Thursday, June 19, 2014

Shark Week (2012)



Number Rolled: 35
Movie Name/Year: Shark Week (2012)
Genre: Horror
Length: 89 minutes
Rating: NR
Affiliated Companies: The Asylum
Executive Producer: David Rimawi
Director: Christopher Ray
Writer: Liz Adams, H. Perry Horton
Actors: Yancy Butler, Patrick Bergin, Joshua Michael Allen, Bart Baggett, Erin Coker, Frankie Cullen, Valerie K. Garcia, Billy Ray, Meredith Thomas, Robert Matthew Wallace, Eric Scott Wilson, Israel Wright, Josh Williams, John Paul Bennett

One by one, a group of strangers find themselves kidnapped and brought to a strange place. Chained up and hooded, they learn that their captor intends to release them, provided they pass a few tests. Every day they must face and kill a shark, or die trying.

I love movies that are so bad that they’re good. A good example of that, from the creature feature category, is Sharknado. Shark Week, however, was so bad that there was nothing good about it. That’s a very different thing. Not every B movie is going to fall under the “it’s so bad it’s good” category.

The problem with movies coming from The Asylum Production Company is that they will produce anything B movie-ish. They don’t make a distinction between bad-bad and good-bad. That means they have a terrible reputation with movie fans. They’ve produced roughly 160 movies, most do tend to fall under the “terrible” category, but there are a few gems. We all know I enjoyed Sharknado; I also enjoyed Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies among others. Still, the bad is starting to outweigh the good.

This movie had terrible acting, terrible graphics, a terrible storyline, and a terrible script (my brain is still twitching from “a lot more easier”).

Don’t put yourself through the agony of watching this crap, but try to keep an open mind about The Asylum. Their movies don’t always suck.

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – None
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 4%

Netflix’s Prediction for Me – 1.9/5
Trust-the-Dice Score1/5

The Random Rating: PG-13 – for drug innuendo and moderate action violence

Movie Trailer: 

Monday, June 16, 2014

World War Z: Unrated Version (2013)



Number Rolled: 4
Movie Name/Year: World War Z: Unrated Version (2013)
Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Length: 122 minutes
Rating: UR
Affiliated Companies: Paramount Pictures, Skydance Productions, Hemisphere Media Capital, GK Films, Plan B Entertainment, 2DUX2, Apparatus Productions, Latina Pictures
Executive Producer: David Ellison, Marc Forster, Dana Goldberg, Tim Headington, Graham King, Jillian Kugler, Paul Schwake, Bradford Simpson
Director: Marc Forster
Writer: Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, Damon Lindelof, J. Michael Straczynski, Max Brooks
Actors: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, James Badge Dale, Ludi Boeken, Matthew Fox, Fana Mokoena, David Morse, Elyes Gabel, Peter Capaldi, Pierfrancesco Favino, Ruth Negga, Moritz Bleibtreu, Sterling Jerins, Abigail Hargrove, Fabrizio Zacharee Guido, Ernesto Cantu, Vicky Araico

Gerry Lane is an employee of the United Nations. Although his job used to entail going to dangerous areas for various reasons, he no longer does that kind of thing. His primary focus is now his wife and two daughters. On their way out one day, disaster strikes and they find themselves trying to stay safe in a world of zombies.

I love Max Brooks. I read the Zombie Survival Guide twice. A lot of my closest friends are also big Max Brooks fans. There’s nothing better than sitting around and debating survival ideas for a zombie apocalypse. Most people were surprised when I didn’t rush to see this film in the theaters.

I don’t remember why I didn’t go. To be honest, I think it was money trouble. Whatever it was, I’ve been looking forward to Netflix getting it and I got the bonus of both the original and unrated versions becoming available.

The first thing I noticed was that the movie isn’t directly from the book it’s named for. I don’t think that’s a terribly important detail, though. World War Z, the book, is kind of an anthology of first person stories. To try and convert that kind of thing into a movie, we’d wind up with a very confusing horror-type version of New York, I Love You and The ABCs of Death. Trust me, nobody wants that.

World War Z, the movie, stuck to feel of the book. In this case, that seems more important to me. Not only because it stuck to the core of its namesake, but because it was easy to see inspirations taken from the Zombie Survival Guide as well.

As the movie goes, I found it to be pretty good. There was very little build-up before the big action started, but the transitions in the story aided the addition of suspense.

There were a few minor issues, but I can’t really go into them without adding spoilers. Without specifics, there were parts of the script that I felt were a little off; as if it was almost easy to tell where the different writers came in. I can only assume rewrites and budget issues contributed to the problem.

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 67%
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 72%

Netflix’s Prediction for Me – 4.2/5
Trust-the-Dice Score3.5/5

The Random Rating: R – For strong violence and implied rape scene

P.S. World War Z 2 has a tentative release date in 2016. It is reported to be directed by J.A. Bayona (Penny Dreadful, The Impossible) and written by Steven Knight (Closed Circuit, Redemption).

Movie Trailer: