The screenwriters and director of Terminator 3:  Rise of the Machines have re-teamed to give us another underrated Sci-Fi robot action movie.  Surrogates isn’t doing so hot at the box office but I caught it this afternoon in a nearly empty theater and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Do yourself a favor and check it out on the big screen before it disappears completely.  It’s a lot better than Terminator:  Salvation that’s for damn sure.

“Surrogates” are lifelike robots that humans control via a computer hook-up (it looks like a cross between Neo’s Matrix portal and the virtual reality set-up from Lawnmower Man).  The Surrogates go to work, get groceries, and go out dancing while the human just sits at home in the chair doing nothing.  After a prominent scientist’s son is murdered, Agent Greer (Bruce Willis) is called in to investigate.  He quickly uncovers a plot by “The Prophet” (Ving Rhames), a stanch anti-Surrogate agitator to kill every person hooked into a Surrogate computer.  When Greer’s Surrogate gets blown to shit by The Prophet’s men, Greer has to go out into society for the first time in years to get his man.

Like most good science fiction, Surrogates gives us some subtle political commentary (The Prophet’s “Live” posters are almost exactly like Obama’s “Hope” posters) and makes an important statement on the times we live in (the people in the movie that are constantly plugged into their Surrogate are clearly meant to represent those idiots who sit around on their ass all day playing World of Warcraft).  It also delivers on the action side of things.  There are only two or three big action sequences, but they work extremely well because of your emotional investment in Willis’ character.

Bruce does a great job in this flick; both at playing his plasticy faced Surrogate (with a full head of hair) as well as the world-weary cop.  He is particularly awesome in the scenes where he has to get acclimated to walking around the city for the first time without a Surrogate.  Bruce also gets to do a neat little Snake Plissken thing there at the end that I liked (no I won’t spoil it for you).

Surrogates does suffer from a tad bit of déjà vu though.  It’s almost as if someone put Terminator, I Robot, and The Matrix in a blender and hit Puree.  That’s fine by me though because it was never boring and it made all of its points without being overly obvious.  Surrogates also happens to be a great Bruce Willis action flick and the world always needs more of those.

Surrogates lands on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of the Year list for 2009 at the Number 10 spot; placing it just below X-Men Origins:  Wolverine.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the first white trash anime movie.  It’s got loads of cartoon boobies, cursing, and ultraviolent gore.  Since it was based on a comic book by Rob Zombie you know it’s going to be uneven as all get out.

El Superbeasto is this Masked Mexican wrestler who spends most of his time making pornos, getting drunk, and acting like an asshole.  Occasionally, he will fight a werewolf or two but mostly he just goes around being a D-Bag.  His crime-fighting partner (and sister) Suzy X mostly does all the heroic shit like fighting Nazi zombies and blowing up Hitler’s living decapitated head.  When El Superbeasto tries to save a hot stripper from the clutches of his arch-nemesis Dr. Satan, Suzy grudgingly agrees to help save the world.

This flick jumps around like a kid with ADD hopped up on Count Chocula cereal.  Zombie keeps cutting back and forth from El Superbeasto and his hot sidekick (who herself has a robot sidekick), which hampers a lot of the film’s momentum.  Once they finally team up though, the movie finds its footing and starts becoming funnier.  The big problem I had with the flick is that Suzy X is a heck of a lot more entertaining than El Superbeasto.  How come Zombie always makes his “heroes” foul-mouthed unlikable assholes?  Beats me.

The humor is crude and sophomoric, bordering on freshmanic.  There is some genuinely funny stuff here though.  I dug Zombie’s references to his own films (Captain Spaulding, Michael Myers and the Werewolf Women of the SS make cameos) as well as the Schoolhouse Rock inspired musical number detailing Dr. Satan’s evil plan.  The best part though is the opening which is basically a word-for-word rip-off of the prologue to the original Frankenstein.  These moments are fleeting but I have to admit they made me laugh.  The bulk of the movie is far too sloppy and/or annoying to give it a full-on recommendation.  However, I can’t bring myself to hate any movie that references Carrie and Benny Hill within the same minute.

I was always a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fan by proxy.  My little brother was the Turtle head in the family so he was the one who watched the cartoons, played with the toys, and wore the pajamas.  Just because I was a little bit older, that didn’t stop me from occasionally watching the show and playing with a toy or two myself.  I liked the original live action Turtle movie but Part 2 was atrocious (despite the hilarious Vanilla Ice cameo) and Part 3 was kinda hokey.  It took Hollywood 14 long Turtle-less years to finally make another TMNT flick, albeit in a completely computer generated format.  The results are decidedly mixed. 

The film picks up some time after Part 3 and finds everyone’s favorite Mutants disbanding and going their separate ways.  Meanwhile in the city, a nefarious villain (voiced by Patrick Stewart) has teamed up with the dreaded Foot Clan to kidnap thirteen evil monsters that will bring about the resurrection of an ancient immortal stone army.  It’s up to the Turtles to get their shit together and learn how to work as a team in order to save the day.

While I think the idea to go CGI on the Turtles was ambitious, I have to admit I missed the rubbery looking Turtles from the 90’s.  While the switch to CGI was a smart one, some of the animation is downright shoddy.  All of the monsters are extremely cheesy and the flashback to the villain’s past is pretty pathetic looking.  The human characters were too heavily stylized for my tastes as well.  (I know this movie is a goddamn cartoon, but did they really need to make the humans look so damn cartoony?)  I will say that the rendering on the Turtles themselves is very well done and the animators did a good job on differentiating their distinct personalities.  Oh well, as long as they look good, I guess it doesn’t matter if everything else looks goofy as fuck.

TMNT also suffers from some of the most horrendously weak villains I’ve ever seen, animated or otherwise.  I didn’t really give two shits about the villain’s plot and the whole monster subplot was incredibly weak.  I guess after you defeat Shredder, watch Vanilla Ice do the Ninja Rap, and travel back in time, it’s all downhill from there.

The flick does get some things right; namely the Turtles themselves.  Their interactions with each other are classic Turtle stuff.  I also appreciated the slightly darker approach to the characters which made them more akin to the Turtles of the comics than the cartoon.   The rooftop duel between Raphael and Leonardo is the highlight of the film and hints at what a badass movie this could’ve been if it didn’t have a bunch of lame-ass stone warriors and numb-nut monsters in it.  I also dug the nods to the previous live action films as well as some of the Casey Jones and April O’Neil stuff.

TMNT is filled with shortcomings and reeks of missed opportunities.  That doesn’t stop it from being the second best Turtle movie ever made.  That’s not saying much though.

When I was 14, I was into anime for all of about 3 months.  I picked up Vampire Hunter D and Keiko Kamen and loved the fact that they were ultraviolent cartoons that featured a lot of (animated) nudity.  I quickly came to realize though that there were far sleazier live action movies that featured real chicks getting naked, so I dropped the anime habit like a dead hooker.  That was long before Ghost in the Shell came out in 1996.  Ghost in the Shell was supposed to be the big movie that got mainstream audiences into anime.  It didn’t; but it went on to influence the guys who did The Matrix, and that flick helped to spread the anime gospel with the creation of the Animatrix cartoon.

The story centers around Motoko, the cyborg leader of Section 9, a special police force.  She and her team have to search the city for a mysterious hacker known only as the “Puppet Master”.  Or something like that.

Look, I’m just not an anime kinda guy, so a lot of Ghost in the Shell just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.  The plot simultaneously had too much and not enough going on.  Although the movie looked cool visually and featured scads of animated nudity, the story wasn’t involving enough to hook me.  Plus, my mind was about to go nuts from all the senseless techno-babble the characters spouted endlessly.  The ill-fitting, flatly-read, American-dubbed line readings didn’t help matters much either.

Best line:  “If you’re still alive, get off your ass and arrest those garbage men!”  

AKA:  Shell Mobile Force.

Okay, so if anybody couldn’t piece together what happened to Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) before he joined up with the X-Men, then this prequel will fill in every little last detail.  Basically what went down is that the 100 and some odd years old Wolverine fought in every single war from the Civil War to Vietnam alongside his brother, Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber).  After being tried for killing a superior officer, the duo get put before a firing squad, but since they both have regenerative powers, the bullets only tickle them.  So Colonel Stryker (Danny Huston) handpicks them for his special team of mutants who do Black Ops type shit like murdering innocent people and stealing meteorites.  Finally, Wolvie grows a conscience and walks away from the unit and marries some broad up in Canada.  Of course, Sabretooth kills her and Wolverine agrees to let Stryker replace his bones (and more importantly, his claws) with anamantium so he can go out and kick his brother’s ass.

Wolverine was always at his best when playing the role of reluctant hero and mentor to the younger X-Men.  Here, he’s center stage and as a result, he loses a bit of his charm.  X-Men Origins:  Wolverine (or X-MOW as I like to call it) fires on all cylinders whenever Wolvie is working with Stryker’s team or when he’s rescuing a bunch of mutants who get to (briefly) show off their powers.  Curiously, it’s the scenes where Wolverine flies solo that fail to entertain.  Wolverine’s (predictably doomed) love affair borders on tedious and his constant run-ins with his arch nemesis Sabretooth lack a lot of oomph since we know that Wolvie kills him in X-Men 1.  Luckily there are plenty of scenes of mutant melees and X-Men experimentation to make you forget the fact that most of the plot shit had already been thoroughly covered in Parts 1 & 2.

Jackman puts in another solid turn as the man behind the claws, but it’s the supporting mutants that really steal the show.  First and foremost is Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool.  He makes the most out of his limited screen time and his wiseass demeanor fits the character like a glove.  Taylor Kitsch also does a fine job as Gambit, the card-tossing, cane-twirling Cajun and Kevin Durand is a hoot as the massively overweight Blob.  There are also a gaggle of surprise mutant cameos that should have X-Fans grinning.  Oh and make sure you stay after the credits because there is an extra bit of business that sets up another X-Men spin-off movie.  (There are two alternate versions out there.)  Even though X-MOW doesn’t quite live up to it’s three predecessors, it still remains a solidly entertaining comic book flick and is a heck of a way to start the summer blockbuster season.

X-Men Origins:  Wolverine claws it way to the Number 6 spot on The Video Vacuum Top Ten of the Year, just below Watchmen and right above The Last House on the Left.

Hey geeks; Watchmen is finally here so you can finally stop bitching about giant squids and shit on the internet.  I’ve never read the comic book so I can’t tell you what’s what but take it from me:  the flick’s not too shabby.  Now I’m not going to sit here and give you a tired plot rundown like I normally do because any die hard geek out there already knows the story inside out.  Besides, the plot is far too massive and cumbersome for me to give an adequate description anyway.  Basically what I’m going to do is tell you the shit I didn’t like and the shit I did.  Fair enough?  OK let’s boogie:

The Bad:  The sheer length of the movie.  It’s a long haul.  That’s not to say that director Zack Snyder didn’t always keep your attention.  He was constantly hurtling information at you all the time; almost forcing you to pay attention.  The amount of shit your brain has to process (for instance, the character’s back stories and past histories) can be at times overwhelming and it felt like Snyder was trying to spin one too many plates at the same time.  The flick probably requires another viewing to fully take everything in so I may eventually give it another shot (preferably on a comfy couch and the ability to use a pause button).  The film is simply ambitious to a fault.  While I admire Snyder’s obsessive compulsive need to throw in every little detail to placate the die hard fans of the comic; I think he could have been a bit more generous with the scissors in the editing room.

Now on to the good stuff.  In a word:  Rorschach.  As played by Jackie Earle Haley (yes, the same Jackie Earle Haley from The Bad News Bears), Rorschach is one bad motherfucker and kicks all kinds of ass; both in and out of costume.  He’s so great you’ll wish the whole movie was about him.  My second favorite character was Dr. Blueballs (Billy Crudup).  Basically he’s a blue guy with white eyeballs who went around totally naked and made Vietnamese people blow up.  And by totally naked I mean totally naked.  Without a doubt, this has to be the most gratuitous cock shot movie of all time.  I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that you’ll see his blue junk over a dozen times in this flick.  Even when the Doc goes to Antarctica, he still doesn’t put any pants on.  (Seriously folks, the man goes to Antarctica without a stitch of clothes on and never once experiences SHRINKAGE.  Now that’s a superhero for you!)

Speaking of naked superheroes, this flick had more scenes of superheroes fucking than you could shake a blue dick at.  It was almost like watching Red Shoe Diaries with capes.  My favorite scene was when Dr. Blueballs made multiple duplicates of himself to fuck his girlfriend (Malin Akerman) while simultaneously building a nuclear bomb in the other room. 

That’s right people; this guy is so powerful he can have a gangbang all by himself!    

And that’s more or less why I liked Watchmen so much:  The superheroes made legitimate uses of their super powers.  Honestly, if I had the power to be totally omnipotent, I’d be banging Malin Akerman in every hole at the same time too.

You’ve heard of movies that include everything but the kitchen sink?  The Spirit actually HAS the kitchen sink in it.  It makes its appearance about five minutes into the film’s running time.  The scene:  Our hero Denny Colt/The Spirit (Gabriel Macht) is battling his arch nemesis The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) in a swamp.  The Spirit grabs said appliance and uses it to smack The Octopus upside the head.  This is just shortly after The Octopus conked The Spirit on the noggin with a toilet. 

Yes folks, these guys are fighting in a swamp, yet there is a shocking abundance of household fixtures just sitting there waiting to be used as weapons. 

The kitchen sink is the least of your worries though.  During the film, we also get to see a shrunken human head grafted onto a hopping foot, a sword wielding belly dancer/assassin named “Plaster of Paris”, and a melting cat.  The weirdest part about the movie though is Samuel L. Jackson’s wardrobe.  Throughout the film he dresses up in such bizarre get-ups as a samurai, a mad scientist, and a Nazi.  The reason for his constant costume changes is never given.  Spenser’s Gifts must’ve had one Hell of a post-Halloween sale I suppose.

To call The Spirit “over the top” is an understatement.  The term “over the top” doesn’t even begin to describe the movie.  I mean when the first fight scene in the film has your hero beating the snot out of his enemy with the kitchen sink in the middle of a goddamned swamp, you’ve already far exceeded the top to begin with.

Macht plays The Spirit with an easy blend of confident suaveness and knowing camp.  The fact that we never really learn anything ABOUT The Spirit (except the fact that he’s immortal, is a chronic womanizer, and used to have a girlfriend when he was a teenager) is irrelevant.  He’s our hero and he wears a Lone Ranger mask and a tie and beats the snot out of people.  End of story.  Jackson is equally fun.  He basically plays himself, except he wears a lot of funny outfits.  The female cast members are all hot.  We get Eva Mendes (who shows off her butt), Jaime King (as “Death”) and the scrumptious looking Scarlett Johansson.  I missed a lot of the plot of the movie thanks largely because I was starring at Scarlett’s massive cleavage. 

The Spirit was created by comics legend Will Eisner and has been adapted by another legend, Frank Miller.  Eisner and Miller’s approaches are as different as night and day.  While Eisner’s original character was always more or less like a supernatural version of Dick Tracy, Miller makes him more of a refugee from Sin City.  Consequently, most of the movie’s problems stem from Miller putting the character into a mold in which he doesn’t quite fit. 

Unlike Sin City, The Spirit is all style and no substance.  I know that this is a comic book movie and everything but there are comic books and there are cartoons.  The Spirit mostly just seems like one big Bugs Bunny cartoon.  During the fight scenes between The Spirit and The Octopus, you half expect them to start shouting, “Duck Season!” and “Rabbit Season!” in between their punches. 

Since both characters are immortal and can’t feel pain, there is absolutely no suspense, depth, or emotion to any of this.  In the end, what we are left with is a lot of film noir-ish posturing, clumsy hard-boiled dialogue, and a bunch or random weirdness-for-weirdness-sake shenanigans.  I will give this to old Frank though; the flick is never boring and is always fun to look at (especially any scene involving Johannson’s cleavage or Mendes’ butt).

Macht gets the best line of the movie when he tells Jackson, “I’m going to kill you all kinds of dead!”

The Punisher is one of my favorite comic book characters so I was a little weary of this flick because it was yet another “reboot” of the franchise.  The Punisher series is the only series I know of in which a different actor plays the titular hero in each movie.  At least Michael Keaton stuck around for two Batman flicks before bolting.  (Time will only tell if Edward Norton reprises his role in the next Hulk movie.) 

The first Punisher movie starred Dolph Lundgren and it was a fun action picture that suffered from a miniscule budget and no skull on the Punisher’s T-shirt.  The second flick starred Thomas Jane as the Punisher and was a meaty origin story that favored angst over actual punishment.  This time around, it’s Ray Stevenson’s turn to inherit the mantle and I’m happy to report that Punisher:  War Zone is one of the goriest action movies of the year, second only to Rambo in terms of sheer carnage.  While I may have missed the emotional resonance of the Jane version, this is a perfectly acceptable incarnation of the Punisher and should please his more narrow-minded fans.  (And by narrow-minded I mean people that just want to see shit get fucked up.) 

The film opens up with The Punisher going ape shit on a whole bunch of greasy mobsters and machine gunning the bejesus out of them.  In a particularly gnarly encounter, he grabs a hold of this big deal gangster named Billy Rossoti (Dominic West) and shoves him into an industrial glass grinder and puts it on “puree”.  During the fracas, Punisher accidentally kills an undercover FBI guy and spends the rest of the movie contemplating giving up his vigilante ways. 

Meanwhile Rossoti miraculously survives and is left with a face that looks so fucked up that even Leatherface wouldn’t consider using it as a mask, and begins calling himself Jigsaw.  With Punisher off moping about the dead Fed and giving puppy dog eyes to the agent’s grieving widow (Julie Benz from Rambo) and little daughter, Jigsaw is busy rebuilding his criminal organization.  When Jigsaw comes after the deceased narc’s family, Punisher grabs a shitload of guns from his buddy Microchip (Wayne Knight) and returns back to his punishing ways by blowing away Jigsaw and his minions.

Whereas the last Punisher movie was well acted and dramatically sound; this flick is just a balls to the wall action movie.  Director Lexi (Green Street Hooligans) Alexander did an admirable job at bringing a comic book sensibility to the movie and captured the feel of The Punisher comics (especially Garth Ennis’ run) remarkably well.  When Alexander attempted something approximating actual “drama”, the results were often laughable though.  She completely botched just about every “emotional” scene in the movie, but that’s okay though because she sure as shit knows how to film The Punisher dishing out the pain. 

Punisher slices people’s heads off, shoots numerous baddies at point blank range in the face, throws a guy off a roof and impales him on a fence, jumps off the roof and lands on said impaled guy’s head, punches one guy right through the face, and launches a grenade into the general vicinity of a group of gangbangers.  In the flick’s best scene, Punisher uses a rocket launcher on a somersaulting criminal and effectively vaporizes the dude.  I laughed harder at that shit than I have at any comedy made in the past year.  

The hand to hand stuff is also particularly brutal, and the bathroom brawl Punisher has with Jigsaw’s brother, Loony Bin Jim (Doug Hutchinson) is a doozy.  This Loony Bin Jim (or “LBJ” for short) dude is a trip.  When Jigsaw rescues him from the Loony Bin, Jim is so pissed that an orderly ate his applesauce that he rips out the guy’s kidney and gobbles it up!  And while we’re on the subject of gross, don’t even get me started on the scene where Punisher gets his nose broken and fixes it by shoving a No. 2 pencil up his deviated septum and... it’s better not to think about it folks.  When you’re The Punisher, your health insurance options are limited I guess.

Stevenson knows how to fuck shit up and plays The Punisher like a combination of Charles Bronson, Jaws and Jason Vorhees as he mows through armies of Mafioso and other assorted scum like it’s nobody’s business.  (I particularly liked his look of annoyance whenever he got shot.)  Stevenson is considerably less effective whenever he isn’t dishing out the punishment and the scene where he lets Benz’s snot-nosed kid play with his dead daughter’s snow globe is especially groan-inducing.  Even though the man can’t do drama like Thomas Jane did (Lundgren was at least smart enough to not even attempt to try anything remotely dramatic), I still dug Ray Stevenson as The Punisher.  Let’s face it, the man looks like a Tim Bradstreet drawing come to life, so he’s okay in my book.

Also deserving of kudos is Dominic West as Jigsaw.  While his origin reeked of leftovers from The Joker in the ‘89 Batman (“Billy is dead.  Call me... Jigsaw!”), West still had lots of fun with the role.  He had excellent chemistry with Hutchinson and together they made a formidable duo.  The scene where he recruits the dregs of society into joining his organization was priceless and is worth the price of admission.  He stands in front of a giant LCD TV that’s projecting the image of the American flag and says “We’re looking for a few good men to be all they can be!” while a bunch of Thug Lifers look on incredulously.  That shit was so rousing that the gangbangers sitting behind me in the theater starting applauding. 

Punisher:  War Zone is a fun, if patchy action movie that delivers the gory goods more often than not.  Any Punisher fan should be pleased with the final product, just be wary of any scenes involving actual plot or dialogue.  Speaking of dialogue, Stevenson only says about 250 words throughout the whole movie.  Nothing particularly noteworthy although I did like his parting words to Jigsaw:  “I’m going to put you out of my misery.”

A sexy white trash succubus (Nicole Hiltz) lures a busload of Jesus Campers to her trailer park where she seduces and murders them.  She also has an army of white trash zombies who help her dispose of the meat. 

This sounds like it has all the makings of a classic but it pretty much sucks more nuts than a toothless squirrel.  Several things hamper what could’ve been an entertaining flick.  First and foremost was all the irritating flashbacks.  Second was the dumbass redneck zombie who acted like a fucking Greek Chorus and sang a bunch of shitty rockabilly songs for no good reason whatsoever.  The biggest disappointment in the film though was the conspicuous lack of female skin.  Every time the succubus does the nasty in this flick, she keeps her top on.  Seriously, we’re talking about a trailer park prostitute/succubus here.  You mean to tell me she’s not going to show her goodies?  One star deduction for illogical plotting.

Then you had the fact that all the characters were one note and annoying.  There was the stuck-up Goth chick, the gay guy, the horn dog, the black chick, the fat girl and the asshole.  Yeah, I know this is a horror movie and they are only there for the purpose of being killed off, but c’mon; none of these fuckers are remotely likable.  As for all of the trailer park residents, they all try WAY too hard to be white trash and in the process end up looking and sounding utterly ridiculous.  If the film had been cast with exclusively real life trailer park people, the film could’ve been the stuff nightmares are made from.  There’s also a bunch of business involving an omnipotent stranger with mysterious powers (played by country star Trace Adkins) who likes to hang around whose presence is never properly explained. 

The gore is the only thing worth a toss in this flick.  There are severed heads, severed arms, gut munching, human filleting, and human deep frying.  The best scene though is the spine-snapping Asian massage, complete with a decidedly unhappy "Happy Ending".  Maybe if the filmmakers had based the whole film around this scene and called it Massage Parlor of Terror, it might’ve been slightly better.  Slightly.

A young girl grows up in Iran as revolutionaries take over the country and force all the women to wear scarves on their head and forbid them to listen to Iron Maiden cassettes.  Since a lot of her outspoken relatives have been imprisoned, shot, or both by the government, her parents send her away to Vienna to go to school.  She has a lot of trouble adjusting to her new surroundings and soon returns to find her country is just as fucked up as ever.  She then ventures into a loveless marriage and eventually divorces and has to flee the country again just so she can walk around without that damn scarf on her head. 

The film was based on the autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, who also co-directed.  You know, I liked the stylish animation on this flick and thought that some of the imagery was rather well done.  While there were brief glimpses of humor here and there (most having to do with the rebellious girl being influenced by the devilish Western culture), for the most part though this flick was one big Depress-O-Thon.  I mean I get it, living in Iran sucks (especially if you are a girl), but shit man I could have told you that 95 minutes ago and I wouldn’t have been subjected to this morose history lesson/coming of age story. 

What pissed me off about this flick was that the chick got a chance to get the fuck out of Iran but when she got to Vienna, all she could do is bitch about how much Vienna sucked.  Dude, Vienna may be a shithole place to live but it’s not fucking Iran!  Moral of the story:  If you live in Iran and have a chance to leave, by all means do it and don’t come back! 

Jesus, do you just realize I had to sit through a fucking FRENCH movie about Iranians?  My wife will get anything off of Netflix…    

The 80’s were not kind to movies based on Marvel comic books.  While DC was reaping the millions of dollars from Tim Burton’s Batman, Marvel had to be content with goofy made for TV movies like Captain America while constantly failing to bring their beloved Spider-Man franchise to the big screen.  The Punisher looked to be the start of a promising slate of Marvel films, but sadly the studio, New World Pictures went bankrupt shortly before the film’s release so it went straight to video.  It’s kind of a shame too because the results aren’t bad at all.

Dolph Lundgren stars as Frank Castle, a cop whose wife and child died in a car bombing that was meant for him.  Castle; thought dead by the Mafioso who orchestrated the bombing, starts meditating naked in a sewer until he gets mad enough to blow away anyone remotely of Italian descent.  Since Frank has wiped out most of the gangsters in the city, it leaves them vulnerable to a hostile takeover by the yakuza, who are led by an uptight Japanese broad.  She kidnaps the son of big cheese Mafioso Jeroen (The Living Daylights) Krabbe who negotiates a truce with Castle long enough to rescue his son and blow away several kimono clad criminals. 

It’s painfully obvious that this flick had a budget the size of a TJ Hooker episode, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Director Mark (Dead Heat) Goldblatt edited dozens of action flicks in his day, so he knows how to keep things popping along at a steady clip.  He also gives us plenty of action and not a whole lot of gratuitous plot stuff (the Louis Gossett, Jr. subplot is handled fairly swiftly) to keep things from getting bogged down.  The scene where Punisher crashes a casino is pretty tight and the final red-tinted yakuza massacre is excellent. 

I’m tempted to give the movie four stars because the action scenes are handled nicely and Lundgren is perfectly cast as Castle.  BUT… the thing that just pisses me the Hell off about this movie is that there is no skull on the Punisher’s T-shirt!!!  What the fuck?  How can you make a Punisher movie without the freakin’ skull on his shirt?  That’s like making a Superman movie and having no ‘S’ on the costume.  You know, if the filmmakers simply bothered to put a skull on the Punisher’s T-shirt it would have been a classic; since they didn’t it’s an automatic one star deduction. 

They didn’t give Dolph a whole lot of lines in this one (wise decision) but he does get one great dialogue exchange with Gossett that is pretty classic: 

Gossett:  “What do you call 125 dead bodies in 5 years?”

Dolph:  “A work in progress.”

Since this may be the last year of The Diamond State Drive-In Theater (Delaware’s last remaining drive-in in existence), I thought it would be a great idea to toss the wife in the Cavalier and go across state lines to check out a Comic Book Movie Double Feature of Hellboy 2:  The Golden Army and Wanted.  Now I wasn’t a big fan of the first Hellboy movie, but I do admire the work of director Guillermo del Toro and the previews were promising lots of eye-popping special effects and plenty of monster mashing, so if figured what the hay.  Besides, it won’t be too long before seeing demons with gigantic stone boxing gloves fighting enormous robots under the moonlight will become a thing of the past in the First State, so you got to grab each opportunity you can get by nut sac.

The plot of Hellboy 2 has an evil Troll Prince getting pissed off that humans have ignored the truce between Man and Troll to keep out of his forests, so he’s getting itchy to try out his father’s Golden Army of Giant Indestructible Killer Robots that have the capacity to bring about the end of humankind as we know it.  His hottie twin sister doesn’t want that so she hides the map containing the Army’s whereabouts and ditches the Troll Kingdom for New York where the demon Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and his band of paranormal investigators try to protect her from her spear wielding sibling. 

Hellboy 2 suffers from some of the same problems the first film did (mainly that Hellboy mostly seems like a supporting character in his own movie), but this time out del Toro is totally in his element.  Thanks to the critical success of his Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro doesn’t have to kowtow to the lame-brained execs and can finally make a movie for himself instead of a studio mandated demographic group.  This means that del Toro can put in as many bedtime stories that look like a Rankin Bass version of an Iron Maiden album, calcium eating tooth fairies, and other assorted general weirdness without worrying if an exec is looking over his shoulder screaming “What the fuck is this crap?”

Del Toro serves up at least one memorable special effects set piece in The Troll Market which kinda plays like an updated version of the Star Wars cantina scene for the new millennium.  This scene alone has a bigger cast of mutants and weirdos than the last three David Lynch movies combined and is totally worthy of your $8.  (Don’t you just love drive-in prices?  TWO movies for EIGHT BUCKS, baby!  It certainly beats the shit out of going to a Roofie Cinema.) 

Sure the movie is uneven as all get out, and could’ve benefited from some tighter editing, but this flick features a giant monster brawl every ten minutes or so, so what more do you really want?  I especially enjoyed the scene where Hellboy squared off against the giant Elemental monster.  If the monster itself suffers from comparison to the Cloverfield monster, that’s okay because this movie one-ups the monster from that movie because this monster actually turns INTO a clover field after it’s been slain.

Perlman is great (again) but you’ll be wishing he had more screen time (again).  Luckily for us, there’s no more wet-behind-the-ears rookie FBI guys mucking up the works, which lets the supporting cast do their thing.  Returning stars Selma Blair (Firestarter Goth Girl), and Doug Jones (Telepathic Fish Man) are in fine form and their performances are complemented nicely by the addition of a new character, Johan Krauss (German Gas Man) voiced by Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane.  

The flick is also chockfull of great dialogue, but I think I’m going to have to nominate “I’m not a baby, I’m a tumor!” as the best of the bunch.

Next up was Wanted and I don’t if it was because this was my second time viewing the film but most of this movie actually MADE SENSE this time around.  I guess goofy shit like assassins who can curve bullets and weaving looms that order people to kill just makes more sense when you’re at the drive-in.  For those who’ve seen Wanted already, you already know how insane this movie is.  Even though I just saw it nine days ago, Wanted is STILL the Best Brain Dead Action Movie since Shoot ‘Em Up and STILL the Best Exploding Rat Movie ever made and I'm STILL giving it three stars despite it's moments of extreme stupidity.  Honestly folks, how can you turn down an opportunity to see Angelina Jolie’s bare ass 50 feet high on the drive-in screen under the stars in the comfort of your own car?

Anyone out there interested in doing their part to save The Diamond State Drive-In Theater, check out their website at www.dsdit.com.  Take someone you love to the drive-in tonight. 

Wanted is bar none the Best Brain-Dead, Over the Top, Testosterone City Action Movie since Shoot ‘Em Up. 

There are so many moments in this flick that will have you shaking your head with disbelief that the person beside you with think you have Parkinson’s disease.  This is a good thing though. 

Wanted tells the story of Wesley (James McAvoy), who works in a dead end office job and is prone to bouts of anxiety attacks.  He’s miserable because his boss is always yelling at him, his girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend, and he’s got a wimpy name like Wesley.  That all changes when he is recruited by “The Fraternity”, a secret order of assassins led by Sloan (Morgan Freeman) to murder the man who killed his father; the best assassin in the world.  Naturally, killing is in the blood and together with his team of crack shots, Sloan turns Wesley into an expert marksman who can “curve the bullet”, which means he can shoot people from around corners. 

If you think the idea of curving a bullet as easily as curving a baseball is preposterous, then avoid this movie at all costs.  You ain’t seen nothing yet. 

Anyway, Sloan gets his orders from “The Loom of Fate”, which is literally a weaving loom that produces cloth that when carefully read and deciphered gives the names of people that should be swiftly assassinated by the Fraternity.  

I told you this flick is preposterous.  Then again, if you can swallow a magic loom that orders Academy Award Winners to kill people, you’ll probably swallow anything. 

So the loom weaves out names and a trained and ready Wesley goes out running around on top of El trains shooting people around the corners of office buildings, effectively turning them into the Fruit of the Loom.  Eventually Wesley’s name comes out of the loom and Sloan sends his sexy as Hell assassin, Fox (Angelina Jolie) to ice Wesley. 

Curving bullets?  A textile machine that spits out God’s hit list in impossibly encoded fabric?  If you people can’t believe that, then I probably shouldn’t tell you about the scene where Wesley mixes up nitroglycerin and peanut butter, feeds it to thousands of rats, ties a detonator to each one of them, sends them scurrying into the Fraternity’s compound and makes them all blow up real good. 

Yes folks, we’re talking about the Greatest Exploding Rat Movie of the New Millennium here. 

Director Timur (Night Watch) Bekmambetov knows how to film scenes of bullets flying in slow motion and hitting their intended targets so that lots of strawberry jelly flies out the back of their head.  He also actually manages to out-John Woo John Woo during the final gun battle and gives us not one but THREE Shadow inspired scenes of bullets hitting each other in mid-flight.  He has trouble stringing all of this together in a plausible manner, but then again he can film a Wet and Naked Angelina Jolie Scene just as good, if not better than Robert Zemeckis, so that’s worth something in my book.   

After the puny 2003 psycho-babbling Ang Lee Hulk movie, Marvel bought back the rights to their beloved Hulk character and did things their way.  They rebooted the franchise with a better cast, more sophisticated effects and a lot more action and monster mashing.  The result? 

Nothing short of incredible.

Seriously, remember how good Iron Man was?  Well The Incredible Hulk is just as good.  Scratch that.  It’s slightly better, if only because Iron Man is in this flick too.  Sure, you got to wait till the very end, but when Tony Stark waltzes in and says, “We’re putting a team together”, well, it’s enough to make any fanboy make meringue in his pants.

This new Incredible Hulk follows the rhythm of the iconic 70’s television show, just kicks things up several notches (it’s basically The Fugitive on Jolly Green Giant steroids).  Dr. Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) is hiding out in Brazil searching for a cure to his gamma ray induced fits of rage.  The psycho General Thunderbolt Ross (Wiliam Hurt) wants to turn his gamma genes into a biological weapon (Isn’t that always the way with the Army?) and with the help of a pissed-off military grunt with sketchy alliances named Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), Ross and his crack crew try to capture Banner.  Every time they get THIS close to catching him though, they make the mistake of making Banner VERY angry; and we all know what happens when he gets VERY angry.  He Hulks out big time, turns green and smashes things up left and right and tosses around Humvees and forklifts like they were Matchbox cars.  Blonsky gets his mitts on some of that gamma ray goodness (along with healthy doses of Super Soldier Serum) which turns him into the gnarly looking Abomination, a giant monster that looks like Godzilla with a calcium deposit problem.  When Abomination goes rampaging through Harlem, he threatens the life of Banner’s sweetheart (Liv Tyler) and that makes Bruce VERY angry.  You know what comes next.  Giant monster WWE grudge match. 

I can’t think of a summer movie as perfectly paced as this one.  Just when you’ve had enough of Banner searching for a cure, in comes Thunderbolt Ross with his tanks and Hummers.  Bruce hulks out and causes millions in property damage and escapes.  Bruce heads to some college in Virginia, starts looking for a cure… BAM!  Ross shows up, Bruce turns green.  Banner hitches to New York, Abomination shows up, Monster Mash City. 

Oh and speaking of that fight scene between Abomination and Hulk.  It just so happens to be the best superhero fight scene since The Son of Jor-El took on the trio of Kryptonian baddies at the end of Superman 2.  I’m not kidding.

Hulk himself also happens to be the single greatest CGI creation ever.  Fuck those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.  Screw Kong.  Hulk is the best fleshed out CGI character ever put on screen.  Yeah he looks awesome, that’s for sure, but the key to what makes him work so damn well is that you can always see what makes him tick through his expressions.  Granted, most of the time he’s just pissed off and smashes the shit out of stuff, but you always sympathize with him because during every battle, he’s protecting the woman he loves first, and smashing the shit out of stuff a very close second.  As much as I loved the Hulk/Abomination fight, I enjoyed the tender, quieter moments between Hulk and Betty just as much.  The scene in the cave where it’s just them together hiding from the rain is phenomenal.  When their tranquil peace is ruined by an annoying bolt of lighting, Hulk lets out a roar into the skies as if he was yelling at God himself.  With equal parts of Kong and Frankenstein-like pathos, this scene is the heart of the movie.  Great stuff. 

In short, this was not the Hulk movie I was expecting from the director of Transporter 2. 

Sure I LOVED that movie, but I’ll be the first to admit that it was just mindless action junk.  Like that movie, this one is filled with tons of action, but here, director Louis Leterrier expertly balances the CGI rampaging action scenes with warmth and humor (this flick features the best superhero sex scene of all time) and is filled with lot of in-jokes for fans.  (The original Hulk, Lou Ferrigno has a cameo and also voiced the Hulk for this movie.)  By honoring the history of the Hulk (even to some extent, the Ang Lee film since it picks up with Banner in Brazil) Leterrier also creates something wholly original and crafts a truly wonderful and exhilarating comic book movie, one of the best ever made.  He also peppers enough hints of things to come (The fucking LEADER, baby!) to have you ready for Incredible Hulk Deux ASAP.

The Incredible Hulk is quite simply INCREDIBLE.  As far as Marvel Movies go, it’s second only to Spider-Man 1 and about on par with Iron Man.  It easily mops the floor with the shitty Ang Lee Hulk movie.  The only thing that isn’t as good as that first Hulk movie was Thunderbolt Ross. I much preferred Sam Elliott’s performance to William Hurt.  That’s not to say that there was anything wrong with Hurt’s performance in this flick, it’s just hard to top Sam Elliott and Hurt knows that, so he doesn’t even try.  (Hurt seemed more or less like a pushover in comparison to the much more machismo Elliott.)  That’s only a MINOR quibble.  The rest of the performances are excellent.  Tyler brings a quiet vulnerability to Betty, yet always remains foxy as Hell.  And what more can you say about Norton?  The man is probably the closest thing to Brando his generation will ever get and he plays one of the most beloved comic book icons of all time exactly how you think it would:  He nails it. 

With two perfect comic book movies under their belt and a litany of other inter-connected ones to come (Ant-Man, Captain America, Thor and the granddaddy of them all The Avengers are all in the works), Marvel looks to be well on their way to bringing every comic book movie fan’s dream of superheroes mingling in each other’s universe to fruition. 

All I’m going to say is that The Dark Knight will be hard-pressed to follow the astounding one-two punch of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk.

The Incredible Hulk goes straight to Number 2 on The Video Vacuum Top Ten, right behind Rambo and just a smidge ahead of Iron Man.

David (Angel) Boreanaz stars in Crow movie number 4 as a peyote eating satanic cult leader who escapes from a chain gang and heads to an Indian reservation to murder Redskins.  Edward (T2) Furlong plays a white dude who’s messing around with a hot Indian chick (Emmanuelle Chriqui), and that doesn’t sit well with Boreanaz and his nutty girlfriend (Tara Reid), so she eats Chriqui’s eyeballs while Boreanaz rips out Furlong’s heart.  If you’ve seen the other movies in the series, you know what comes next:  A crow shows up to bring Furlong back to life so he can paint his face white and make like a Ronald McDonald version of Charles Bronson. 

I always thought the first Crow movie was a tad overrated and that people usually forgave a lot of that film’s many shortcomings because Brandon Lee died while making it.  Crow 2 wasn’t bad, but it suffered from a horrendous performance by Vincent Perez as the new Crow.  I somehow managed to avoid the next installment, but let me tell ya, 3 must have contained a LOT of plot cuz this one didn’t make a lick of sense to me.

Okay, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the first two (and probably the third too) movies take place in a bargain basement Blade Runner future?  And if so, how come this one takes place in the present day and on an Indian reservation no less?  I have not a clue. 

Anyway, the cast for this flick is probably the best ever assembled for a Crow movie, but it doesn’t exactly help when everyone is woefully miscast.  When you think of The Crow, Edward Furlong is about your 191^st choice for the role.  With his cherubic face and his braindead stare, he looks more like an Emo Hot Topic douche bag and not a supernatural specter bent on revenge.  If anything, Boreanaz would’ve been much more suited to play the title character.  He’s tall, stoic, and muscular, all traits befitting a hero.  I didn’t exactly buy him as an evil Satanist cult member either.  To me, it just looked like he was just biding time until Angel got renewed.

The misguided casting aside, some of the movie actually works.  The revenge genre is pretty hard to screw up, and although director Lance (Six String Samurai) Mungia tries his damnedest to sabotage things at every turn, parts of this mess are surprisingly watchable.  The scene where Boreanaz murders the lovebirds has a kick to it, and some of the action scenes are well staged.  (The characters fly through the air so much that the movie’s subtitle should’ve been Crouching Tiger, Hidden Crow.)  Although the kills are kinda watered down (baseball bat to the face, impalings, stabbings, etc.), the movie does feature one of the nuttiest death scenes I’ve ever seen in a motion picture:  Death by Bug Zapper.  I’m not kidding.   

Although the flick sorta lost me around the time Boreanaz became the second coming of the Antichrist and started acting like a game show host on LSD, I say to you that any movie in which Dennis Hopper plays a Mexican pimp named El Nino, can’t be all bad.   

Hopper of course gets the best line of the movie.  While presiding over a satanic wedding he says, “I now pronounce you devil and his shorty!” 

I’ve been up for almost twenty hours now and have to be at work early tomorrow (technically this) morning, so I’ll make this review short and sweet.

Me and the wife made like a cigarette truck and hauled our butts up to the Diamond State Drive-In Theater, Delaware’s only drive-in (www.dsdit.com) to see a double feature of Iron Man and The Forbidden Kingdom. 

Since Marvel Comics got tired of the big studios messing up their potentially lucrative superhero properties, starting with Iron Man, they’re doing it all by themselves now.  First time up to the plate, they knock it out of the park. 

The alcoholic, womanizing industrial billionaire and high tech weapons manufacturer Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) gets kidnapped in Afghanistan by a radical group of terrorists and gets coerced into building them a weapon of mass destruction.  Tony says uh-uh and builds himself a suit of armor instead and equips it with a machine gun, a flamethrower and a rocket pack, and precedes to do a reverse 9/11 on them asshole Afghanis.   When he returns home, he modifies his armor and sets out to help people instead of profit off of them, much to the chagrin of his business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).  Stane steals Stark’s blueprints and builds himself his own suit and the two go toe to toe for the final showdown. 

We’re talking the cinematic equivalent of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, here.

In fact, this movie features some of the finest scenes of men dressed in robotic suits kicking the crap out of each other since Robocop 2.  (And if you all know me, you know of my unhealthy love for Robocop 2, which means that last sentence is nothing short of the highest praise I can give by law.)

Iron Man is an origin story so there’s going to be more story than action, but that’s okay cuz I’m kind of a sucker for origin stories.  But if you want action, Stark’s escape from Afghanistan wearing his clunky armor is nothing short of awesome.  Although nothing else in the movie comes quite as close to topping that scene, it’s still one of the coolest things you’ve ever seen in a superhero movie, period.

Director Jon Favreau (who also has a small role) does an excellent job blending the effects with the human element of the story and gets some truly great performances from his actors.  Downey is simply fantastic and everyone else around him is rock solid too.  A movie like this one thrives on supporting characters and people like Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow and Terence Howard help Downey out immensely and allow him to shine that much brighter.  Oh, and stay glued to your seat until after the credits.  You’ll be glad you did. 

As far as comic book movies go, it’s not quite up to par with say, The Shadow, but it’s still much better than most of the stuff Marvel has been making lately and good enough for it to fly straight to Number 2 on The Video Vacuum Top Ten of 2008, right below Rambo and just above Shine a Light. 

After Iron Man was over, The Forbidden Kingdom was up next and even though I already reviewed it a while back, I’ll hit the highlights again:

Jackie Chan fights Jet Li.  You want more reasons to see this flick?  How about Jet Li pissing in Jackie Chan’s face?  You’re sold now I bet aren’t you?  How about Jackie Chan doing some of the best drunken boxing since The Legend of Drunken Master?  Have you got your tickets yet?  Do the words Best Kung Fu Movie of 2008 mean anything to you?  What if I told you that The Forbidden Kingdom is also the odds on favorite to win the coveted Video Vacuum Award for Best Screenplay for having Jackie Chan say the immortal line, “Crouching Tiger, Spanking Monkey!”  If you couldn’t figure it out by now, I’m talking about *** ½ and a rock steady Number 5 spot on the Top Ten. 

Do yourself a favor and take someone you love to the drive-in tonight. 

The original Swamp Thing wasn’t too hot, but that shouldn’t stop you from thoroughly enjoying this sequel from Jim Wynorski, the director of Chopping Mall and Not of This Earth.  It’s cheesy, ludicrous, and borderline brain dead, but damn it, that’s part of it’s charm. 

The opening credits appropriately sets the tone of what’s to come.  We see some stunning artwork from Bernie Wrightson’s Swamp Thing comics while CCR’s “Born on the Bayou” blares on the soundtrack. 

The evil Dr. Arcane (Louis Jourdan) is meddling around in his lab splicing genes trying to find a drug that will give him eternal life.  He splices human DNA with elephants, alligators, cockroaches, hippos and leeches, resulting in a group of awesome looking mutants.  Arcane’s stepdaughter (Heather Locklear) shows up and since she has the same DNA make-up as her mother, Arcane wants to turn her into a walking medical experiment.  

Meanwhile two comic relief trailer trash kids look at porn and interrupted by a mutant leech man who wants to eat them.  Luckily, Swamp Thing (Dick Durock) shows up to battle him WWE style.  Locklear gets molested by a bunch of moonshiners and Swamp Thing beats them to a pulp, starting a love affair of sorts.  (She’s a vegetarian.)  Arcane shows up and blows Swamp Thing up, but in the coolest scene of the movie, Swampy rejuvenates himself and comes back in a bubble bath to rescue her and blow Arcane’s mansion sky high.    

The make-up for the half-human monsters is impressive and Swamp Thing’s new highly vegetative look is pretty cool, but it’s the non-stop monster mashing makes this flick a lot of fun.  There’s very little in this movie in the way of plausibility, realistic characters, or subtle performances, but what do you expect from a movie called The Return of Swamp Thing?  Oh, and the “love scene” between Locklear and Swampy is one of the nuttiest things you’ll ever see in a motion picture. 

Wynorski equips himself nicely with this modestly budgeted affair (the song rights for “Born on the Bayou” alone probably cost more than any movie Wynorski ever directed) and it’s a shame we never got a Swamp Thing 3 from him.

A space miner named Tyler (voiced by Michael Ironside) finds a glowing “key” that turns him power crazy.  He blows up half a city and kidnaps a space slut who happens to be the sister of a bad ass chick named Julie (voiced by scream queen Julie Strain) who sets out for revenge.  Unbeknownst to her, the key has made Tyler immortal, which makes him kinda hard to kill. 

Whereas the first Heavy Metal movie was a multi-part anthology of vastly different stories that captured the essence of the magazine of which it was based, this sequel tells only one story and not very well.  The thin plotline would have barely been enough to fill an eight minute segment of the original, let alone an eighty minute sequel.  In fact it feels more like an overlong half assed episode of Aeon Flux than an honest to goodness Heavy Metal movie. 

Speaking of Heavy Metal, the music in this one actually sounds like Heavy Metal, but that doesn’t mean it’s very good.    The animation is an amalgam of passable CGI effects blended in with traditional hand drawn animation.  The results are interesting and the movie at least is visually adequate, but that’s about the best compliment I can give it.  There’s also plentiful animated gore (bloody bullet wounds, sword slashings, etc.) and nudity, if that’s the sort of thing that turns you on.

Overall, the film feels less like a sequel and more like a vehicle for Julie Strain and her cartoonist husband Kevin (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) Eastman, who wrote the graphic novel this movie is based on.  This movie could have been fun, but the flick’s biggest problem is that Strain and her massive assets are much more fun to ogle when she’s flesh and blood and not comprised of a bunch of finger paints.  If you got a boner from Cool World, you may want to check this out; otherwise it’s strictly for Strain completists only.    

A mechanical sex toy gets the best line of the movie when she asks:  “Select your sexual preference, anal, oral, or other.”

I just looked up the definition of requiem in the dictionary.  I quote:

Requiem:  1.  A mass for a deceased person.  2.  A musical composition for such a mass.  3.  A hymn, composition, or service for the dead. 

All these definitions are fitting for this movie because after viewing it, I can say with great certainty that both beloved franchises are officially dead as doornails.  You can send flowers or donations to the families via 20^th Century Fox Studios, Hollywood California. 

It seems that the movie as a whole just…

…WE NOW INTERRUPT THIS MOVIE REVIEW TO BRING YOU THIS BREAKING NEWS…

NEWS FLASH!  IT IS OFFICIAL.  BOTH ALIEN AND PREDATOR FRANCHISES ARE DEAD.  

It seems that Christmas Day, a time usually reserved for tidings of cheer and goodwill has turned into a time of mourning for lovers of the two series.  Separately the two icons of sci-fi and horror were world renown and loved by legions of fans.  But it was in the summer of 2004 when they met and found true love.  Sadly, their bliss was to be short lived.  Three years later they would be brutally murdered in a tragically unjust way by what police are now calling Aliens vs. Predator:  Requiem. 

Murder suspects wanted for questioning in the deaths of both Alien and Predator franchises include directors The Brothers Strause, screenwriter Shane Salerno and various members of the cast. 

It is believed by witnesses that the so-called “directors” murdered the franchise by deviating from the traditional slow build-up of suspense inherent in the material.  Allegedly the Strauses thought it would be wiser to constantly show us the Aliens and Predator running around without the benefit of A) mood, B) convincing lighting, or C) fleeting glimpses of the creatures which would eventually lead up to the bravura reveal of the two titans of terror, but that was not the case.  A leading criminologist tells this news team that the brothers, two special effects make-up men, were ill-equipped to work with any of the actors that weren’t totally encased in a rubber suit.  These progressive feelings of inadequacy towards the cast combined with a toddler’s understanding of how to film an action sequence lead to the pair’s downfall and caused them to allow the movie to quote:  SUCK HARDCORE.  The Brothers Strause (Real names:  Colin and Greg) are also wanted on a misdemeanor count of necrophilia for raping the corpses of the two victims.  It is also believed unofficially that the duo are also wanted on an additional charge of lewd behavior for defecating on the remains of the Alien legacy and wiping their hindquarters with what was left of the Predator franchise.  A detective on the case revealed to us that the crime scene “Made Paul WS Anderson look like James Cameron.”

Also wanted for questioning is screenwriter Shane Salerno.  Salerno is thought to have aided and abetted the Strauses by writing a screenplay that was so spectacularly inept that it featured postage stamp thin characters, disregarded all sense and logic, and contained THE most abrupt, anti-climatic, stupidest ending since Jaws the Revenge.  Salerno is also wanted on charges of writing such dialogue such as “Don’t crash!”, “This hat makes me look stupid!”, and “The government doesn’t lie to people!”

Cinema Police are also on the lookout for the following cast members:  Steve Pasquale, Reiko Aylesworth, John Ortiz, Johnny Lewis and Robert Joy.  Pasquale is wanted for having the charisma of a Pringles chip, Aylesworth is wanted for being out acted by her tank top, Ortiz will be brought up on charges of being THE most ineffectual sheriff in movie history, but it is thought that Lewis may get off on a technicality because his screen presence was so transparent it may be difficult for a jury to prove he was actually in the movie.  It is also believed that even if Joy is convicted, he’ll receive a Presidential pardon for his stellar work in Death Wish V:  The Face of Death as the transvestite hitman with chronic dandruff.  One eyewitness said of the acting, “I’ve seen Dexy’s Midnight Runners videos with better acting than this film.”

If you happen to see Aliens vs. Predator:  Requiem (or as it’s known on the streets, AVP-R), the police advise you NOT to tell anyone as it may shame you for your entire life.

WE NOW RETURN TO YOUR REVIEW, ALREADY IN PROGRESS…

… I mean the filmmakers are SO clueless that they didn’t even remember that the title of the first film was ALIEN vs. Predator.  So wouldn’t that make this one ALIEN vs. Predator:  Requiem? 

That’s not to say there isn’t SOME fun to be had from the film.  The Hybrid Alien/Predator (it looks like Britney Spears with dreadlocks) is pretty cool, especially when French kissing pregnant women in the maternity ward, but one semi-neat biracial beastie can’t save the film.