December 12 in Dubuque, Iowa, would you go anywhere near that town on that date? Me neither, and thus there’s no reason for the story of EASTON’S ARTICLE to be told. The premise of the film is already undercut by your common sense, but, for some reason, Easton Dunning (Chad Meyer) thinks it’d be a good idea to explore his hometown right around the days leading up to his proposed death to see what happens. He certainly doesn’t have any designs on preventing it, because, if that were the case, Easton would be somewhere in the middle of New Zealand in the middle of the summer of 1997 to ensure his survival. And this is what happens when young filmmakers – in this case, writer-director Tim Connery – think they have an awesome idea on their hands and rush out to shoot, with no consideration given as to whether or not that idea makes any deal of sense.
Look at BACK TO THE FUTURE, for example. Marty didn’t stick to plan in the hopes of not disrupting the time-space continuum when it came to preventing his own existence from being wiped away or even in trying to prevent the death of Doc Brown on more than one occasion. Instead, he acted accordingly in order to try to change a future that hadn’t truly happened yet. Not to compare EASTON’S ARTICLE to BACK TO THE FUTURE, because that’d be like comparing beef jerky to a fine steak, but at least one takes the proper steps to guarantee that its characters behave in a believable fashion. In EASTON’S ARTICLE, the title character sticks to the plan, even following a series of handwritten instructions he also received, as if he’s welcoming his dated demise. He doesn’t even question the instructions, as if it never even crossed his mind that by following them to a tee, he might be doing everything possible that walks him right up to death’s door. I mean, this is dying we’re talking about, and there is no sense of urgency in trying to prevent it from happening in this film… and without those actions, there’s not much to watch here.
The pacing of the film is all off to begin with, as it’s about 10 minutes into the film before we even have our first conversation between characters, which goes nowhere in even establishing the story. In fact, if you lopped off the first half-hour of EASTON’S ARTICLE, you might have at least a tighter film that cuts to the chase faster. It might not get any better, but at least you’d be thrust into the purpose of the film much more quickly. There’s no great crime committed by a movie dealing with time travel than for it to actually waste tons of time. Films of that nature have to be tightly constructed, with each moment meaningfully connected to the next or the one before as a massive puzzle is built. The one thing EASTON’S ARTICLE does get right is its attention to detail, but there’s so much nothing in between that when you get those “Ah-ha” moments, you’ve been lulled into not caring.
If the lead character can’t even be bothered to try to change his fate, then there’s no reason for me to care what happens to him. The most poignant moment of the film comes from Easton’s love interest, who remarks that she feels like they should be doing something. Yes!! Exactly!! I’ve been saying the same thing the entire time, and, because of that, there’s nothing in EASTON’S ARTICLE that resonates with you. Easton’s lack of fight to stay alive is only equaled by my lack of fight to stay awake during this boring affair. I get that the details of a time travel movie are the most important aspect to get right, but a close second is a story worth telling and a character worth them happening to.
Read up HERE for my reviews of SUSHI GIRL, BLOOD LETTER and SCHOOLGIRL APOCALYPSE from Fantasia, and HERE for my review on ERRORS OF THE HUMAN BODY.
More reviews from Fantasia still to come.
-Billy Donnelly
"The Infamous Billy The Kidd"
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