Ferocious Planet (Review)

Ferocious Planet

Ferocious Planet (TV 2011)

Directed by Billy O'Brien

[this review is from The Jaded Viewer 2 DVD Giveaway Winner Kim K. She suffered through these awful flicks like a real soldier and for that I'm giving her a honorary jaded viewer gold star of awesomeness]

I was warned - these movies won’t be making any "best of" lists. Watching them was a test of will. I have a short attention span. I'm rating them not by spinkicks, but by how many failed attempts it took me to actually sit down with the movie long enough to watch until the end.

"Ferocious Planet"

Alien movies, even when done well, are not typically the subgenre I reach for first. Plus, I tend toward thinking that any film with the word ‘Ferocious’ in the title is bound to be lame. But you can't judge a film by it's cover right?

Okay... maybe you can.

This movie begins with two scientists giving a demonstration to a group of politicians, military and fellow scientists on their groundbreaking technology whose purpose quickly becomes unimportant as once activated, the entire lab rips out of our dimension and into one inhabited only by dinosaur-like aliens. The scientists spend the remainder of the movie trying to fix their machine so that the group can make it back home. The politicians & military men prance around the jungle exploring, in hopes of securing fame and fortune. You can probably guess which group was (marginally) more successful.

There were funny moments, though most of them were likely unintentional. This movie had a feel of Jurassic Park-meets-Predator tweaked for a scifi original. The CGI was cartoonish, but in the context of this movie, it works well enough. The concept was ridiculous from the get-go, so I say run with that. The movie doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously either, which I respect, so if you’re going to watch, make it a drinking game:

• Drink every time someone gets killed
  
  -Twice if it’s not the person you expect
  -Three times if killed in almost identical manner to the previous character
  
  
• Drink for every cut-to-commercial edit
  
  
• Drink whenever someone says “that’s impossible,” “we’ve hit a snag,” or “we have a problem”
  
  
• Drink for every time gunshots don’t work.
  
  -Twice when characters use them anyway.
  
  
• Drink anytime someone mentions self preservation
  
  
• Drink for breathless running through the forest.
  

There is one kind of funny, ironic twist in the final five minutes that I appreciated, but not enough to make watching the entire movie worthwhile.

I give this film: 4 failed attempts.

No nudity in either flick and minimal gore, I’m afraid.

And there you go. Now may I request you send me a copy of “Martyrs” or “The Woman” as consolation for playing? ;)

[Totally, Kim. My Top 10 Horror Movies of 2011 List is at your disposal. You can pick any film you want :-) ]

Check out the trailer.

Triangle (Review)

Triangle

Triangle (2010)

Directed by Christopher Smith

It's that time of year where I look at every body's Top 10 lists and watch the one's I think may make mine. So I saw that Triangle was on one of these lists and I gave it a shot.

It's no square.

Triangle delivers everything you want from a horror movie. Heightened Hitchcockian suspense, twizzler twists and turns and there is blood by the pint. For a movie created out of the UK/Australia that boasts a group of Aussies doing their best American accents, it delivers on everything you want in a horror thriller.

Your mind will trip out from the amount of WTF is in this film. So much head turning plot twists you may need to drink some Four Loko to get it all straight. It all comes full triangle and by the end you checking IMDB message boards and trivia to find out what's the what.

Well I did.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

When Jess sets sail on a yacht with a group of friends, she cannot shake the feeling that there is something wrong. Her suspicions are realized when the yacht hits a storm and the group is forced to board a passing ocean liner to get to safety, a ship Jess is convinced she's been on before. The ship appears deserted, the clock on board has stopped, but they are not alone... Someone is intent on hunting them down, one by one. And Jess unknowingly holds the key to end the terror.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

This review won't be that long because if I explained what's going on it would give away tons of good stuff. Like all movies like Inception, Sixth Sense, The Others you have to pay close attention to get the clues sprinkled throughout. But the film gets into the creamy filling quite quickly. Jess (Melissa George) and her friends go yachting, big storm, encounter strange ship. Spooky strange things happen on the ship.

SLIGHT SPOILERS below...

So we get into weird time travel mode and things get kooky doubly as they investigate the ship. Our crew gets bloodied and shot at and everything seems to revolve around Jess. The best comparison to Triangle is the low budget brilliant Timecrimes which I never reviewed because my head hurt after watching that awesomeness. I would say Triangle is a horror version of Timecrimes.
END SLIGHT SPOILERS

The performance of Melissa George is solid. She plays her part well evolving her character into different iterations. The rest of the cast are just stand ins to the reveals we see. Smith who directed the uber awesome Severance cleverly employs the stand by suspense techniques with Kubrick's The Shining and Hitchcock flicks. There's talk of mythology scattered throughout as the film creates its own. Sure there may be BIG plotholes and logic questions. Even I started questioning if our main hottie Jess did this or that, her dilemma would get resolved but I decided to go with it. When your watching a fantastico time triangle, you just have to shut down the old cerebral CPU.

The funny thing about Triangle is when you think it's over, it keeps hitting you with more crazy WTF.

Suffice it to say Triangle is the one flick I've seen this year that had me Wikipedia-ing, Googling and IMDB-ing after I saw it. I enjoyed the film but wanted to understand it completely. There is always one film a year that makes my Top 10 list that has me hitting the message boards to get some answers. That makes you think minutes, hours, days and months after you've seen it. I like seeing those films (though in small quantities).

Triangle tries to out clever you and it succeeds. You want a horror thriller to challenge you, make you really try hard to find out what's going on. As the ending approached I had my theories and I kinda knew what was going to happen. You can see the cliche coming but it's all good. You want to see THAT ENDING. The one you feel is coming.

Triangle does just that. It's definitely going to make my Top 10 List for 2010.

It's that time of year where I look at every body's Top 10 lists and watch the one's I think may make mine. So I saw that Triangle was on one of these lists and I gave it a shot.

It's no square.

Oh oh. Fuck me.

Gore-ipedia

Shotgun trauma
Head trauma
Slice and dice

Nude-ipedia

Melissa George for an hour and change is in a tight white tank top and Daisy Dukes. Yum.

WTF moment

A pile of dead bodies....say what?

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

One of the year's best horror films you never heard of. Its out on DVD and probably on Netflix as well. One of the year's best....ARGHHHHH I better stop writing now.

The Vitals

• Buy it at Amazon
  

Rating:

5 More TV Shows You May Have Forgotten

After bringing you all a list of 5 supernatural TV shows you may have forgotten, I've come up with more TV shows that I used to watch back in the day. Some are from years back, others are from the 90s. Mind you, back in the 90s, cable wasn't the way it is now and only a few channels were standard back in the day.

Much of the exotic TV came in the form of syndicated shows and basically Fox putting anything on broadcast TV.

In any case, these are some shows I decided to follow because either they had a hot actress, involved some sci fi element and had kung fu. Ahhhh thank you You Tube for letting me time travel back to these awesome days of the toob.

5.) The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.

Network: Fox/Syndicated (1994)

the jaded viewer says: The thing about Bruce Campbell is that after seeing Evil Dead, you became a fan of anything he was in. Bruce is in a TV show? I'm so gonna watch it. It's a western with sci-fi elements and its oddly bonkers. I know Brisco fans became Jack of all Trade fans. C'mon admit it.

4.) Black Sash

Network: The WB (2003)

the jaded viewer says: My main man Russel Wong's second show that 's on this list (I watched any show that had Asians in it because American TV doesn't have Asians in it). I think they axed this show mid 2nd episode. Show was about some wrongly imprisoned Chinese martial artist who opens up a school in San Francisco. His students included Ray J, Missy Peregrym, Sarah Carter and Mako. Stereotypes galore in this one (because we all know every Chinese man, woman and child knows kung fu)





3.) Cleopatra 2525

Network: Syndicated (2000-2001)

the jaded viewer says: OK ok, as part of Universal TV's Action Pack series, I didn't watch Cleopatra 2525 for the acting, story or special effects. I watched it for the very revealing outfits, especially the ones worn by our ditzy blonde lead Cleo (played by the hot Jennifer Sky). It's so silly sci-fi about armed flying machines versus kick ass girls you'd really don't mind the cheesiness when Gina Torres and Victoria Pratt are blasting bad guys and machines in tight leather.



2.) Time Trax

Network: Syndicated (1993)

the jaded viewer says: I'll admit, I'm a time travel junkie. If it be Quantum Leap or a BTTF cartoon, I'm watching it. So a little show about a cop from the future traveling to the past to catch bad guys is MUST SEE TV for me. He had an AI disguised as a credit card!




1.) Vanishing Son

Network: Syndicated (1994)

the jaded viewer says: Another TV show that was part of Universal TV's Action Pack series and starring Russell Wong. Seriously, it had an Asian male as the lead and getting "action" from all sorts of yummy ladies. Basically Vanishing Son started off as 4 made to TV movies about 2 brothers who come from war ravaged China to start anew (thank goodness they didn't end up in Arizona). But racist bad guys are everywhere so Jian-Wa has to kick ass to protect the innocent.
Yes, this is the TV movies that had Rebecca Gayheart in them playing Jian-Wa's girlfriend. This show made it possible for Asian guys to date white women.



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Do you remember any of these shows? Want to reminisce with me about the good ole days of odd TV shows? Share your thoughts.