Screenhead

It’s a surprise to say but Expired, which The Asylum sent me a copy of,  may well be the scariest thing that The Asylum has ever released, and it’s not even a horror flick.

See, apparently, sometime while I wasn’t looking, The Asylum started to go after offbeat comedies and romantic drama, and it’s the latter that we’ll be referencing today.  Expired, however, is a romantic drama of the worst sort–the kind that won’t stop hurting.

In Expired, two horrendously deformed personalities–a total doormat of a woman and a complete jackass of a man–manage to find each other and engage in a tumultuous relationship that takes them through fights and death and bereavement and a horrendous New Years Eve featuring karaoke that has probably been banned by the Geneva Convention.  But will these two prove a match made in Hell?  Or will they realize that they’re both complete wastes of life and go their separate ways?

I’ve never watched a movie that hurt quite so badly as Expired did.

I spent insane amounts of time screaming at my television.  I never wanted a character dead quite so many times, either, as I wanted THESE two dead.  They were like needles.  Needles in my EYES.  By the hour mark I was shrieking in agony, wishing this would finally end.

And eventually, it did.  But by then, I was feeling so badly for pretty much everyone involved, but most badly for myself who had to sit through this misery tour, that I was glad to eject the DVD it came on.

I wondered, what kind of masochist would subject themselves, voluntarily, to watch a movie where a guy tries to score with a woman literally the SAME NIGHT HER MOTHER DIED.  And what kind of cynic would fail to be amazed that she ACTUALLY LET HIM GET SOME.

And it’s like this for the whole movie.  It’s a hundred and seven minutes of some of the most horrendous relationship I’ve ever seen.  These two halfwits make Bobby and Whitney look like Ozzie and Harriet.

Oh, sure, you want to believe that they’re both getting better, in their way.  And you can actually start to see that, after a fashion.  But it’s just too little, too late.  The damage is done.  This movie is downright painful to watch for entirely too little payoff.

The Screenhead Ten Scale’s off in a corner retching right now, but it told me to pass on that it gave this horrendous misery tour a two out of ten.  Wait…it just said something about “rewarding effort”, which is fair enough.  It DID try, after all.  It just didn’t end well at all.

There are times when you watch a movie that it feels like it was handled by somebody in particular.  Most George Romero or Steven Spielberg or even Michael Bay movies have that certain feel about them, and you can tell, even as you watch them, that this movie was handled by that person.

2012 feels EXACTLY like a Roland Emmerich movie because, let’s face it, we’ve all been here before.  It’s just gotten a LOT bigger since the last time.

This time, as it turns out, the Mayan calendar that’s gotten so much press over the last few months or so was exactly right and the end of the world as we know it starts up on December 21, 2012.  And for a writer and father, who’s been somewhat estranged from his family of late, the whole world will quite literally never be the same again.

If you saw The Day After Tomorrow, ironically, you’ll have about a thirty percent head start into 2012 because it’s almost the EXACT SAME MOVIE.  Both will feature scientists who catch on to things way ahead of the rest of the curve, but no one will believe them for a while until it’s almost too late, then there will be a whole lot of horrendous things happening that are far, far, more outlandish than anybody’s worst case scenarios.  Sprinkle in some bad science, top it off with some schmaltzy family drama, and boom!  You’ve got yet another half baked Roland Emmerich disaster movie that will probably make its shooting budget back if for no other reason that people LOVE to see stuff go boom.

Idiocracy fans, take note–at this rate Ass will be in theaters summer 2015.

Seriously though, this isn’t really a BAD movie.  It’s a bit overlong, sure, and don’t even try to find this movie’s science on a map because it just plain old DON’T EXIST, and don’t even get me started on Roland’s big middle finger to greedheads everywhere who think they can buy their way out of disaster.

But there is plenty going on here.  You’re almost certain to be entertained.  Even I was entertained.  There’s no long term value in a movie like this, but for a pleasant way to kill off two and a half hours with explosions and drama and a number of car jumps so large as to make Bo and Luke themselves have car envy (the first time I saw John Cusack JUMP A LIMO all I could think was “Well sir, right about then the Duke boys knew they was in a heap o’ trouble”.  Try it; it’s fun!), there’s not much better.  And by the way–it’s AWESOME that Woody Harrelson’s in this.  I’ve got a whole new respect for this man.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, shakes its head with a sardonic grin and hands this low-brow disaster epic a six out of ten for its sheer fun factor, even if its plot is a load of steaming garbage that’s about a third of a ripoff and its science so lousy even a fourth grader could knock it into a cocked hat.

Okay, so people weren’t too enthused by the Screenhead Film Festival’s big prize giveaway (it was ten DVDs, man!  That’s got a retail value of like two, maybe three hundred bucks!), but I’ve got something here that might put some fire in your belly.

It’s the Indieroar Film Festival, and I just got word of it from director Alan Rowe Kelly.  Top prize?  Five THOUSAND dollars.

Plus, you’ll also get some film editing software with that.  And if that isn’t enough, there are also second and third prizes too, a thousand bucks a crack.  Entries are being accepted in five categories: horror, drama, comedy, animation and documentary, and each entry must be UNDER twenty five minutes in length.

The public will vote on the gathered films, and winnow down the entries to the top twenty five in each category, the winners of which will be decided by a jury.

So if you’re a short film maker and you’re up for a shot at five grand, grab your camcorder and get to shooting.  Deadline for entry is January 15th, 2010.

So despite all logic and good common sense, apparently Will Smith is planning to play a mentally handicapped janitor in Flowers for Algernon.

He’ll be both producing and starring in the film, a remake of the old novel in which the janitor in question, Charly, gets a surgical procedure done that augments his mind, making him a genius…but only for a while.

The end result is actually a pretty good story, so I look for this one to actually come off pretty well.  In all honesty, Will Smith is actually a really good actor, so he should be able to put the necessary dramatic force and the endless duality into the role (he’s got to play a handicapped guy and a genius and then go back to handicapped while KNOWING he’s going back all at once).

He should be able to handle it, but I’ll reserve just a bit of skepticism as I’ve seen this kind of thing go wrong before.

Ken Robinson gets to add American Violet to his DVD library, congratulations!

Based on a true story, American Violet is a look at the harsh reality of injustice.

American Violet has been described as “AMAZING! The first must-see film for African-Americans in 2009,” by BET.com and Jeffrey Lyons of NBC Reel Talk has said “A powerful, compelling true story of a woman of courage.” The movie is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Inspired by a true story, American Violetfollows the struggle of a young African-American mother to clear her name after being wrongly arrested for dealing drugs in an impoverished Texas town. An honest woman with no hard evidence to justify the accusation, she is forced to risk everything in order fight unfair prosecution. The film stars touted newcomer Nicole Beharie, Academy Award nominee Alfre Woodard, Will Patton, Academy Award nominee Michael O’Keefe, Tim Blake Nelson, Emmy Award winner Charles S. Dutton and Xzibit.

It is truly a compelling story that must be watched about survival and the persistence to never give up for your god-given right to be free.  

“EXCELLENT performances by Beharie, Woodard, Nelson and Patton”- The Washington Post 

“POWERFUL performance by newcomer Nicole Behaire” – B+, Entertainment Weekly 

“IDEAL MOVIE for an ideal time” -San Francisco Chronicle

Precioushas been on the festival circuit, getting rave reviews with some strong backers: Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry. The movie opens with a limited release November 6, 2009.  Precious is a strong, emotional film about survival and truth.  Yet, I don’t know if I could sit through this film as entertainment.  That is usually why I go to the movies,  I want to escape for two hours and not worry about the problems of society. What do you think?

Ben Foster stars as Will Montgomery, a U.S. Army officer, who has just returned home from a tourin Iraq and is assigned to the Army’s Casualty Notification service. Will is partnered with fellow officer Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) to bear the bad news to the loved ones of fallen soldiers.

Will seeks solace back home and finds himself drawn to Olivia (Samantha Morton), to whom he has just delivered the news of her husband’s death. Will becomes involved with Olivia and film peels away layers of surprising, humorous, moving and very human portrait of grief, friendship and survival.

The Messenger trailer is up at Apple in HD.  You can view it here.

First Showing nabbed the embedded code, so we have the trailer below, too.

Comparing the current Up in the Air trailer with the exclusive Internet trailer, I’d say this one is much beefier. George Clooney’s character Ryan Bingham is more defined with the rest of the cast.  We even get a chance to hear the original song “Help Yourself”.  The movie opens November 13, 2009 in select theaters.

Today I’m talking about a movie you probably haven’t heard of.

It was just released this week to theatres, mobile devices, online, and on DVD, and it’s called Rage, a film that will ensure you never look the same way at couture culture again.

It’s about a filmmaker that goes by the name of Michelangelo, a young man out to shoot a film on his cell phone about the fashion industry.  As his subjects slowly reveal bits and pieces about themselves, a series of crises bursts into life around them, and each must come to grips with the disasters in their own way.  But just how much of these are Michelangelo’s doing?  Or is everyone just in the wrong place at the right time?

There’s a mix of no-names bundled in with a bunch of big names–Jude Law’s sharing the screen alongside Simon Abkarian, and Steve Buscemi’s right there with Adriana Barraza.  There are plenty more recognizable names, and they’ll all turn in outstanding performances.

Why?  Because they HAVE TO.  They have literally no choice but to excel since there’s absolutely nothing in the shot but them.  No explosions, no other characters, no action, not even music, really–just the actor and his or her lines.

Rage proves the incredible power a movie can pack when it’s well written, and shows what little the Michael Bays of the world are actually doing.  The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Rage plenty of respect with a nine out of ten for an amazing display that only becomes predictable at all toward the end.