G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

Pros:
- Red Lasers / Blue Lasers
- Underground Desert Bases / Underwater Arctic Bases / Hoth-like Snow Bases
- Nano-mites
- Snake Eyes / Storm Shadow
- Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow
- Snake Eyes & Storm Shadow
- Sienna Miller's body
- BSG-esq high scale submarine battles
- Paris street chase is one of the most entertaining action sequences I've seen in a while. The jump suits I was skeptical of from the trailer are actually pretty damn sweet.
- Scarlett's heat seeking crossbow
- Cobra Foot Soldiers
- "Lost" cast-member count: 2 — Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje aka Mr. Eko (Heavy Duty) and Saïd Taghmaoui aka Caesar (Breaker).
- The movies second half is nearly entirely action packed, pure cartoon / comicy Joe fun. The revealing of Cobra Commander and Destro is prue diabolic comic pulpy goodness. In fact all the main Cobra villains are completely awesome (Zartan!) The action is tight and fun, Storm Shadow and Snake Eye's final battle is very reminiscent of "Phantom Menace's" final Darth Maul light saber duel. Maybe that's because the incredible Ray Park is behind both Maul and Snakes Eyes.
- Every single scene with Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow

Cons:
- Perpetually constipated Dennis Quiad. Will someone seriously feed this man some dairy products? Constipation Level: Somewhere between "Vantage Point" and "The Day After Tomorrow."
- Marlon Wayans
- Every line that comes out of Scarlett's mouth
- The first half of the movie. Up until the Paris chase the movie is too caught up in establishing its story and characters (none of which, with a movie like this, do we really give a flying fuck about.)
- Sienna Miller's acting
- The Duke / Baroness love story. Once again with a movie like this, completely unnecessary. Give me more action. The only people it's going to please is the girls whose boyfriends dragged them to the movie. And the flimsy half-assery of the "love story" probably won't even be enough to keep them satisfied.
- Terrible one-liners that are beyond awesomely-bad and just straight bad. All of the Joe's in-fact are incredibly cheesy and can be a bit annoying. Don't really make me want to root for um much.
- Why must Cobra Commander bypass a Norton Virus Scan before uploading the Nano-mite info?
- Cookie cutter nuke high-jacking evil doer plot line.
- At times fairly shoddy special-fx.

All that said, the momentum of the second half of the movie, which leads it towards an obvious sequel, is very promising. If the filmmakers realize that they are making an action movie first and foremost, they can succeed in pleasing their audience next time around and silence the folks that were on the fence with this one. They would probably strike gold if they made a film entirely based around the life of "brothers" Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes, their parts in the film are truly the most action packed and strongest acted. Without them, the movie would get a much lower score from me.

Pure summer popcorn action: B-

And just for good measure, my favorite viral video from 9th Grade:

Christmas in August: Black Christmas (1974) v. Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Two Christmas themed horror films, oddly enough both featuring killers named "Billy." One is an under appreciated genre definer and the other is just a steaming piling of somewhat hilarious cheese.

Black Christmas (1974)
A sorority house set horror film directed by Bob "Porky's" Clark? The first thing that probably comes to mind is boobs and dick and fart jokes. What you get instead is an incredibly mature, completely eerie and unsettling, highly influential genre film. Released a whole 4 years before John Carpenter and "Halloween" changed the horror genre forever, Clark firmly planted roots with "Black Christmas."

Set near Christmas when school is getting out for winter break, the girls of the house are celebrating the holidays and the pending break from school. Amongst their partying they get a phone call from someone they refer to as "The Moaner," an apparently frequent prank caller to the house. "The Moaner's" prank calls are sexually harassing in nature and are all around incredibly obnoxious. While some of the girls laugh it off, others feel fairly uncomfortable about it all. The next morning when one of the girls fathers shows up to pick her up, and she is no where in site, everyone starts to panic. Little do they know she's in the attic, asphyxiated with a plastic bag, and being lulled away in a rocking chair by "The Moaner" aka "Billy." Red haring situations, mystery and more deaths ensue.

The film begins with a P.O.V. shot of "Billy" waltzing up to a sorority house and climbing a trellis into the attic. Its a shot that later would become synonymous with slasher films, and that really became a staple when we first glanced through the eyes of a young Micheal Meyers when he kills his sister at the beginning of "Halloween." Where Clark and Carpenter's films differ though is that in Clark's, the killer is never seen. You see through his eyes, you see his deeds, you hear his heavy breathing, but you never actually see who he is. The effect is incredibly uncomfortable and unnerving. Where as Michael Meyers, yes is eerie, I find him less creepy when I see him standing there in his William Shatner mask.

A relatively bloodless affair, "Black Christmas" relies mostly on atmosphere and sound to really grab hold of your senses. The continuous shots of of Clare in the rocking chair, with a crazed rambling Billy are truly the worst. Relying only on diagetic sound, Clark really creates a haunted house feeling amongst the creaking halls and crannies of the sorority house. The phone calls that girls receive are a main irking point of the movie as well. They turn into a series of animalistc, satanic sounding babble, that leaves you baffled and fearing the unknown of what is on the other side of the phone line. By the end of it you really can't tell if "Billy" is some demonic force, or an incredibly fucked up rejected frat boy.

"Black Christmas" has easily weaseled its way into my horror favorites. It's another Canadian dish, which after this and "My Bloody Valentine" makes me more interested in their horror films at the time.



Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Billy's sees his family brutally murdered by a man dressed up as Santa on Christmas Eve as a child. Billy ends up in a orphanage, and becomes haunted and deranged every year around Christmas. As a young man Billy gets a job at a dept. store for the holidays...the stores Santa gets sick...guess who gets to sit in as the replacement? Billy snaps.

Heralded as "One of the most controversial films of the 1980's" "Silent Night, Deadly Night" is nothing but a bunch of mediocre b-movie hub-bub. Relying mostly on blood and guts for shock, the deranged, horribly acted Billy takes away from any sort of scares this movie would have. Sort of a fun flick, but nothing special. It did spawn a sequel though, which is responsible for this incredible meme.

Last week in film...

Friday the 13th: Part III (1982)
So much can be said about this bloated monotonous 80's slasher franchise, but when it boils down to it they are all still pretty damn entertaining to me. Part III in particular though is one watch for two very awesome reasons: A) Its the first film in which Jason dawns his iconic hockey mask and B) It was recently released for the first time in its original 3-D format. Apparently giving Jason the hockey mask was a joke by the Canadian film crew to honor their homelands national past time, who knew it would stick and become such a classic image. The films 3-D points are for the most part laughable, but are entertaining none the less, i.e. a 3-D joint being passed out of the screen, juggling, playing with a yo-yo...a harpoon through the eye, Jason's outstretched arms and a pic axe attack. Part III isn't without some mega-cheese though, although to me its all so endearing rather than annoying (see film score below and the "biker gang.")

Friday the 13th: Part IV: The Final Chapter (1984)
Continuing the Friday the 13th binge comes Part IV aka "The [First] Final Chapter." Intended to be the last in the series, Part IV features none other than Corey Feldman, and Crispin Glover (aka George McFly.) This is where the films clearly start getting more focused on just the killing rather than having any sort of coherent story. Not that any of the other films were Grade A tales, but this one really just doesn't give a shit. Two high points in this one though A) George McFly's crazy ass dancing (see below) and B) Corey Feldman's horrific make-up when he decides to shave his head and look like Jason before taking a machete to him supposedly killing him once and for all. Was said to be the final chapter in the series...because well Jason is fucking chopped up...but turned out New Line realized the franchise was too much of a cash cow. Jason returned a year later for Part V and all other subsequent entries as a, for lack of a better word, zombie...


My Bloody Valentine (1981)
Having only seen the, actually sort of awesome, 3-D remake of this movie, I didn't know what to expect. The legend of the original cut of this film is well...legendary. Apparently the MPAA was having a huge crack down on violent films around this time and made Canadian director George Mihalka cut all the good juicy bits from this movie to get an "R" rating (Friday the 13th Part II is another film heavily affected by this). With the film seeing a highly edited release, it saw mixed reviews during its original run, but became quite the cult classic over the years (the irish band My Bloody Valentine is named after the damn film!) Not until the remakes release did the original cut of My Bloody Valentine (and around the same time the original cut of Friday the 13th Part II) see the light of day for the first time, this uncut version is what I had the pleasure of watching, and i'll be damned if it isn't one of the best slasher flicks of that early era. Hokey yes, but Harry Warden is one bad ass, pissed off coal miner, who fucking detest Valentines Day. The shit he pulls in this movie is stuff Jason, Freddy and Michael Meyers combined wouldn't try to pull. We get: an old woman pick axed and burnt to a bloody crisp in a dryer, nail gun to the dome, a shower head through the throat, a drowning in a boiling pot of hot dogs, decapitations, pick axings and Kano heart grabs galore. I'm almost certain if the movie wasn't so heavily edited at the time, Harry Warden would be as much of a house hold name as Freddy and Jason. Although once again not a golden piece of cinema the film is better crafted than any of it's American slasher movie counter parts by a long shot, and even has some sort of "mystery and suspense" to it.


Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)
Gigantic piece of crap. The second one was no where near as classic as the first, but at least it had Reggie toting a 4-barrel shotgun! This one doesn't have anything remotely redeeming or B-Movie entertaining about it...its just plain bad.

Coming up this week: Friday the 13th Parts V / VI and Black Christmas (1974)