Aloha yall. Tex Hula.
Someone made a movie. And they called it INTENSIVE CARE.
The movie begins with Alex (Tara Macken), a special ops marine now working as a caregiver to an elderly woman. Greedy grandson Danny (Jai Rodriguez) owes money to a mobster named Mr. Butters (Such an adorable name. I want to name my next cat that.). So Danny goes to Grandma to kiss ass and get in on some of that sweet inheritance money. Grandma (Leslie Easterbrook, Callahan from POLICE ACADEMY) tells Danny to go fuck himself. He goes to a bar and meets up with a couple of local thugs. Danny comes back, woos Alex with his date rapist charm, takes her out to the same bar while thugs break into her house and try to crack Granny's safe. Danny and Alex go back to the house, sexy time happens, they wake up the next morning, and the thugs are still trying to crack the goddamn safe. They could have taken the safe somewhere else, but fuck you logic.
This is when the movie really starts showing its incompetence. Alex discovers the thugs, and then the film turns into a slow, stupid cat and mouse thriller. I think the actress playing Alex is fully capable of going into a full badass mode, but the movie barely lets her. The fight scenes are well choreographed, but lacking brutality. You can see better on a typical episode of ARROW.
The only highlight of this movie is the paperboy from BETTER OFF DEAD returning. The pesky bastard pops into the movie a couple of times looking for his nine dollars (two dollars adjusted for 2018). Someone even offers him a hundred dollars at one point, but the little fucker just wants his nine dollars.
It has a twist ending that doesn't twist or surprise. It leaves itself open for a sequel that nobody will want, or get. Ugh, goddamnit movie.
INTENSIVE CARE is now available On Demand and Digital HD. Available on DVD in January.
If you want to watch a good cat and mouse, girl goes into a badass mode, hunted by three guys movie...here it is.
REVENGE. Not to be confused with the Kevin Costner movie of the same name which is also great.
I loved the shit out of this movie. It's stylish, gory, and goes balls out crazy. I'm not going to lie, this movie makes some pretty big leaps of logic, but it does them with imagination, and that starts to become the movie's charm.
So, party girl Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) and her wealthy, married boyfriend Richard (Kevin Janssens) are dropped off by helicopter to his isolated hunting lodge on top of a desert canyon. Richard's two friends show up. Party happens. Jen gets flirty with everybody.
Next morning, Jen wakes up, boyfriend is gone to get hunting licenses. One of the friends assaults her. Later the boyfriend comes home. Jen wants to him to call a helicopter to leave. Richard says no. She threatens to call his wife. He loses his shit, chases her out of the house, and pushes her off a cliff.
How she survives the cliff fall becomes one of the movies big suspend belief moments. It's your moment as a moviegoer to decide whether your down for this ride or not.
In INTENSIVE CARE there are two scenes of the heroine hiding from the bad guys and patching up her wounds. Both are pretty lackluster. In REVENGE they have one, it involves a fistful of peyote and a red-hot energy drink can tattoo, and it's pretty fucking amazing.
To go into detail about the rest of the movie would be going into spoiler territory, but I will tell you the final chase sequence is a loopy trip.
The only thing I wish they should've added to this movie was maybe a flashback that shows Jen as a little girl camping and having survivalist training from her father. She does go from party girl to badass pretty abruptly.
If you want to watch REVENGE, it's currently available on Shudder.
Mahalo pardners,
Tex Hula
