Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

Our guest reviewer this morning, Rav, is staying with Massawyrm while he's in Austin for the QT Fest. Poor bastard. I can only imagine what sort of payment Massawyrm's gonna come looking for 'round about three AM some night this week. *Shudder* At least he turned in these three reviews before the inevitable occurs...

Hey everybody, I’ve got reviews of the three interesting movies opening wide this weekend, but I will stray away from Bubble Boy and Summer Catch (LILLARD/PRINZE ARRGHH!!!! Can’t be good). The three films are Ghosts of Mars (JOHN FUCKING CARPENTER!), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (KEVIN FRIGGIN SMITH), and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (Woody “Insert Vulgarity here” Allen).

Ghosts of Mars

Ghosts of Mars is about a team of police officers (Natasha Henstridge, Jason Statham, Pam Grier, and Clea Duvall) who are sent to a small mining outpost to transfer one of the most feared criminals alive (Desolation Williams AKA Ice Cube) to a higher security prison, but they run into a problem when they get there, no one seems to be alive everyone has had their head chopped off or has just gone completely fucking insane. The police officers begin to team up with all of the living criminals and sane people to get the hell out of there and away from these creatures that are doing this, which of course leads to some fucking cool Carpenter action.

Now, I am a big fan of John Carpenter films, I wouldn’t go and say that I dug this film more than any of JC’s past works…….well maybe I liked it a little bit more than Vampires. Ghosts Of Mar’s keeps its Carpenter’s coolness factor on high gear enough to please any Horror/action audience….if it doesn’t please you, you probably went in expecting the Holy Grail of Carpenter films…which this is not. One thing that delighted me was while watching the opening credits I failed to recognize “Jason Statham” as that badass boxing promoter from Snatch and Main Character #4 from Lock Stock, It’s just totally cool to see him branch out into American Mainstream films off of Richie’s (it had to happen sometime, but I was worried for the longest it would only come for Vinnie Jones). Another one of the cool delights somewhat a spoiler was how the actual ghosts would leave and take over another body when killed taking over the soul, so in essence when one is killed another one of the heroes is up for taking over. And when they go crazy they really go fucking insane ie: cutting themselves up and killing everybody.

The only thing that I really disliked about the film was that it was told in flashbacks from a debriefing meeting/hearing so it gives you a good estimate of who makes it and who croaks early on, but even though it is told this way there is still room for a few cool twists left to be made.

So in the end the film delivers more Carpenter goodness, but falls short of being a “Carpenter Masterpiece”.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is my favorite Kevin Smith film to-date, but being as everyone and their mother seems to have seen this film already from the multitude of screenings presented and the open sneak preview this past weekend I shouldn’t waste my breath saying the same good things everyone else has said about it.

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

So last Tuesday I had the choice of either seeing American Outlaws or The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, my reaction to the dilemma? Why the fuck do I want to see an MTV teeny-bopper flick defiling western films…….I can wait until the weekend matinees for that. I’ll take the Woody Allen comedy that looks cool. Well being the dumbass I am, I accidentally went to the theatre for American outlaws, walked in and saw the teenyboppers standing waiting in line saying WE WANT SCOTT CAAN…..I WANT TO SEE ALI LATER’S BREASTS (reviewers note: ME TOO!). So then I bolted to my car so that I could head on over to the other Edwards where Curse was showing! Now onto the movie……what you really care about.

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is about a dim-witted insurance investigator C.W. (Woody Allen), who loves to use the old gumshoe techniques of blind beggars and disorganization to solve his cases. C.W.’s office life is perfect, until Helen Hunt’s efficiency expert character “Fitz” begins to cause problems for him. Fitz and C.W. loathe each other, and the entire office knows they do. One day they all go to celebrate a coworkers birthday (or something to that effect) and a magic show is played out there. C.W. and Fitz are hypnotized there; the magician jokes around with them and tells them that they are in love with each other. Spoiler well eventually this is brought up later and they start committing crimes and then have to investigate the very same crimes they have committed…….AND ITS FUNNY OKAY!

Curse is another sweet little Woody Allen comedy, along the lines of Small Time Crooks, that doesn’t fail in any way other than leave you wanting for more from its 90 minute run. It takes place in the forties, so all the jokes Woody makes are period-related so make sure you know who Mussolini and Boris Karloff are before walking into the theatre, or you could be left sitting around watching a movie that everyone else is laughing at, but you just have no clue what the fuck is so funny.

Well this is it for now, more to come.

Rav