THE MIST (2007) - Damn nature, you scary!

Frank Darabont's The Mist is based on an original story by the one and only Stephen King, who has made it his life's goal to scare as many people shitless as possible. He has been pretty successful. Darabont, on the other hand, has been pretty successful himself in adapting King's writing into good movies. His track record is damn good too: The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. It's no surprise then, that The Mist is a great horror/thriller and one of the best adaptations of King's stuff to make it to the screen.

It could be worse... you could be trapped at Hot Topic.

The Mist is set in a small town in Maine, where self-employed artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane, from The Punisher fame) lives with his wife and son Billy. After a loud thunderstorm and an enormous tree smashes into their house, David is forced to go into town to buy some supplies and groceries. He takes his kid and his asshole lawyer neighbor with him and upon arrival to the grocery store they notice a heavy mist has fallen all over the town. While shopping and minding their own business, some raggedy old guy walks in, bleeding and screaming for everyone to get inside the store and shut the door.

Old Screaming Guy is yelling about something grabbing people off the street. Scared and confused, the customers pack inside the store and close the doors, hoping to wait it out. Problems soon appear when David and few other guys try to venture outside, and a bag boy (played by none other than the SHERMANATOR from American Pie!) gets dragged out and killed by some gnarly tentacles. Besieged by whatever the hell is waiting out there for them, the customers and staff hunker down and start arguing within themselves over their options. Even worse, a batshit crazy religious lady starts to tell everyone it is the end of days and that it's God's will that everyone die because of America's sins... uuh okay. The tension starts to build up quickly as the people inside the store start to realize that their fellow humans might just be as dangerous and cruel as the monsters waiting outside to chew their faces off. All the while, our protagonist David is just trying to make it out alive with his kid and get back home to his wife.

Horror Movie Survival 101: Stay away from giant tentacles.

The Mist suffers from some lack of believability in the actions of the characters. I know it sounds a bit dumb to criticize this in a movie about giant monster tentacles eating up people in a grocery store, but hear me out. In the beginning of the film, the asshole lawyer is confronted by Drayton and some others who saw the bag boy get dragged out by the tentacles. He refuses to believe their story, and even refuses to go into the loading dock to see the tentacle piece they had cut off with an ax. Seriously? How hard is it to walk a few yards to see the damn thing? No, instead he gets pissy and starts some rant about how the country hicks think they're better than the "out of towners." Idiot. I was really hoping he'd get killed in every scene.

The creatures themselves are original and well thought out. There's a variety of weird ass designs and they eventually start killing off humans in some grotesque form or another. The constant fog over the town makes their appearance very fast, unexpected and downright scary.

COME AT ME BRO!

This is a movie that could easily have copped out and taken an easy way out in the final few minutes. If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil what I think is one of the GREATEST endings in recent years. It is seriously shocking  - I saw The Mist for the very first time to write this review and I had no idea about the ending. You really owe it to yourself to see the stuff Frank Darabont was ballsy enough to pull off screen and get away with in an era of Michael Bay OMGWTF 3D extravaganza blockbusters and constant remakes.

TL;DR - trapped inside a store by mysterious monsters outside and religious nuts inside - 8.5/10

9TH COMPANY (2005) - the Commies are good in this one

Back in the 1980s, the Soviet Union were the biggest guys on the block and though they'd prove to world how tough and hairy chested they really were. In this moment of bravado, the Soviets decided to invade Afghanistan. Having the world's biggest and most powerful military at the time gave them a big set of brass balls they weren't afraid to swing around. Unfortunately, they picked the worst f*cking place on this shiny planet Earth to invade. The Afghans take great pleasure in kicking ass: they had done it to the Mongol hordes, they did it to those snooty British, and they sure as hell weren't gonna let Ivan get some. Long story short, Afghanistan turned out to be a nightmare for the Soviet bear, turning into their version of Vietnam. Except with Osama bin Laden. And deserts. And mountains. Mountains everywhere.

If I were a man of the gambling sort, I'd wager half these guys will eat it by the end of the movie.

9th Company is one of the best known Russian movies of recent times, and with good reason, since it was a major blockbuster over in the land of bears, vodka and oversized Moon rockets. Even President Putin liked it. When Putin likes it, you know that shit's gonna be successful. Director Fyodor Bondarchuk's movie tells a pretty familiar story of some raw army recruits being trained into soldiers and sent off to fight the bearded Afghans. As with almost every war movie you've probably seen to date, the group of recruits has its varied characters: the street-wise rough kid, the stuck up rich guy, the horny bastard, the wimp who pees his pants, and the philosophical artist guy who makes deep comments about the nature of war. Yawn. It's all been done before, and in better fashion.

These guys have aimbots.

As generic as the story is, it works well enough to keep the plot moving along. The recruits are sent to paratrooper school, where they get assigned to a hard as nails Lieutenant Dygalo (Mikhail Porechenkov), who is a veteran of the war and sports a gnarly scar on his face to prove it. Dygalo takes special pleasure in working  his recruits extra hard and they soon start to crack under the pressure. Of course, it's revealed that Dygalo actually was the lone survivor of a terrorist ambush, so he makes sure his platoon is ready for the brutal war ahead of them. After their training is complete, they are sent to Afghanistan and soon get their first taste of shit blowing up in front of them at a rapid pace.

Protip: when at war, wear a helmet.

They realize the Afghans are not to be messed with, since they're pretty good fighters and use caves and ambushes to hide and kill Russians. The protagonists' company is sent to guard some god forsaken hill with a new hard ass commander. Soon enough, the small group of Russians is abandoned and forced to defend their outpost against some hundreds of angry, rocket launcher packing Afghans, setting up the story for the grand finale in the last  hour or so.

9th Company is a good war movie with a few basic flaws. The acting is a bit over the top, which is to be expected in most war movies, but this movie really does have a gung-ho feeling throughout most of it. The story also muddles along until the guys arrive in Afghanistan, dealing with the characters' backgrounds, their encounter with a hot Russian blonde (plenty of gratuitous nudity involved) and their training. Once in the war itself, the pacing picks up and the action pieces are well done. The final battle especially is the highlight of the movie, with the fight lasting a few days and being bonkers in regards to the amount of ass kicking the Russians hand out to the Afghans. It's a decent flick about a war that most people haven't seen much about. Recommended.

TL;DR - Russians go on the set of Rambo 3 and kill Rambo's friends in some brutal mountain fighting - 7.5/10

DUEL (1971) - a.k.a.: Californians can't drive for shit

Dave Mann (Dennis Weaver) is just an average guy. He's a businessman, has a wife and kids, and drives a shiny red Plymouth Valiant. As he makes his way to work and back home through some mostly deserted California roads, he comes across a rusty, piece of crap on wheels big rig driving way below the speed limit and putting out a bunch of smoke. Dave fancies himself a hotshot and guns it, overtaking the truck and pissing off the driver. This being California, and California having the worst drivers in the whole of the United States, eventually leads to an hour long chase to the death between Dave and his new truck driver friend.

Average guy. Average car. Big freaking problem.

As Dave tries to out run the beastly truck, his driving gets more reckless and dangerous. The guy thinks he can pull off some Mario Andretti stunts when he is actually about as skilled behind the wheel of his Plymouth as your average Asian minivan driving soccer mom. His car is pretty craptacular as well - it looks like a muscle car but ends up being wimpy, while the crazy truck driver has a souped up truck that apparently is a Ferrari in disguise. That thing can haul some serious ass.

Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down.

Despite having a very small cast and taking place almost exclusively on various stretches of highway, Duel is a decently crafted thriller - fast paced and well scripted. The flow of the movie keeps the action going from the first encounter between Dave and his 18-wheeled tormentor from hell until the satisfying climax. So much of the movie resting on Dennis Weaver's performance, it's good to see that the veteran actor is up to the task. He's convincing as the everyday joe caught up in a shitty situation and trying to make the best of it. It's great to see his attempts to come to reason with the truck driver and his reaction when he realizes the guy just won't give up until his face is flattened by his heavy duty radials.

Don't mind me. I'm just trying to kill you and your whole family.

Duel is a bit dated with its lame 1970s synth score, but the basic thrill of the plot and the relentless chase between Dave and that bastard driving the truck remains fresh. It's an exciting movie that works despite its limited scope and is worth a watch. It's definitely not a classic, but it is better than a lot of the straight to video crap that overflows from Redbox and video stores. Give it a watch.

TL;DR - a killer truck chases a guy up and down California and crashes into a lot of stuff - 7/10

BATTLE ROYALE (2000) - Proof the Japanese are crazy

Director Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale is a film adaptation of Koushun Takami's controversial novel of the same name. The basic theme of the novel dealt with a dystopian vision of Japan in which the govenrment randomly selects a class of high schoolers and sends them to a deserted island where upon arrival they will be given weapons and forced to kill each other until only one remains. Of course, Japan being Japan, this is only slightly controversial. After all, Japan also got nuked twice, gave the world Godzilla and weird anime fetishes, and they tend to eat some weird shit as well. On to the film however...

Battle Royale is a movie that for very obvious reasons could not have been made in the US. The plot of the film closely follows that of the novel, with the same premise of high schoolers forced to kill their friends (and rivals) off on an abandoned island. Watching it for the first time was a pretty crazy experience: it's very gory, it's shocking and probably even more troubling is the fact that it is a very funny movie. It's a macabre sensation to watch kids hacking at each other with sickles or shooting one another with Uzis and handguns while they yell out hilarious lines. With the differences in culture between America and Japan, especially the American problems with school violence and what not, this movie would've been cut to shreds by every morality group out there. But thankfully we have Japan, that wonderfully twisted, crazy archipelago where making weird movies is not only okay, but seems to have been embraced as a national pastime.

It was probably the funky haircuts if you asked me.

We are introduced to the primary protagonist, Shuya Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara), who after coming home to find his father had committed suicide finds himself unable to really care about his life anymore. Most of his classmates, including his best friend Nobu Yoshitoki, generally don't give a damn about life and go around school being assholes and causing trouble. In the first couple scenes, we see that Nobu has attacked the class teacher Kitano with a knife, leading to the teacher's hasty resignation. A girl, Noriko Nakagawa, is crushing on Nanahara and helps his best friend avoid capture.

Word of advice: don't stab your teachers. They might put you on a deserted island and force you to kill your friends.

A few months later as the students near their graduation, the class is sent on an end of the year trip. Aboard their bus, they get kidnapped, knocked out, and wake up to find silver electronic necklaces put on them. Some military men show up and drag the kids into an abandoned building where it's revealed that the ex-teacher Kitano is working with the government Battle Royale educational reform program. Kitano explains (with the help of a cheerful video presentation) that only one of them will be able to leave the island alive. They must kill each other off, and each student is given a duffel bag with some food, water, maps, a compass and a random weapon - some kids get shotguns, knives or a taser, and poor Nanahara gets a pot lid. Kitano is a pretty sick guy: he kills a girl outright for whispering during his instructions, and ends up blowing up the necklace on Nanahara's best friend's neck, killing poor Nobu and making Nanahara royally pissed (get it... get it?)

No, Nanahara, he's not. In fact, it looks like he's got an axe sticking out of his head.

After they get their duffel bag of goodies, the 40 or so kids are off and they have three days to kill each other off. At the end of the third day, if a single survivor hasn't emerged, all of the necklace bombs will go off killing them all. Thus begins the twisted and brutal game of hide and seek between the students. Some of them band together and try to avoid conflict. Some take a liking to the game and have fun shooting and stabbing their classmates. The story then begins to revolve around the basic issue of trust and personal survival. It's a really interesting concept pulled off in a bizarrely attractive fashion. Despite the massive amounts of bloodshed, the violence isn't really the end result the viewer is drawn towards. Instead, you're wondering who Nanahara and his tag along love interest Noriko can trust, if anyone. Good friends might just try and shoot you in the eye with a crossbow, after all. Most interesting of all, it begs to ask yourself the question, how would I do if my class was the one sent to the island? Which of your friends would gladly bust a cap on you, and which could you trust?

TL;DR - Japanese high school students forced to kill each other on a deserted island because they dont behave in class - 9/10

TOP 5 - Memorable Movie Things That Go Boom

 As I was debating between which of the next series of manly movies to review, I decided I'll be posting a few of these Top 5 sorts of articles every once in a while to break the monotony. Without further ado, let's kick things off with the first of who knows how many. In honor of the things which make action movies as great as they are, here is an ode to those wonderful explosive shooting things that have brought us so much joy on the screen.


TOP 5 - Memorable Movie Things That Go Boom

# 5 - Pulse Rifle
Film: Aliens (1986) 

Who used it: Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, Michael Biehn and others as Colonial Marines. 

Why it's worthy:  Most of the badass Colonial Marines in the fast-paced action sequel to Alien were packing the futuristic pulse rifle. In keeping with the gritty, realistic feel of the movies, the pulse rifle looks like a meaner, pimped out version of the assault rifles we see in movies today. What made it especially memorable was the cool sound it made as the characters blasted their way through hordes of aliens; the fact that it has a huge grenade launcher underneath can't hurt either. It wasn't awesome enough for Ripley though, since she attaches a grisly flamethrower to it with some duct tape in preparation for the grand finale battle with the ultrabitch alien Queen.

# 4 - Anton Chigurh's Shotgun 
Film: No Country For Old Men (2007)
Who used it: Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh.
Why it's worthy:  It's so simple and unassuming, yet still unnerving. Oh, and the fact that one of the most ruthless murdering pyschopaths ever to grace the screen wields it also helps. In the Coen brothers' bleak chase movie, Anton Chigurh sports a terrible haircut and a shotgun with a silencer and goes around Texas wreaking mayhem all over. His gunfight with Josh Brolin's character is one of the most exciting moments in the film - you can't hear the assassin's shots until they smash into the ground near Brolin's feet or they hit flesh. Menacing.

# 3 - M202 Rocket Launcher
Films: Commando (1985)
Who used it: Arnold Schwarzenegger as John Matrix.
Why it's worthy:  When Arnold did a movie in the 80s about an ex-special forces soldier destroying a small Latin American country in order to get his little daughter back, he couldn't just use a pansy ass bazooka. It had to be as brash and as extravagant as possible. It also had to be as heavy as a Honda Civic, so that Arnold's arms could be flexed throughout the scene. No, sir... Arnold got the best - in Commando he ends up sending many mustached thugs to their fiery doom with a four shot rocket launcher he apparently copped at a local neighborhood gun store. I love the 80s.

# 2 - .44 Magnum
Films: Dirty Harry (1971), Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976) and Sudden Impact (1983)
Who used it: Clint Eastwood as Inspector Harry Callahan
Why it's worthy:  Look at the damn thing. Just the sight of that enormous cannon-like barrel should be enough to make any grown man shit his pants. The script for Dirty Harry decided that Eastwood's gun had to be the most fearsome, man-perforating device available, so it opted for the Smith & Wesson 29 revolver. Memorable? You damn right. Dirty Harry doesn't mess around. Whether shooting bank robbers or hostage takers or serial killers with bad haircuts and ridiculous names like Scorpio, he needs a handgun that can take down elephants in single shots... "Go ahead, make my day."

# 1 - Minigun 
Films: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Predator (1987)
Who used it: Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800 and Jesse Ventura as Blain Cooper
Why it's worthy: It's huge. It's got six barrels. It shoots more than 100 bullets per second. And the guy carrying it has to be a bodybuilder and take serious amounts of horse steroids to even lift it. In all of movie history, it is hard to find any gun as weapon that can rival the badass factor of the Minigun. The scene in Terminator 2 when Ahhhnuld opens up on the cops outside the Cyberdine building is just amazing. In Predator, the gun is used to cut down a huge swath of lush rainforest with a hail of bullets as the soldiers try to hit the invisible Predator. Never has overkill been captured so well on the screen - it's glorious.

ONG BAK (2003) - Ass Kicking for Dummies

When most people think of Thailand, they inevitably think of two things: Thai food and people getting their ass kicked. And they'd be right.

...and in the process, punch half the country in the face.

Ong Bak begins in a little village in rural Thailand. The villagers are pretty fond of a big Buddha statue named Ong-Bak that supposedly brings them good luck, and when some rich folks (those damn rich folk, never up to any good) drop by and try to buy the statue, they're refused. A few nights later, some dastardly ruffians break into the shrine where the Buddha is kept and cut off its head and steal it. When the villagers wake up to find the statue's head chopped off, they are enraged and start preparing for bad luck which is sure to follow. It's up to Ting, the local martial arts expert and general all-around badass, to recover the statue. The village rounds up some cash and sends him on his way to Bangkok to get the statue's head back.

The world's slowest, yet most exciting, tuk tuk chase.

Ting is played by Tony Jaa, who was a virtual unknown before Ong Bak became a huge hit worldwide. The dude is a killing machine - according to the trustworthy source that is Wikipedia, he used to copy Bruce Lee's moves as a kid and he also did somersaults off his dad's elephants. Somersaults off of elephants. After starring in a few more movies, he's apparently called it quits on acting and decided to become a real life Buddhist monk. He's obviously the real deal. Jaa does some wack stuff in the movie - he's incredibly buff and flexible, and did all of his own stunts without any wires or any computer generated crap.

Back to the story, Ting makes his way to Bangkok and runs into his hustler cousin Humlae and his girl sidekick Muay. Humlae and Muay basically run around Bangkok scamming people at casinos, street races, and fights. Ting gets their help to try and locate the head of the statue, and in the meantime gets dragged into some underground fights where he makes money for the group.

Tony Jaa would like to kick your ass.

Ong Bak is a refreshing take on the martial arts movies that used to be churned out by the hundreds in the 70s and 80s. The fights are really intense and Jaa is a straight up weapon: he knees people in the face, punches them in the face, round house kicks them in the face, smashes tables on people's faces, hits guys in the face with refrigerators, etc. If it's got a face, Tony Jaa can and will find a way to hurt it. Being a foreign film, it's got a few quirks. Maybe it's just me, but some of the Thai dialogue sounds hilarious to my decadent, evil Westerner ears. Even worse is when some of the characters say things in broken, heavily accented English. It's all in good fun though, since chances are you'll be watching Ong Bak for the action scenes and the crazy stunts and not for some world class acting and delivery.

Recommended.

TL;DR - Tony Jaa destroys most of Thailand while trying to get back a statue for his village - 8.5/10

TREMORS (1990) - Rednecks fight giant worms.... success!!!

When I was a kid, my family moved to Europe for a few years, and growing up as a twelve year old in the U.S. you get take awesome stuff for granted, like being able to plug in your Sega Genesis without it blowing up in your face or being able to speak English with everyone around. Living in a tiny apartment in Europe mostly sucked, since there was no room to run around playing cool games like cops and robbers and even worse, European TV sucks major ass. As in, it's godddamn awful. To make things even worse, one day while out jumpan, exploran and having adventures, I jumped off a 10-foot wall and sprained the hell out of my ankle. So I was stuck at home, with nothing to do but enjoy the misery that is European television.

Thankfully, this was the golden 90s, when you could count on Uncle Sam exporting the best of our low-budget cult films out to the needy Old Continent, and I was able to experience the greatness of Tremors for the first time. Sitting there with my swollen foot wrapped in a cast, I kicked back and started watching this curious movie about some hick town in the middle of nowhere that is attacked by giant, mutated earthworm aliens. As a 12 year old, there is nothing better than seeing rednecks being eaten by monsters and seeing an Oscar-worthy (I'm lying) performance by Kevin Bacon wearing a cowboy hat.

The first ingredient for any summer blockbuster: Kevin Bacon.

Tremors introduces us to two down on their luck handymen, Valentine (Kevin Bacon) and Earl, played by the always badass Fred Ward, as they get ready to leave the craphole country town they call home in search of better jobs. On the way to work, they run into a college seismologist that Val gets the hots for. She tells them that there's been some weird seismic activity, and they head back into town, where we meet the rest of the small cast: a Mexican dude, an Asian dude, some lady with two annoying kids, and a crazy gun-addicted survivalist couple, Burt and Heather, and played by Michael Gross and Reba McEntire.

You can never have too many guns in a B-movie.

Soon enough, the town is attacked by graboids, some giant earthworm things that can magically move underground as fast as a running human. The graboids don't have any eyes (duh) - instead they can home in on sound and chase footsteps. They're about as big as car and have some snake-ish tongue things that come out of their mouth and grab tasty redneck prey. It's ultimately up to the bumbling Val and Earl to save the townfolk from getting eaten. Thankfully though, the two gun crazy wackos have enough machine guns to overthrow a small Latin American democracy. They also know how to make explosives out of household items apparently, but seeing as how they're batshit crazy to begin with, it's not surprising. Most of the rest of the cast is just around so they can be eaten in various hilarious ways, and the killer worms are actually pretty damn smart and keep changing things up.

Giant earthworms. Giant earthworms everywhere.

Tremors is a shitty B-movie of the best kind. It's fun as hell to watch - the acting is not that bad and the action scenes are pretty believable. About as believable as being attacked by giant alien worms can be, but anyways. Val and Earl have most of the best lines and their banter back and forth is bound to get a few chuckles. If you're looking for a serious, thoughtful movie, this ain't it - it's no Memento. Otherwise, it's 96 minutes of hilarious B-movie goodness.

TL;DR - killer worms eat people in a small town and Kevin Bacon wears a cool hat - 8/10