Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Hunter Prey is a 2009 independent science fiction film written and directed by Sandy Collora on a very economical budget of $425 thousand. It follows a group of interstellar commandos tracking their alien prisoner on a desert planet. Somehow the prisoner managed to force the prison ship carrying him to crash on this planet and now it is the job of these commandos to take him back into their custody. And they must bring him in alive. This turns out to be a point of contention, seeing as the alien proves more formidable than first thought, but the commander explains that since they have wiped out all but one of this alien’s race, it plans to “return the favor”, and they must find out how.

That’s a very brief introduction to this film, but I want to keep it as spoiler free as possible because Hunter Prey has plenty of surprises. I stumbled across this one because of a recommendation over on the Sci Fi Reddit page and decided to give it a look. And despite a few flaws here and there, Collora manages to deliver a very good genre entry with this modest film. It definitely has an initial cheesiness about which may cause some to tune out early on, but I recommend that you stick with the film and give it the chance it deserves. The armored uniforms that the commandos wear are definitely an early weak point, looking not unlike discarded Power Rangers gear dragged through the dirt several times. But remember that this is no big budget affair and pretty quickly you don’t even notice those uniforms anymore. Also, the acting has lapses from time to time, but for the most part is decent at least.

What sets Hunter Prey apart from the Syfy Saturday night cheese-fests that it resembles at first blush is that it takes a familiar story and builds on it and develops it organically instead of through contrivance. We have seen this sort of tale before, done well in the Star Trek TOS episode “Arena” and not so well in the feature film Enemy Mine, but Hunter Prey quickly establishes itself as more than just a knockoff of genre formulas. The film could have easily descended into a predicament-oriented affair where the commandos and their prey find themselves in a never-ending succession of precarious situations, but it avoids that pitfall. It follows a rather straightforward plot of hunters pursuing a dangerous prey, though it throws in a nice helping of twists as well. And it advances the story through character development and mostly avoids the contrivances you expect from a low budget sci fi film. The ending is a bit confusing (more on that below in the SPOILERS section), and maybe somewhat unsatisfying, but it does not completely derail the film. And the movie is relatively brisk at about 90 minutes running time which works in its favor. It’s definitely worth checking out, even if it won’t quite overshadow too many of the bigger budget CGI-fests that have hit theaters the last couple of years.

WARNING: SPOILERS TO FOLLOW (Skip this paragraph to avoid). As mentioned above, the ending to Hunter Prey is a rather vague and may turn off more than a few viewers to this film. I have actually watched it a couple of times and have picked up a few more clues each time, but still can’t claim that I fully understand it or feel like it delivers a satisfying resolution. I think a lot of the understanding revolves around the comment that Centauri makes to Jericho, “Is that what you want the legacy of your kind to be?”, referring to that latter’s plan to destroy the Sedonian homeworld. I believe that Centauri infects himself with a degree of self-doubt at that point, and we had already seen that he had his own previous disagreements with Sedonian authorities. But would that be enough for him to allow Jericho to escape and potentially carry out his plan of retribution. And what did Centauri mean when he said that he and Jericho would meet again? Was that setting up a sequel? If so, it seemed to be at the expense of a more satisfying resolution. But again, as I said above, that doesn’t completely kill the movie, which is mostly excellent up to the end, just docks it a bit in my final rating.

A note for sci fi trivia buffs, this film seems to have all sorts of obscure references to other science fiction properties. The names of Karza and Croyer seem like a reference to the Micronauts comic book series (Baron Karza and Acroyear). Centauri could be a reference to the like-nmaed race from Babylon 5 or any of umpteen other sci fi uses of the term. Orin Jericho comes straight from Starchaser: The Legend of Orin and perhaps the Jericho TV series as well. And it seems like there were a few others that I noticed that have since slipped my mind. Also, Erin Gray, ex-spandex wearing hottie from TV’s Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, provides the voice for the computer Clea.

Director Sandy Collora had previously worked with effects and makeup expert Stan Winston (Aliens, Predator, The Terminator) and has spent most of his career behind the scenes. But in 2004, he directed the well-received fan film Batman: Dead End which Kevin Smith has referred to as “possibly the truest, best Batman movie ever made” (you can download the eight minute film at this link). Hunter Prey is Collora’s first feature-length film and he definitely shows promise with this one. Science fiction fans should check this one out and keep an eye on future developments from this director.

Buy Hunter Prey and Other Anti-Blockbusters on DVD from Amazon.com:

Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars (Highest Rating)

In one month, Thor will hit the theaters kicking off this Summer’s Blockbuster season and giving us one of many superhero CGI extravaganzas that will soar across the big screen during the biggest movie-going time of the year. And while that film and its ilk will give us plenty of senses-dazzling, popcorn-munching moments, it’s worth taking the time to recognize a superhero film of sorts from last year made on a much smaller scale but that delivered a grand, moving story. Defendor (misspelling explained in the film) comes to us from writer/director Peter Stebbings and stars Wood Harrelson and it flew very much under the radar getting a limited release in theaters in February 2010 and a quiet debut on DVD a few months later. But this one is a must-see for genre fans even if it does take a major detour from what you would expect for a superhero film.

The movie focuses on Arthur Poppington (Harrelson), a person with no superpowers who dons a costume and gear to take on the criminals who seem to run unchecked in his city and has a particular vendetta against a super villain known as Captain Industry. And that’s about as much as you should know going in. I could provide a bit more detail (and I will to a small extent below), but this movie is best viewed spoiler-free to experience its full impact.

Now many reading that brief synopsis will immediately think of last year’s Kick-Ass (or 2008’s Special or this year’s Super). And Defendor does share some similarities to Kick-Ass, but it takes a very different approach to the same sort of concept and delivers a far superior film. Both have normal people putting on a superhero disguise and trying to act like the comic book characters that inspired them. But Kick-Ass takes this idea to the extreme if not the absurd whereas Defendor remains grounded in reality. In fact, Defendor really counts more as a drama than anything else. Very little that happens in the movie is not plausible, and it has almost nothing in the way of Science Fiction and/or Fantasy elements, whereas Kick-Ass infused its story with many genre elements. But Defendor still roots its premise heavily in the superhero tale and should be embraced warmly by genre fans. Kick-Ass also verged on torture-porn at times, though intentionally as it winked to its audience and brought to life elements only implied in its comic book source material. Defendor does not take this angle (though it has plenty of violence), as it delivers more in the way of a drama and a character study. It also has a gut wrenching quality about it, something present in Kick-Ass as well. But that latter film actually makes you feel creepy at times, almost like you need to go take a shower. Defendor has moments that make you cringe and/or feel uncomfortable, but ultimately these help bring out the true pathos in the film’s hero.

And you can’t accuse writer/director Peter Stebbings of stealing the basic premise from the Mark Millar comic book series. Stebbings wrote the screenplay in 2005, three years before the comic hit the stands, and he filmed the movie in 2009 (though it did not get its release until February 19, 2010, one month before Kick-Ass hit the big screen). And if the name Peter Stebbings rings a bell, he is an actor/writer/director who has had frequent guest appearances on genre shows like The X-Files, The Outer Limits (the 90’s remake), and Stargate SG-1. He also played Markus Alexander across the two seasons of J. Michael Straczynski’s excellent but underrated post-apocalyptic series Jeremiah. But with Defendor he has demonstrated that he can do much more than act. He has shown himself to be a highly talented filmmaker, handling a grand story on an intimate scale while expertly working in such nuances as the misspelling of the title character’s name and the Captain Industry reference.

It’s not like we haven’t seen the idea of normal people dressing up as superheroes played out in comics, on television, and in the cinema before. But Stebbings manages to give the concept a fresh spin and ultimately uses it to deliver an engrossing and moving film. It’s not too much of a spoiler to tell you that he works in many of the expected standards from the darker, grittier comics that this film draws its influence from. Defendor gives us the troubled, driven central character with a motivation from his past to strike out against crime. Of course, the city is riddled with the criminal element and the people feel helpless and insecure. Then we have the corrupt cop on the take and the jaded hooker with a good side she tries to suppress. And all of this could have lead to a stale, hackneyed film or a contrived and muddled affair or could have easily descended into camp. But Stebbings meshes all of this together without reverting to cliché and makes the familiar seem like a whole new experience. Reworking old ideas is not a bad thing in itself. It’s when you regurgitate what has come before that you deliver an ersatz product. Stebbings avoids the latter here and instead takes a familiar idea to new heights. And with this relatively simple, grounded story that he put together on very little money (about $3.5 million) and used little in the way of special effects, he succeeds in delivering that grand tale that genre productions often strive for yet often fall short of. That’s story-telling and that’s film craft and that’s what makes this a film fans should seek out.

And of course I would be remiss if I did not mention the outstanding performance delivered by Woody Harrelson. Woody is one of my all-time favorite actors and one of Hollywood’s best character performers. Unfortunately, he has rarely received the material equal to his talent, even though he manages to make almost any script that he reads from shine. But with Defendor, Harrelson finally gets his Magnus Opus, even if it has not been recognized as such. He delivers a career performance and expertly interprets the nuances of the scripts. From the one-liners that aren’t as witty as you expect (there’s a reason for that, and don’t worry because he does get some zingers in there), to his less than heroic run-ins with bad guys, to the moments when he reveals the inner turmoils that haunt Arthur Poppington, Harrelson is at the top of his game from start to finish. And he gets a pretty impressive supporting cast that includes Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy), Elias Koteas (The Prophecy, Fallen), Michael Kelly (The Sopranos, Fringe), and Kat Dennings (various supporting roles), each of whom fully immerse themselves into their roles and help elevate this movie to that next level.

Defendor unfortunately suffered from little to no marketing, and what did exist misrepresented the film. The movie is played up as a comedy in its promos, and it does have its humorous elements (a few times it had me rolling on the floor laughing), but it’s really a drama through and through. And that unfortunately seemed to hamper it in more ways than one. The movie industry, which prefers an easily labeled product, couldn’t really peg it down this drama with genre trappings and that ultimately resulted in it falling through the cracks. It got little attention upon its release, and no recognition from the Academy which was yet another injustice served upon it. The Academy Awards often shy away from genre films in the non-technical categories anyway, but this indy film definitely deserved at least nominations for Harrelson’s acting as well as Stebbings’ writing and directing. Unfortunately it received no attention from the organization that supposedly recognizes the best examples of filmmaking.

If you missed out on this film, which is quite likely, you need to check it out and soon. And spread the word. I consider this one of the best ever superhero movies even though you could make an argument that it’s not a superhero movie. In any case, it’s a must-see for all genre fans.

Buy Defendor on DVD from Amazon.com:

Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

M. Night Shyamalan just received a drubbing this week as his The Last Airbender movie took home the Worst Movie award at the Razzies which I consider somewhat unfair because I don’t think that movie was nearly as bad as people made it out to be and there were plenty of other movies more deserving such as Jonah Hex and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. In any case, I will take this opportunity to give the beleaguered Shyamalan some props and look at his other 2010 film Devil, recently released on DVD. I figure this one deserves a place amongst our Anti-Blockbusters because it managed to accomplish quite a lot on a relatively small budget ($10 million), and maybe this format will provide him the means to revive his filmmaking status. Note that I will be breaking this review in two parts: the first will be my impressions of this film that contain little or no spoilers, then I will take a deeper dive that will contain some minor spoilers. Those who have not seen this movie and prefer to approach it with as little fore-knowledge as possible (highly recommended) will probably want to skip that section (clearly marked below) for now.

While M. Night Shyamalan is a well known as a writer/director of suspense/supernatural movies, he only provided the story and produced this time around and did not write the screenplay or direct. But make no mistake, this is definitely a Shyamalan movie, and for those who derive a negative connotation from that (like all of the Razzie voters), make note that I consider this his best film since Unbreakable. The premise in a nutshell and with minimal spoilers gives us five strangers trapped in an elevator in a high-rise office building who start to realize that one among them is a dangerous person. The building security, along with the help of the local police, work to free these people from their predicament, but as things continue to go awry they begin to fear that a malevolent force may be controlling the situation.

This relatively low-budget film delivers a muted contrast to the epic proportions of the CGI-heavy blockbusters that have assaulted the screen of late like Iron Man 2, Prince of Persia, and Tron: Legacy with its confined location and cramped quarters but you can also sense where the creative team tried ape those films in spirit at least, giving it almost an overproduced feel. Whereas a director like Vincenzo Natali (Cube) would have taken full advantage of the captivity of the elevator and delivered a claustrophobic tale, director John Erick Dowdle (Quarantine) eschews that angle and almost makes the elevator and its surrounding building feel roomy and spacious. This seems at contrast with the core premise of the film and makes it a bit less accessible at first. That, along with the rather unlikeable characters that provide the focus of the story may cause some watching the movie to disengage by about the halfway point. However, right about the time that people might be losing interest enough to contemplate a bathroom break or a snack run, Dowdle takes a firm grip of the reins and returns all eyes forward. This leads to a gripping second half that ultimately delivers on the promise that the film almost seemed to lose its grasp of early on, and he guides it to a riveting, mostly satisfying, conclusion.

WARNING! SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!!! SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH TO AVOID!

The fact that we find the five people on this elevator rather unlikeable can actually be a deal breaker for some watching the movie, and I have seen that as a common criticism leveled at Devil. However, there is a crucial reason for the unsavory nature of these five people that plays itself out when the final confrontation with the malevolent force reaches its culmination. And what a mea culpa it delivers with the trademark Shyamalan twist ending which he finally gets right for the first time since The Sixth Sense (even though I loved Unbreakable, its final twist fired blanks for me). And we discover that many of the loose ends from early on start to fall into place and actually play an integral part in the overall scheme of the story. And while the script seems to leave a few dangling threads, a second viewing (which I partook of once the DVD came out) clears up the majority of this. And this film definitely deserves one or more go-arounds to catch all of the intricacies that it tucks away through its relatively brisk hour and twenty minute run time. The only thing that bothered me after the film concluded was the final act of Detective Bowden. Whereas the final act of the last person standing in the elevator (not revealing male or female) made sense because that person had been put through Hell and back, the film did not make me feel like Bowden would have arrived at the decision he made at the end. The story did not really build to that point and seemed to take a leap of faith. Still, that did not detract from the movie for me the same way that the final twist for Unbreakable did, and Bowden’s decision was not the twist, just a reaction to it. And while some might find the coincidence of the detective’s presence a bit contrived, I believe the film fully established what brought him there with the voice-over narration.

I know there are a lot of Shyamalan-bashers out there that have dragged his reputation through the mud over the last few years and their voices may deter many people from watching this film. But I say to ignore them and buy or rent the DVD. This one puts Shyamalan back on track and delivers yet another film along the lines of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. And I admit that I wrestled with my final rating for the film for a while in part because of its meandering first half and in part because of what I mentioned about Detective Bowden above in the spoilers section. But that fact is that the movie continued to resonant with me after it ended and demanded that I watch it again to revisit its implications and possible interpretations. And that is truly the sign of an accomplished film.

Devil is the first in Shyamalan’s planned trilogy of Night Chronicles movies that deal with the supernatural in urban settings (specifically Philadelphia where this and many of his films take place). The second planned movie will be titled Reincarnate (originally 12 Strangers) and will deal with a jury deliberating over a case that involves the supernatural. The third film will adapt the script originally intended as the sequel to Unbreakable, but no word on whether the David Dunn character will show up in that film. In any case, I think that this past Fall movie season showed that moderately budgeted, well-made movies like Devil can be quite profitable (itmade back six times its production costs), and perhaps Shyamalan should continue on this course for the near future.

Buy Devil and Other M. Night Shyamalan Movies on Blu-ray from Amazon.com:

Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Monsters is an indie Science Fiction film made by writer/director Gareth Edwards that received very limited release in the theaters this past Fall but that has now made its way to DVD giving the wider audience of genre fans a chance to check it out. It takes place six years after a NASA probe returns to Earth carrying large, squid-like alien creatures who clash with humans and have since taken over a large part of Mexico along the U.S. Border. The film focuses on a reporter named Andrew Kaulder (played by Scoot McNairy) who is tasked with returning the daughter of his newspaper’s owner (Samantha “Sam” Wynden played by Whitney Able) to the United States after she narrowly escapes an alien attack while in Mexico. At first this seems like a relatively simple request, but after Kaulder is robbed and loses Sam’s passport and ferry ticket back to the States, they must rely on the locals to help them traverse the “infected zone” in northern Mexico in order to get to the border.

Edwards put this all together for a budget of around half a million, and he worked with mostly local, non-actors in Mexico getting them to improvise most of their parts. And the two leads, McNairy and Able, did not have a hard script to work from either. Instead they relied on just a “loose paragraph describing the scene with just the main points that had to be hit”(Ref). The settings, which often showed bleak devastation, were actual locations in Mexico that they filmed without prior permission (I assume most of these were from areas ravaged by several of the hurricanes that have hit Mexico over the last few years). This all makes for an authentic and at times documentary feel to the film that hearkens back to similar movies like District 9 and Cloverfield. But it takes neither the full-on documentary approach of the former nor the cinema verite of the latter, following a more traditional narrative, from the audience perspective at least.

Monsters is a fairly linear film that does not take too many twists and turns, but it also does not quite follow the path to its conclusion that the audience likely expects early on. It also does not rely on placing the main characters in one perilous predicament after the next, and also thankfully eschews the jump-out-and-scare-you gimmick so over-used in monster/horror films. Instead it builds its tension through the knowledge that an ominous peril lurks nearby and it relies on the less gratuitous suggestion of the terror more often than its actual manifestation. We do get to see a few glimpses of the monsters and what they are capable of, but for most of the film we know they are off-screen but never far away.

Some viewers may find themselves put off by the two lead characters seeing as they come off as shallow, vapid people throughout much of the film. And I have a hard time believing that Sam would not have been furious at Kaulder for his bonehead move that resulted in the loss or her passport and ferry ticket out of the country. But we do learn more about these two as the movie progresses, especially at the very end, and at least some of the pieces of the puzzle seem to fit together by that point.

Monsters also tries to make a statement and definitely has something to say about illegal immigration from Mexico and the condition of the people currently living there as well as their perspectives on the United States. But it’s not quite as overly political as District 9, nor is the message really all that clear. Any grand statements intended by Monsters find themselves obscured in the narrative, but the movie does provide some interesting observations interspersed between its monster-movie elements. And you can pretty much take the commentary or leave it, but what I found more shocking were the actual images of a dilapidated Mexico used to depict this post-invasion world.

(WARNING: The following paragraph contains major spoilers, skip to avoid.)

It was tooward the end of the film, as Kaulder and Sam cross the border, that I really felt the true impact of the film. Up until that point, their whole perspective assumed that the aliens were contained in Mexico. When they found that the creatures had crossed the border into the United States, though, then the nature of the threat really hits home. This delivered the “Oh Wow!” moment of the film for me. Unfortunately, the very end fell flat. I assume that Edwards was trying to suggest that the aliens were not the threat others assumed them to be. And I assume that Sam’s comment that she did not want to go home was supposed to emphasize that point (and/or consummate the romantic side-story that had been building through the film). But those last few minutes felt more muddled to me than anything and came close to derailing what had been shaping up into a fine movie, though it did not go quite that far.

Ultimately, the film left me with a very good impression, despite its few shortcomings and occasional lapses. And this shows once again that good Science Fiction does not need a blockbuster-sized budget or an excess of CGI pyrotechnics. We have seen several other examples of this over the last few years with films like The Man from Earth, Moon, and District 9, and Monsters stands up well in comparison to those highly regarded Science Fiction films. We can only hope to see more intelligent films like this from Edwards and other independent producers in the coming years that offer a respite to the blockbuster bloat-fests Hollywood continues to assault us with (and you can read more about those at our Blockbuster Overload page).

As mentioned above, Monsters had only a very limited release in the States with slightly more exposure in the foreign markets. Why it didn’t get wider release puzzles me, because since this one had such a small budget it could have easily brought in significant returns if it had made it into more theaters. I’m sure Science Fiction fans at least would have ventured into the theaters to give it a look, and it would not have needed to fill seats in too many theaters to have delivered a notable return on its investment. But now with its DVD release, fans have a chance to see it, and I highly recommend this one as yet another example of intelligent Science Fiction that has managed to creep in from the fringes of the movie industry over the past few years.

Buy Monsters and Other Movies from the Must-Watch List on DVD from Amazon.com:

Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Cloverfield is the J.J. Abrams produced, Matt Reeves directed film that takes the monster-movie format and turns it inside out. It’s premise is actually quite simple: remember all those people running and screaming in the Godzilla movies as the giant monsters wreaked havoc on the city? Well let’s make a movie from their perspective. The movie gives us the point of view of the people caught up in the mayhem and shows us what happens to them as a giant monster stomps through the streets, knocks over their building, and knocks their rescue helicopter from the sky. All of those are familiar scenes from the many monster movies we have seen over the years, but this time we experience it from thier POV.

To deliver this, the film offers yet another twist on the cinéma vérité style, that the Blair Witch Project utilized with such success, as we see the entire movie through the eyes of a camcorder which actually gets passed to three different people throughout the course of the movie. The film begins simply as Jason Hawkins (Mike Vogel) and his girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas) prepare a going away party for Jason’s brother Robert Hawkins (played by Michael Stahl-David and the character from the film has no relation that we know of to the Robert Hawkins from the Jericho television series). Jason is filming all of this but then he passes the camera off to their friend Hud (T. J. Miller) to film the goodbyes from all of the party guests. After the party turns sour following the departure of Rob’s friend/one-time lover Beth, Hud and Jason are trying to console him when a violent tremor rocks the building. They then see a report on the news that an oil tanker has capsized near Liberty Island and they see explosions outside. More tremors prompt everybody at the part to evacuate the building, but on the streets they find themselves in the middle of an attack from a giant monster that is shedding what appear to be offspring or smaller versions of itself as it plows through the city. The people try to escape across the Brooklyn bridge, but it is destroyed blocking their exit and killing Jason. Rob then gets a call from Beth who is trapped inside her apartment building after the monster attacked it. He is determined to help her and Lily, Hud, and Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) go with him deeper into the city where the monster continues to rampage.

Cloverfield is not a low-budget film and it has some notable genre veterans attached to it like Abrams and writer Drew Goddard (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel), so it might seem like a marginal choice as an Anti-Blockbuster. But they did produce the film on a very modest budget by Hollywood standards ($25 million) and lacked any big name stars and also took a very different turn on the monster movie format with its POV perspective. This is what makes it unique and why it stands out from the typical cookie-cutter, big-budget genre film. This one puts the viewer in the middle of the action creating an unnerving, gut-wrenching, “you are there” experience that makes the film really resonate and stick with you well after it has ended. And after seeing this one, you will never look at another monster movie quite the same.

This movie does tread a find line, though, which will likely turn it into a make-or-break affair for many viewers. It starts off kind of slow and much different than what you might expect going in with its “day in the life” viewpoint, some may even wonder if they have tuned into the wrong film. But once the film shifts into monster movie mode, that opening actually makes sense for the contrast that it offers. The film also has some unnecessary soap opera elements that I felt detracted from the central focus. I understand that they threw this in there to give Rob the motivation to return to the city, but they could have gone for a more organic plot line just as easily. Why not just have them at the city center to begin with and have them struggling to make their way out throughout all the turmoil? But the biggest deal-breaker will likely come from the camcorder perspective that captures all the action. I had a hard time believing that they would have kept that camera rolling through everything that happened. Hud, who films most of what we see, didn’t want to hold the camera to begin with, so I have a hard time accepting he would have been as diligent in his recording (despite his comments before things go completely to Hell that he wanted to document what was happening). Had he been a wannabe-reporter or a blogger or something like that, I could have accepted it better, but they never established a good enough motivation for him to keep that camera rolling almost constantly (even when himself or others were in jeopardy). And the military would have immediately confiscated the camera once they saw it.

So some viewers may have difficulty buying into this film for one or more of the reasons mentioned above and I admit that several of them really bothered me while watching it. But as I previously mentioned, once the film ended it really stuck with me for several days. It struck a nerve, which is definitely a sign of good film-making. Maybe because I watched so many monster movies over the years and loved the genre as a kid, this one just seemed like the missing piece because it finally showed the story from the ground up perspective. In any case, I highly recommend this to any monster movie fans and still suggest it to any genre fan. Just know that your suspension of disbelief will be tested to some extent, but ultimately you will be rewarded with a memorable movie-viewing experience.

Buy Cloverfield and Other Anti-Blockbusters on DVD from Amazon.com:

By John J. Joex

We define an Anti-Blockbuster as a film that bucked the Hollywood bloated-budget, cookie cutter blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. They may have had a respectable budget or modest or even non-existent funding and they may have done well in the box office or flew under the radar and perhaps eventually found an audience in the video market. But the main factor is that they diverged from the typical, formulaic output we see all too often from Hollywood and they showed the potential of film-making when the creative team pushes the boundaries and tries something new and original. Following are what I believe to be ten of the best movies covered in this column so far, and you can go to this link to see all of the Anti-Blockbusters we have reviewed.

1. The Man from Earth – Written by the late Jerome Bixby (a respected Science Fiction author who also penned several classic Star Trek and Twilight Zone episodes), this movie has no special effects, no action scenes, no aliens, basically nothing you would expect from a Science Fiction film. Just a group of people sitting around talking. But it delivered a film that I would easily put on a Top 20 (maybe even Top 10) list of the all-time greatest Science Fiction films.
2. Primer – This film could likely find its way onto the same Top 20 list right alongside The Man from Earth. Produced on almost no budget and written and directed by a mathematician and former engineer, it gives us one the best (if not the best) Science Fiction films to deal with time travel. It’s a pretty intense movie and demands multiple viewings, but it’s worth the commitment.
3. Moon – This throwback to slow, intelligent Science Fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, and The Andromeda Strain (all of which we have covered on our Must-Watch List) may not have filled many seats in theaters last Summer, but it quickly gained a reputation as an instant classic in the genre.
4. Pan’s Labyrinth – Guillermo del Toro had a decent budget to bring his dark fantasy to life, but he still did it at one third to one quarter of what it would have cost him in Hollywood. And if he had done it through that machine, he would have never had the freedom to tell the story the way he wanted and would probably been forced to tack on a more upbeat, less ambiguous ending.
5. Cube – This Science Fiction/Horror tale from Vincenzo Natali (Splice) delivered an engaging, claustrophobic, paranoid thriller following a group of people trying to escape from a bizarre prison they don’t understand.
6. They Live – Speaking of paranoia, this John Carpenter classic has it oozing from the seams. It gave us an 80’s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, not because it followed the same plot but because it delved into the Id of that decade like the 50’s classic did with its era.
7. Beowulf and Grendel – You don’t have to have a bloated Hollywood budget and high-tech motion-capture animation (as we saw in the 2007 Robert Zemeckis directed Beowulf) to adapt this classic epic. Canadian director Sturla Gunnarsson along with Gerard Butler (300) in the lead role turn this Old English saga on its head and use it as a parable for our own times.
8. Night of the Living Dead – I consider this actually a proto-Anti-Blockbuster as it came out prior to the Blockbuster era that began a few years later with Jaws and Star Wars. But with only a tiny budget, George A. Romero delivered a seminal horror film that spawned a whole sub-genre of zombie-pocalypse movies, books, comics, games, etc.
9. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension – How much further from the Hollywood formula can you get than this genre-bending cult classic. It may take you a few viewings to catch everything, but you will enjoy it that much more each time around.
10. Ink – This trippy Science Fiction/Fantasy indie film almost defies description but I would tell you to expect to see something along the lines of Terry Gilliam doing a Disney film while partaking in large quantities of hallucinogenic substances. It’s a love it or hate it affair, but I truly loved it and give it a high recommendation for those who appreciate an off-the-wall movie experience.

Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 Stars

The dystopian film Mad Max came out back in 1979 with a then unknown Mel Gibson in the lead role and garnered some attention for its bleak vision and themes focusing on the breakdown of society. But it was the sequel to this low budget film, Mad Max 2 (known in the states as The Road Warrior), that marked a significant milestone in movie-making when it came out in 1981. And in so doing it managed to achieve that rare feat of producing a follow-up film superior to the original.

The film gives us a post-apocalyptic, western style movie set after society has collapsed even further than what we saw in Mad Max. We follow the former cop Max (Gibson) as he treks through the desert searching for fuel to keep his car running and avoiding the marauders that want to steal what little petrol he has. He meets up with a man flying a make-shift gyro-copter (played by Bruce Spence) who tells him about a factory nearby that has as much gas as he could want. The two head to the location (with Max having taken the gyro-pilot as his prisoner) but find it under siege from a gang of desert marauders led by their hockey-mask clad leader Humongous. Max helps one of the people from the compound, thus gaining entry to their fort and he asks for fuel in return. He then learns of their plan to flee from the compound with as much fuel as they can take and he tells them of a rig that he knows of that will haul their tanker. He retrieves the rig for them (sustaining some pretty serious injuries in the process) and plans to leave with the fuel that they promised him once he returns. However, he eventually decides to help them in their flight and agrees to drive the rig hauling the tanker as a distraction so that the others in the compound can escape and head to a promised land they believe lies to the north.

The Road Warrior delivers a bare-bones plot with little in the way of character development and much in the way of mayhem and destruction, but it did manages to distinguish itself on two very important points. First and most obvious is its stylized approach that basically established the look for the post-apocalyptic world (much the way that Blade Runner did for the dystopic world) through the 80’s and beyond. The punk-rock / leather-bondage appearance of the characters in the film, that has since been dubbed the Road Warrior-look, immediately set this film apart and set the visual vocabulary for films of this type that would follow. That along with the chop-shop, throw-together vehicles added much to the appeal and legacy of the film.

Road Warrior’s second distinguishing point is the message that can be found within its subtext. This film did not try to make a grand statement or shout any messages to those watching. It was a bleak action film with a threadbare plot, but it resonated with audiences for a reason. Beneath the carnage and demolition-derby antics lay an austere, ironic message: in this despondent future, life is cheap, fuel is worth much more. And that spoke to the psyche of the audience because if you look back over the last few decades you can see where this has played itself out in world affairs. This movie connected with its viewers on a sub-conscious level in a way that other films like 1956’s The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and 1988’s They Live, did by connecting with the deeper, hidden anxieties of their times. The visual appeal of the film definitely helped draw the audience in, but that underlying message kept it alive and boiling beneath the surface well after the closing credits rolled.

The Road Warrior was definitely not a big budget production, though it had a healthy amount of funds for an Australian production (4 million Australian dollars, ten times what Mad Max cost). Still, most of that went into the scenes depicting vehicular destruction and the film does have somewhat of a cheesy feel to it. But that does not detract from it, and in fact it actually lends to the overall atmosphere. The same can be said for the sparse character development. We get little to help us understand what motivates the characters in the film beyond their base needs and urges. But the very adept cast fills in the blanks quite often with their performances. For example, we see this in the reactions from Max and the gyro-pilot when they watch the marauders attack a couple fleeing from the compound. Max may have drifted pretty far from the conventions of the civilized world, but we can see from his reactions to the violence he witnesses that he has not completely lost touch with his humanity. Little bits like this are peppered throughout the film, giving it a touch more depth than you might expect.

And while the movie is fueled mostly by machismo and testosterone, it does not fall apart without that. There is more beneath the surface even if it does not try to belabor us with proselytizing or grand-standing. And because it was made outside of the Hollywood machine, it was not bound by the conventions expected from major studios. For that reason, it succeeded in traversing new ground and setting the bar for films similar to it, and ultimately the Hollywood juggernaut would follow the lead set by this small-time, indie outsider.

On an additional note, Bruce Spence, who played the gyro-pilot, has long been a familiar face on the small and big screen in Australia, even before The Road Warrior came out. He has had much less exposure to audiences Stateside, though genre fans may recognize him now for his recent, much-loved stint as the wizard Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander on the syndicated fantasy series Legend of the Seeker.

Buy The Road Warrior and Other Anti-Blockbusters on DVD from Amazon.com:

Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

I stumbled upon this fairly recent movie by accident and found it to be a welcome surprise of a film dealing with post-apocalyptic themes. Carriers was made back in 2007 but then sat on the shelf for a couple of years before it finally got a limited release in the theaters just a little over a year ago. Chris Pine heads up the cast of four plague survivors as they trek through the back roads of a ravaged America. Their goal is to try and avoid those affected with the virus that has wiped out most of humanity while heading to a location that they believe will act as a safe spot where they can ride out the holocaust. They do however encounter other survivors along the way and find themselves faced with dubious moral choices, weighing their own survival against helping those in need.

Carriers delivers a very straightforward, linear film that does not rely on twists and turns nor placing the leads in one predicament after the next to build its story and conflicts. Instead, it essays the breakdown of society as it follows these four travelers on their journey to a coastal hotel that the two brothers know from their childhood and that they believe will provide safe ground. Along the way, they must make decisions based primarily on their need to survive in this post-apocalyptic setting and in so doing they must distance themselves from dictates of a more civilized world. And we see a definite contrast between the older brother Brian (Pine) and the younger brother Danny (Lou Taylor Pucci) as Brian has more quickly dispensed with the mores of polite society in his bid to survive in the world that remains. He makes some very harsh, and at times amoral, decisions that Danny and their two female companions don’t always agree upon, but he is driven by necessity. This ultimately pushes him over the edge, though, putting his brother in the position of dealing with an equally harsh decision. And you can argue about the morality of their actions all you want, but you also have to place yourself in the same circumstance and answer honestly how you would act.

And ultimately, this is what a good Science Fiction tale does. It takes us just far enough away from our own world while at the same time using this alternate/future reality to allow us to look at ourselves in the mirror and consider the implications and morality of our actions. Carriers may be slight on plot, but it still manages to make us think and it succeeds in getting us to identify with the characters and put ourselves in their shoes. That leads to some uncomfortable moments at times throughout the film, but that appears to be what the movie wants and first-time director Alex Pastor (who also co-wrote the script) pulls it off masterfully without descending into melodrama or relying on excessive gore or violence. The actors playing the four central characters also deliver excellent performances to keep the film moving along at its brisk pace. Some of the ancillary actors are not always up to the task, though, and the middle section where they encounter a group of makeshift containment-suit clad survivors nearly bogs the film down. But Pastor ushers the film past that and it resumes its pace for a poignant yet bleak ending.

For some reason, this movie was pushed as a horror film which seems like a poor fit for its more sci fi oriented subject matter. It may be that the studio did not quite know how to market this somewhat sparse film made on what must have been a small purse (though it never really looks low-budget). Because of its horror label, it does throw in a few cheesy jump-out-and-scare-you moments, though that never really detracts from the film. It also has very much the feel of a zombie-pocalypse tale even though it lacks the walking dead (the plague apparently does zombify its victims to some extent, though that is never really explored). You would have thought that with Chris Pine hitting it big in Star Trek last Summer a few months before this one hit the theaters that Carriers would have received a better push, but that didn’t happen. Now that it has had its DVD release, maybe it will get the recognition it deserves, if from no place else than zombie fans. Because I would call this the best zombie-pocalypse movie without zombies that I have ever seen!

Buy Carriers and Other Anti-Blockbusters on DVD from Amazon.com:

Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 Stars

Coming out in 1984 at a time when big budget, sfx-laden films were becoming more common at the Box Office, this film left a lot of people walking out of the theaters with their heads spinning and saying wtf! The movie starts out with Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) performing a surgical procedure after which he is rushed away to test out a new jet-propelled car which he has equipped with an oscillation overthruster and which he drives through a mountain and into another dimension. When he emerges on the other side, he finds a strange alien organism attached to the pod; proof that he travelled to the 8th Dimension. The mentally unstable Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) sees a report of Buckaroo’s successful experiment on the news which prompts him to escape from the institution where he is imprisoned so that he can steal the overthruster. Lizardo had previously done similar experiments through which he was possessed by Lord John Whorfin, an evil Red Lectroid from the 8th Dimension. The escaped Lizardo/Whorfin heads to Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems in Grovers Mill, New Jersey (yes, the link to Orson Wells’ radio broadcast is intentional) where fellow Red Lectroids John Yaya, John Smallberries, and John Bigbooté (yes, the recurring Johns are intentional) head up a group of renegades planning to return to the 8th Dimension and conquer Planet 10 once they acquire the overthruster. Meanwhile, a Black Lectroid spaceship commanded by the female John Emdall (yes, another John and this time a woman) orbits the Earth monitoring the situation. Emdall sends a message to Buckaroo and demands that he stop John Whorfin otherwise she will trick the United States and Russia into launching nuclear strikes on one another. With no other choice, Buckaroo calls into action his rock band/super adventurers the Hong Kong Cavaliers along with his civilian backup the Blue Blaze Irregulars and jumps into the crisis with guns blaring.

If that synopsis left your head spinning, then know that I really only scraped the surface of the experience that is Buckaroo Banzai. This movie delivered a cross-genre satire that poked fun at its comic book/science fiction origins while also relishing in the excesses of both and finishing off with plenty of wit and hip posturing. Eschewing the more broad Airplane-style spoofs and maneuvering past the low-brow humor of Spaceballs, the movie walked that fine line between comedy and drama with plenty of winks to the well-versed sci fi fans sitting in the audience. It starts out by setting a breathless pace as it throws the viewer into the middle of the action and it never takes a break to let the audience catch up. And that’s part of its charm, even if it likely put off many viewers on its first go around. This gets the viewers immediately involved in the action, even if they do not necessarily understand everything passing by on the screen as it proceeds at light speed. The movie takes several passes to fully get your arms around it and each new viewing turns up yet another nugget that the screenwriters stashed away somewhere for the tenacious, curious fan to unveil later.

Buckaroo Banzai also managed to deliver a spirit of fun, adventure, and whim that the Hollywood machine had already started to squash in favor of cookie-cutter Blockbusters. Like a breath of fresh air, it departed from the more structured, formulaic cinematic output and verged on the anarchic. But it never got too brainy or geeky, either. It was not the type of movie that only the nerdiest of sci fi fans could get into, just anyone who appreciates a good amount of wit and angular story-telling. It also had a sense of hipness about it with its attractive, ultra-cool cast (was Buckaroo perhaps the first cool geek?) and its stylized look (that distinguished itself just enough from the fashion of the 80’s to create a timeless chic). In many ways, Buckaroo Banzai was a superhero movie with its action-star, renaissance man hero, and it also included some throwback references to earlier adventure serials as well as 50’s sci fi. And Peter Weller along with his supporting cast made this look cool and effortless. And that cast includes a who’s who of names that have since established themselves in movies and television such as John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Goldblum, and Clancy Brown.

Buckaroo Banzai was not a low-budget film with production costs coming in at $12 million. But it did veer to the lower side compared to other genre films that came out the same year like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ($28 million budget) and Ghostbusters ($30 million budget) and it had a slightly lower price tag than 1984’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock ($16 million budget). But I count Buckaroo Banzai as an Anti-Blockbuster because of the way it thumbed its nose at Hollywood and delivered a completely unique film that defies easy categorization and that marketers found nearly impossible to promote (and thus they just chose not to). This resulted in a disastrous Box Office run (making back less than one fourth of its budget) when it was first released. The movie quickly caught on in the home video market, though, and has since become a cult hit. Unfortunately, the promised sequel (teased just prior to the ending credits as Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League) never surfaced because of the poor Box Office reception of this film. But the original creators did eventually carry on the story of Buckaroo in comics through several excellent mini-series put out by Blue Water Productions.

Buy the Buckaroo Banzai Movie, Book, and Graphic Novels from Amazon.com:

Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Cube is a quirky little sci fi/horror film that writer/director Vincenzo Natali (Splice) delivered to us back in 1997 as his feature-length directorial debut. It focuses on a group of people who find themselves trapped in a strange prison that consists of multiple, inter-linked cube-shaped rooms. They discover that some of the rooms have traps (like a razor-thin wire grate that will slice the unsuspecting wanderer into cubes) while others offer safe passage. None of the abductees know each other and none know how they arrived in this bizarre maze, though ultimately they determine that each serves a purpose in this maniacal exercise controlled by hidden forces. They decide that they must work together to succeed in escaping from their unjust incarceration and they start to find clues that help them determine whether a room is safe or trapped. The math genius Leaven determines that this appears to key off the serial numbers at the doors between rooms and whether one of these numbers is prime. Later, after barely escaping death in a seemingly safe room, they determine that answer lies in prime factorization of these numbers. This task at first seems impossible, but the autistic Kazan who has joined the party is a savant and has the ability to calculate the factors in his head. Leaven also determines that the numbers act as Cartesian coordinates which indicate where each room is within the overall structure and that these rooms move throughout the larger cube and eventually each will move to a location outside of it and act as a bridge to exit the prison. But because of their personality conflicts and mutual mistrust, the group begins to crumble from within before they can achieve their goal of escape.

Canadian director Natali managed to pull together this film, which he claims was inspired by the episode from the original Twilight Zone television series “Five Characters in Search of an Exit”, for about half a million dollars. And he made the most with his money by creating a creepy, claustrophobic, paranoia-drenched film following a small group of frantic people trying to understand their seemingly unmerited predicament. And he managed to maneuver past the expected pitfall of trying to make these people symbolic or representative of society in general. Instead, he created very real, believable characters, and each with apparently some function in this demented “game”. He did add one element, though, and that was a sense of guilt that each person felt for something they had done in the past (with the exception, we assume, of Kazan). This leads each of them to initially wonder, either overtly or subconsciously, if their past sins somehow lead to their imprisonment. This emphasizes that each of these people are not perfect, thus making them more human, and as we see their more sordid nature reveal itself as the film progress, the viewer almost wonders if they deserve their fate. But not to the point that we stop routing for them. We always want to see the abductees escape from this prison, even if our feelings shift from early in the film to later on which ones truly deserve to go free.

Natali sets up a Kafkaesque, Orwellian setting that immediately draws in the viewer and establishes a mood of tension and trepidation that carries the film to its bittersweet conclusion. And this is truly a Horror film, though with Science Fiction trappings, because of the threat from the traps throughout the maze as well as that unknown presence that must be controlling things from afar (the Saw film series would later follow a similar pattern, though with a much more exploitative bent emphasizing torture and gore).  And the fact that Cube never answers the questions of why this prison exists or why these people were brought here (though some hints seep through) gives the film that added dimension of despondency. Had this movie come out of the Hollywood machine, it would have never been allowed to go forward with its ambiguous conclusion. But since Natali did this as an indie, he had the creative control to follow that path, making this a much stronger film. And while the film plays out as a B-Movie and the actors sometimes fall short of the emotional range required of them, it still manages to stand out as a first rate B-Movie along the lines of other successful films in this milieu such as The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and They Live.

Cube had only a limited release in the theaters Stateside, but it quickly caught on as a cult film and had a successful run when it hit the home video market. It has even spawned two follow-up films, the sequel Cube 2: Hypercube which delivered a better than expected continuation of the formula, and the prequel Cube Zero, which delves into the backstory of the Cube. But the original film is the one that captured the imaginations of Science Fiction and Horror fans alike and gave us a must-see, genre-crossing psychological thriller.

Buy Cube and Other Anti-Blockbusters on DVD from Amazon.com: