THE MCPHERSON TAPE (1989) * ½

I give The McPherson Tape credit for being an early example of a Found Footage horror movie.  However, like most films of the genre, it’s a chore to watch.  In most of these things, it feels like you’re watching someone else’s home movies.  Well, this one starts exactly like someone else’s home movie with a guy filming his five-year-old niece’s birthday party.  Eventually, he and his brothers go stumbling around in the woods with his camcorder and run afoul of visitors from another planet.  

The opening crawl lets us know that the tape contains footage of an extraterrestrial encounter.  The filmmakers do their best to mimic what such an encounter would look like with the obvious low budget and low-tech materials on hand.  However, the fatal flaw remains:  If this really was the first solid evidence of beings from outer space, would you really sit through all the shit with the little kid opening her birthday presents, blowing out her candles, her uncle futzing around in the dark trying to fix the fuse box, and long scenes of people wandering around in the dark, or would you cut all that unnecessary shit out and just get right to the aliens?  I don’t know about you, but any movie that not only features a game of Go Fish in real time, but has a part where grandma has to EXPLAIN the rules of Go Fish is damn near insufferable.

I will say that the running time is scant (it’s only sixty-three minutes long), which helps The McPherson Tape go down a little smoother than some of the latter-day entries in the subgenre.  What isn’t smooth is the atrocious herky-jerky shaky-cam camerawork, which is among the worst I have seen in a Found Footage flick.  I mean if you’re gonna film man’s first contact with a UFO, you’d think you’d at least TRY to keep the camera still long enough to get a good look at them, but no.  Another problem inherent in the genre is that a lot of scenes revolve around the annoying characters yelling obscenities at one another for minutes on end.  These sequences get old fast and not even the occasional random alien cameo (Shyamalan must’ve watched this before making Signs) can do much to help rescue The McPherson Tape from the lower rungs of the genre.

AKA:  UFO Abduction. 

REDEEMER (2014) ****

Marko Zaror is a force to be reckoned with in this excellent DTV actioner.  In fact, the pre-title sequence kicks more ass in the first five minutes than most DTV flicks do in their entire running time.  Much to my complete delight, it only got better from there. 

Zaror plays a man with a mysterious past who likes to hang out in churches and answer the prayers of the poor and the desperate.  Lucky for the audience, the parishioners are usually praying for revenge and/or hoping their mortal enemies will be beaten to a pulp.  Zaror is only more than happy to act on their behalf as an avenging angel.  Eventually, he runs afoul of some nasty drug dealers and naturally, Zaror has got to beat the bejabbers out of some baddies.

Zaror was also the fight choreographer, which is a fancy way of saying he just told the director, “Start the camera.  I’m about to kick some serious ass.”  There’s a plethora of great fight sequences here, most of which feature Zaror handing somebody’s ass to them.  Notable weapons include a fishhook and an outboard motor.  

Zaror is a great leading man and all, but Noah Segan (who also produced) just about steals the movie as the villain.  He tosses off dozens of hilarious throwaway lines (probably ab-libbed) and has a unique energy that sets him apart from the typical bad guys found in these films.  His presence makes even the most seemingly cliché scenes feel refreshing.  My favorite bit comes when he sits on a couch surrounded by henchmen and wonders why all these badasses have cool nicknames.  He then tries to think of a cool nickname for himself instead of focusing on the matter at hand, which leads to hilarity.  

The whole movie is like that though.  It’s always a lot better than you expect.  Even though it’s essentially the same revenge plot we’ve seen before, it’s done in a much more energetic and fresh way that makes it a true gem of the genre.

Many action beats take cues from the John Wick films as they are full of long takes, violent confrontations, crisp camerawork, and concise editing.  It also contains one of the best henchman fights I have seen in some time (and I’m not even referring to the big brawl with the main henchman that occurs later in the film).  Sure, it may have a few too many obvious CGI blood squibs, but that in no way detracts from the mayhem.  

For action movie fans, Redeemer is a must see.

COSMIC SIN (2021) ½ *

This is another Bruce Willis DTV flick.  Unlike the usual down-to-earth actioners he’s been cranking out, it’s a sci-fi/horror hybrid.  It’s sort of a mix between Doom and Ghosts of Mars, and although the set-up had potential, much of it is just dreary and dull.  

In the future, man finally makes “First Contact” with alien life.  The aliens possess a couple of astronauts and turn them into space zombies who spit blood and infect others.  It’s then up to Frank Grillo and Bruce Willis to stop them.  

Cosmic Sin isn’t one of those Emmett/Furla productions Bruce has been starring in lately.  Even though it was made by a different company, he does even less here than he did in many of those cheap-ass movies.  He’s in it for a little bit in the beginning, but his character conveniently disappears for a good chunk of the running time once the action switches over to a forest planet.  Grillo gets the shorter end of the stick, if you can believe it, as he spends half the movie drifting alone in space.  But hey, anything to keep him from interacting with the other actors, right?

Some amusement can be had from spotting the clever editing used in the early scenes to make it look like Willis and Grillo are in the same scene together (they never appear on screen at the same time), but that can only carry this inept sci-fi slog but so far.  Willis does appear alongside his other co-stars, Corey Large (who also wrote and produced) and Brandon Thomas Lee (the son of Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson Lee!), if only fleetingly.

This has to rank as Bruce’s worst.  I mean stuff like Color of Night is bad, but at least it’s got style.  This looks chintzy and haphazardly put together.  It makes Asylum movies look like blockbusters in comparison.  While the initial standoff between the humans and aliens is OK, it quickly goes into the shitter and never looks back.  I was hoping that once Bruce and Frank hopped into their snazzy mech suits (they look like a cross between the suits in G.I. Joe:  The Rise of Cobra and Edge of Tomorrow), the show would finally get on the road, but once the dramatic focus shifts to the supporting non-stars in the cast, Cosmic Sin becomes a cosmic bore.  

THE SUICIDE SQUAD (2021) ** ½

The Suicide Squad is pretty much what you'd expect a hard-R DC movie from director James Gunn would look like.  That’s not exactly a bad thing.  It’s foul-mouthed, gory, and glib, but it’s sorely missing the heart that made his Marvel franchise, Guardians of the Galaxy so much fun.  

Led by Bloodsport (Idris Elba), the new team of Suicide Squad members land on a small island to dispose a power mad general.  Turns out, he has an extraterrestrial entity on the island that he plans to use to threaten the globe.  It’s then up to the Squad to take it out.  

The Suicide Squad is basically a big-budget version of The Specials (which was also written by Gunn) as it's full of B (and C… and D) grade superheroes with really lame superpowers.  Some of the characters are fun, if one-note (like Nathan Fillion’s “TDK”), but that’s OK because many of them don’t stick around for too long.  There are a few returning cast members that still feel like they’re a part of the old guard, although they aren’t really given a whole lot to do.  You would think Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn would be a natural fit for Gunn's writing style, although somehow, she kinda falls flat.  Elba makes for a solid, if unspectacular lead, and carries the movie capably enough.  

The standouts are John Cena and Sylvester Stallone.  Cena’s Peacemaker is a riot as he strives for world peace and “doesn’t care how many women and children he has to kill” to get it.  (Basically, he’s a shitty douchebag Captain America.)  Cena was unmemorable in F9, but his special brand of dorky machismo fits the character like a glove.  Stallone’s King Shark is basically the Groot stand-in, a loveable monosyllabic monster voiced by a cool action hero.  He steals most of the scenes he’s in.  You’ll just wish it was worth stealing.

The action is kind of ordinary too.  The camerawork is less than optimal, and the choreography is unmemorable.  Being a Gunn movie, the carnage is often accompanied by old pop songs.  The selection offers a few bangers, but it’s not a patch on the quality needle drops in the Guardians movies.  

Overall, The Suicide Squad is definitely a step down from David Ayer’s perfectly acceptable, but thoroughly unremarkable original.  Despite being mostly entertained, but slightly disappointed, I still have to give props to a big budget comic book movie that contains such a loving homage to Warning from Space.  You don’t see that every day.

SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY (2021) ** ½

We didn’t really need a twenty-five-years later sequel to Space Jam, but we got one anyway.  The original was fine for what it was, a goofy kids movie.  I guess the best thing that can be said about the new one is that it offers up about the same amount of entertainment value.  Do I wish they made better use of the classic Looney Tunes characters?  Sure.  However, as far as twenty-five-years later sequels go, you could do a lot worse.

Al G. Rhythm (Don Cheadle) is the creator of the Warner Brothers’ “Serververse” that houses all the studio’s characters.  He selects LeBron James to be the face of the Serververse, and when he refuses, Al kidnaps his kid and makes him play basketball against his old man.  The kid’s a video game wizard, so he and his team use power-ups and combos to rack up points.  James just has, you know, the Looney Tunes gang at his disposal, so he eventually has to beat his son at his own game.  

Yes, Space Jam:  A New Legacy is basically a dumb kids movie, but there are moments that flirt with putting it over the top, even though it never quite gets there.  On the plus side, Daffy Duck gets all the best lines, even if they aren’t exactly laugh out loud funny.  The most fun sequence comes when James and Bugs Bunny rescue the Looney Tunes from various Warner Bros. worlds.  There’s just something about seeing the Tunes interacting with characters from Mad Max:  Fury Road, Austin Powers, and Casablanca that was enough to put a smile on my face.  It’s also cool seeing all the Warner Bros. characters making cameos in the stands for the big basketball game.  It’s basically Ready Basketball Player One.  (Although I would’ve thought that since this one takes place in a computer, they would’ve called it Cyberspace Jam instead of Space Jam:  A New Legacy, but what do I know?)  Speaking of cameos, there’s at least one really funny celebrity cameo that’s almost worth the price of admission.

Admittedly, the basketball stuff is the worst part, and the father/son drama is weak too, as LeBron is a slightly worse actor than Michael Jordan.  Cheadle does what he can with the villain role, although it’s not much.  It might not have mattered so much if Bugs and the gang had a bigger part, because ultimately there was just way too much LeBron and not enough Looney Tunes for me.  

That said, it’s not bad, if a bit overlong.  It was pretty much torn to shreds by critics, but I think it’s slightly better than many gave it credit for.  I liked that the algorithm is the villain, which makes sense.  I mean every time my wife and kid watch something on a streaming service my algorithm gets messed up, so I can feel that.  It also takes balls (no pun intended) to essentially use the studio as the villain as it ruthlessly exploits its own IP for its own sinister purposes.  The cruelest thing the algorithm does is needlessly give the classic looking characters a CGI facelift, which is just plain mean if you ask me.  (Once he is turned into a “realistic” bunny, Bugs says, “Of course you know, this means war!”)  

Also, some kind of award has to be given to whoever was in charge of putting the WB characters in the stands.  I mean, you kind of expect to see Fred Flintstone, Batman, The Mask, and King Kong in the bleachers.  However, I’d like to shake whoever’s had who put the nun from Ken Russell’s The Devils at center court.  Whatever else is clunky and half-baked about the movie, it deserves an extra Half-Star just for that.  (According to IMDb, it’s supposed to be The Nun, but it looks a lot more like the hunchbacked Vanessa Redgrave from The Devils than the twisted sister from the Conjuring movies.) 

TRAUMA CENTER (2019) * ½

Bruce Willis has been accused of sleepwalking through his DTV movies for years.  In Trauma Center, he plays a character named “Wakes”.  He doesn’t exactly resuscitate his career with this performance, but he does seem a little more spry than usual, especially in his first scene.  He must’ve known he was gonna have to match the energy of the other big name in the cast.  Now Bruce has worked with some legends over the years.  Samuel L. Jackson.  Sylvester Stallone.  Arnold Schwarzenegger.  These guys are the GOATs.  This one has The GOOT.  That’s right, we’re talking about Steve Guttenberg!  Unfortunately, Guttenberg is barely in it, so forget I mentioned it, okay?

Willis stars as a detective whose partner was killed by some crooked cops.  The cops also manage to wing a coffeeshop waitress (Nicky Whelan) who is sent to the titular establishment to heal from her wounds.  Bruce knows the corrupt cops will eventually come after her, so he stashes her away in a floor that’s under renovation.  Dumb plot circumstances (and Bruce’s conflicting acting schedule) mean he has to leave her all alone, and predictably, when the bad guys come looking for her, she must try to survive the night alone.

Trauma Center kind of feels like a loose remake of Halloween 2.  Instead of having an injured woman being chased around a half-empty hospital by a masked maniac, it’s an injured woman being chased around a half-empty hospital by a couple of dirty cops.  By having the movie take place in a deserted wing of the hospital, it saves money on pesky things that eat up a low budget thriller’s budget like extras, set decorators, and lighting personnel.  It also saves money on Bruce’s salary as he pretty much disappears halfway through.  Even though he seems mostly awake in this one, it feels closer to one of the recent Seagal movies as his dialogue is sometimes poorly looped and/or done by someone else.  It also doesn’t help that the two cop villains are way below standard issue, barely memorable, and hardly menacing.  

As bare bones as much of Trauma Center is, it does contain at least one cool moment where it threatens to kick into gear.  That moment occurs when our heroine booby traps a door handle with a defibrillator to shock her would-be attacker, Home Alone-style.  If only she used it on the screenplay.  Maybe then she could’ve brought the movie back to life.

BLACK WIDOW (2021) ** ½

Black Widow is the least of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, mostly because it never really figures out what it wants to be.  I think there was a temptation on Marvel’s part to do a more stripped-down espionage-tinged earthbound adventure after so many bombastic intergalactic Avengers flicks, and the parts where Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) comes to terms with her past (and the makeshift family she left behind) works fairly well.  However, it feels like they just couldn’t resist putting a bunch of over-the-top sci-fi action set pieces in there, just to remind everybody it’s a Marvel movie after all.  It’s not that it’s bad.  It’s just that doesn’t quite jibe with the smaller, intimate moments.  It also doesn’t help that many of the fights, chases, narrow escapes, death-defying leaps, etc. feel like video game sequences or that Black Widow herself survives all of this with nary a scratch on her.  

The movie catches up to the ex-KGB-assassin-turned-Avenger after the events of Captain America:  Civil War.  On the run from just about everybody, she figures she has some unfinished business in Mother Russia and tries to take down the mastermind of The Red Room, the place that trained her to be an assassin.  Along the way, she gets help from her estranged family of spies, although whether they are trustworthy is another story.  

It doesn’t help that Black Widow is kind of a boring character.  There’s not much here that hasn’t already been explored in the other Marvel movies and done better, I might add.  Johansson was able to make the character work in the other films in just a few brief moments.  They didn’t give her much to work with this time around (which is why I’m sure she wants to get every penny she can from Disney with her lawsuit), which means the supporting characters are left to do much of the heavy lifting.  Like the main character itself, the film doesn’t have much personality until her family of eccentrics show up to breathe a little life into the proceedings.  Sure, the flick overall is mostly enjoyable, it’s just even more so whenever they are on screen.  

Another debit is the action.  Most of the fights are competent, but not all that memorable or exciting.  I guess it wouldn’t have been all that noticeable if the staging didn’t suffer from some less than stellar camerawork and choreography.  I can’t help but think this could’ve been a real winner had they hired a director who had a real knack for filming action.  Heck, the action sometimes pales next to the recent Marvel TV shows.

Overall, Black Widow isn’t bad.  It may have its share of flaws, but I can’t completely hate any movie that contains such an affectionate nod to Moonraker.  It might not have exactly been worth the extended pandemic-induced wait.  However, I guess it will keep most comic book nerds sated until whatever-the-Hell-the-next-one-of-these-things-is comes out.    

Marvel Cinematic Universe Scorecard: 

Avengers:  Age of Ultron:  ****

The Incredible Hulk:  ****

Iron Man:  ****

Avengers:  Endgame:  ****

Thor:  Ragnarok:  ****

Ant-Man and the Wasp:  ****

Spider-Man:  Homecoming:  ****

Iron Man 3:  ****

Captain America:  Civil War:  *** ½

Ant-Man:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:  *** ½ 

Avengers:  Infinity War:  *** ½

Black Panther:  *** ½ 

The Avengers:  ***

Captain America:  The First Avenger:  ***

Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  ***

Captain Marvel:  ***

Spider-Man:  Far from Home:  ***

Thor:  ***

Thor:  The Dark World:  ***

Iron Man 2:  ***

Doctor Strange:  ** ½

Black Widow:  **  ½