Burned Out

Flame off: Lukewarm storyline and lazy 3D knocks out all the fire power
By Morgan P Salvo



Just as in his last ghostly outing, Drive Angry, Nicholas Cage tries to ruin this movie every step of the way, but this time he has help. His mundane take on acting is surpassed by the dismal directing by two of the most innovative filmmakers to date, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, as they drop the fiery ball big time. The fun that is supposed to be had in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is lost entirely. This flick held high expectations, yet sadly, it flat out sucks.
The plot tries to stay true to Marvel Comics’ original idea with its various takes on Ghost Rider’s origin. As Johnny Blaze (Cage) hides out in Eastern Europe, he is called upon by a wine guzzling priest (Idris Elba) to stop the devil, who is trying to take human form in the likes of a boy. And forget about my theory on haunted house movies sucking, my new theory is anything with a boy in it sucks. Cage rampages hither and yon on his lame quest to find the boy and fight evil doers in an attempt to lift his demonic curse.
This flick is shockingly boring.Everyone is basically stuck in an overdone, highly unoriginal race against satanic doomsday. This hackneyed plot steals from The Fury and The Omen. I should’ve known it would be bad since David S. Goyer wrote the story and is responsible for three movies I found repellent: Jumper, The Unborn, and The Dark Knight.

Cage’s narration is somewhat peppy for his usual hangdog monosyllabic babble and his acting is a baby step above his usual posing. But he spends way too much time without his goddamned head on fire lumbering around in his 70’s Elvis leather duds like he has a red hot poker up his butt. Idris has fun with his rambunctious performance, but Johnny Whitworth has the best time as sadistic Ray Carrigan who obtains the power to make things decay, reducing people to Stove Top stuffing mix. A gratuitous Christopher Lambert as an evil priest/monk with graffiti tattooed on his face gives the best (and shortest) performance of his career. Ciarán Hinds looks funny with half his face melting and Violante Placido does nothing sexy or “actiony” enough to please anyone.
Speaking of heads on fire, there is way too much fiery skull screaming while all action stands still and the villains ponder WTF is with that darn flaming motorcycle? The first fight scene shows shades of things to come as all fiery battle sequences are undecipherable. The PG-13 rating works against the subject matter as every time tension builds and it looks like heads will explode it’s either done off screen or from far away.

Let’s blame the directors. Responsible for Crank and Crank 2, these guys have made some of the most pleasing eye candy action flicks ever made. Even Gamer was a fun-packed adventure and sociological skewer of the media. But Neveldine and Taylor seem just plain lazy here. This is definitely like a bad Jonah Hex hangover (a flick they started and walked away from). At least this movie will please the 10-12 year old male demographic.
Not utilizing 3D to any decent capacity, every chance for shit to fly at your head is extinguished in these tepid animated sequences. There’s more energy packed in five minutes of Crank than this entire movie. My expectations were high from a special preview wherein I saw Taylor being pulled by a strap on rollerblades to get some wildly cool shots that must’ve hit the editing floor.
I’m sure N & T were happy to get a paycheck and cash in on the phenomenon that is Nicolas Cage There are a few BS touching scenes. Nick gets to cry and everyone gets to shoot stuff. There’s way too much yakking and too much mythology on the boy and Johnny Blaze.
The directing team pulls out some tricks from their repertoire but not enough to justify the uninspired flick they dish out. The fiery motorcycle looks cool yet the Mad Max/Road Warrior ending is cut too short. You would think with these filmmakers’ résumé at least the ending credits would be fun to watch, but even they are lackluster.
Basically this movie is a bunch of bad ideas poorly executed. After the smoke clears we’re stuck with no real pay off, a waste of time and an even worse memory.The things a nice high powered fire extinguisher would’ve accomplished...
Oh well, ashes to ashes….

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
Starring Nicholas Cage, Idris Elba, Ciarán Hinds, Violante Placido, Johnny Whitworth
Directed by Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Rated PG-13
1 ½ stars

Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide

Finally... A flick that delivers the action goods
by Morgan P Salvo


I thought for sure that Safe House was another of those Tony Scott/ Denzel Washington collaborations and much to my chagrin its not. It is however Training Day all over again with a much cooler calmer Denzel. Instead of director Antoine Fuqua this time it’s Swedish director, with an equally exotic name, Daniel Espinosa known for Snabba Cash (Easy Money). This flick switches the hard driving streets of LA to the more intense safe houses throughout the city of Cape Town, South Africa.

CIA agent Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is a low-level CIA "housekeeper" in charge of a safe house where suspects are taken by CIA operatives to be interrogated. Enter Tobin Frost (Washington), CIA agent-gone-rogue and the agency's most notorious traitor who mysteriously turns himself in…then the fun begins. When the safe house is attacked, Weston and Frost find themselves on the run pursued by trigger-happy gunmen.. Sound familiar? Within the confines of comparisons to the identity-and-loyalty-in-question Bourne movies and Salt, at least this flick has two action heroes and more gratuitous violence than you can shake a semi-automatic weapon at.
Having a decent beginning I thought the filmmakers were going to blow their wad early with the cat-and-mouse shadowing of Frost followed by an overt amount of gunplay. But that is followed up by one of the best car chases I’ve seen and the rest is nothing but a punch fest, shoot ’em up in all its action glory. The majority of Safe House doesn’t skimp on the punching, running, bullet spattering and dodging, hails of gunfire and thundering loud car smashes.

Worth mentioning is the spot-on editing, dizzying camera work and super stylized direction. Within a somber tone Espinosa maintains a visually coherent sense of time and space no matter how much pummeling there is. Cinematographer Oliver Wood must be praised highly here as his frenetic camera style never wanes and he is no slouch to the material. His cinematography credits include all three Bourne entries and a myriad of other action related flicks including Face/off and Sister Act 2 (Well okay we’re all not perfect). Editor Richard Pearson, whose credits include “The Bourne Supremacy, sews together some of the most cohesive sets of scenes in recent history.The use of grainy film and a lot of supreme close-ups adds to Safe House’s gritty feel.

Reynolds deserves recognition for being a consummate actor who can go seamlessly from smarmy comedic roles to down and dirty everyman roles. Here he expresses absolute believability as a man whose emotions go through the wringer getting yanked from every side against what’s right or wrong. Denzel on the other hand is so good at the epitome of cool, moody mystery and smoldering feeling that he keeps you nicely guessing throughout his world-weary cynical world view. The team playing the CIA home base agents are a bunch of actors (Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard) known for laying on the intense deep seriousness, playing overly grizzled and determined CIA agents. They all look dangerously unhealthy and I can’t tell if it’s them or the characters… probably both.

The problems I have with this flick are miniscule like is it impossible to write an original script without a CIA agent going rogue and how many necks need to be broken by that twisting head routine? There are excellent shit-coming-out-of-nowhere scenes that startle the crap out of you. It’s like what horror movies strive for but in their context it’s always too predictable. Its way more effective in the action genre when a car slams into another on or a bullet pierces a skull when we least expect it.
Out doing Salt, Fast and Furious and all the Bourne flicks put together, Safe House really delivers the goods. There’s a kind of “wish come true” Wiki leaks ending that I think many of us would like to see transpire in reality but for now we’ll stick with the high powered action. With whirlwind energy, high body count and performances that stay on the mark the last thing Safe House does is play it safe.


Safe House
Starring Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard
Directed by Daniel Espinosa
Rated R
3 ½ stars

Oh dear what shall I do? Baby’s in black and I’m feeling blue

Straightforward horror from rejuvenated Hammer films

By Morgan P Salvo


The previews for Woman in Black come from the green tinted night-camera variety, showing “candid” audiences’ reactions of fright. This is the same technique employed by the Paranormal Activity franchise to sell tickets. To me it’s the equivalent of restaurants that showcase faded pictures of their food in the window: never a good sign. It’s a shame the marketing research team resorted to this kind of advertising because in actuality this is an old school Victorian gothic ghost story that qualifies for decent requisite horror and definitely could’ve been a lot worse.
This atmospheric retro chiller, set in an isolated Yorkshire village, is a production of England's revived Hammer label and features a post-Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe in his first grown up role. Screenwriter Jane Goldman has adapted Susan Hill's 1983 novel (which spawned a radio series, TV movie and long-running West End stage play). I feel the highly unoriginal title needs some sprucing up but then again in context with this movie it suffices.
The long and short of the plot is that Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe), is a recently widowed lawyer sent to a remote village to put a deceased eccentric's affairs in order. Kipps discovers that his late client's house is haunted by the spirit of a woman and that no one is safe (especially children) from her terrible wrath. His initial arrival in the township is greeted by weird stares, people peering through windows and a general stand offish vibe from the villagers who are obviously hiding a big dark secret. This creates a nice sinister, mysterious and foreboding atmosphere. The only person who's friendly is Samuel Daily (Ciarán Hinds), a wealthy skeptic whose wife (Janet McTeer) has gone mad after losing their young son. You figure Daily is either going to be a big help, turn evil or croak by the end of the movie. Don’t worry; I won’t spoil it for you.
Director James Watkins (Eden Lake/ The Descent 2) holds a steady eerie feel to this gothic entry with beautiful shots engulfed in a strange string soundtrack, but veers way too much into big loud scares that are accentuated by what sounds like someone whapping a kettle drum with a metallic gavel. In a very simplistic straightforward style we are treated to a variety of overdone genre clichés, some effective and some not. Keeping you on the creepy edge of your seat, Woman In Black relies on eeriness, not gore.
With an Edgar Allen Poe feel, we get foggy London, dark bogs and mucky marshes, and creepy wind up dolls and toys. But the jump scares and jolts go over the required limit especially in the movie’s midsection. Watkins is more innovative in building suspense in the flick’s quieter moments, allowing sometimes only quick glimpses of what could be lurking in the corner. This effect works better then the full on big white scary face that zooms at the screen looking like it was yanked right out of The Grudge. But when we spot the ghostly woman clad in black skulking about in the dilapidated garden, it looks more like Black Sabbath’s first album cover.
It’s no secret that I generally hate haunted house movies, but I’ve decided that if a house is going to be haunted it should at least be creepy, like this one. I think we’re all tired of these new modern houses where nocturnal entities terrorize suburbia.
Luscious and corny with a very hokey ending, this flick resolves into a little too easy of a solution. WIB needs more heaped on chills and thrills, like Sam Raimi’s manic Drag Me to Hell. It seems the filmmakers believed in keeping the movie true in spirit to horror movie predecessors like Roger Corman’s Grade-B The Terror (with Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson).
Reminiscent of yesteryear, Woman in Black is a tasteful, old-school fright-fest, emphasizing suspense and ominous foreboding and, despite the bland name and misleading previews, delivers an adequate experience.


The Woman in Black
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Janet McTeer, Ciarán Hinds
Directed by James Watkins
Rated PG-13
2 ½ stars