WAY TO GO (!)

When first part of the high budget modern trashy interpretation of „War of the worlds”, crashed directly on the DVD/online movie community, the impressions were pretty much positive.

Although in a lower level of cast, „Skyline” showed decently tense and hidden story, accompanied by some pretty good CGI and action sequences. With its very ending it offered less answers then it gave and the story about the advanced alien race that kidnap thousands of people to get their brains had to continue.

And it did, and did it by raising the level of trash to the level of parody. High end budget was there one again, as well as the C-level cast, but the script was the one that evolved beyond any predictions.

Not only do the aliens use human brains to drive their slave army of soldiers, they also do not manage to control every single brain they collect. When one of those brains in one of those soldier’s bodies manages to save his pregnant girlfriend that gives birth to a very special little girl, the hunt for the key of the survival of the entire human race begins.

And it leads us to Laos, crossing the paths with lead stars of the Indonesian martial art masterpiece, „Raid: Redemption”, paving the way to the ultimate standoff between aliens with blue brains, aliens with red brains and mankind at Angkor Wat.

„Beyond Skyline” is one of the finer examples of modern day Hollywood trash SF-horrors and deserves to be recognized as such.

BEYOND SKYLINE – 7/10

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DARK (AND) REALISTIC

Some actors just get tangled up in a particular role and especially if that role is on the television, they tend to repeat it endlessly, without some serious stepping out on the big screen.

Nikolaj Koster-Waldau hadn’t repeated those mistakes by making some important appereances in the Danish long feature production („Second chance”) and also tries real hard to get away from the shadow of Jaime Lannister across the Atlantic.

„Shot caller” isn’t his „Scarface”, but still represents a decent modern day grim and slow pace bloody thriller about a family man that ends up in jail and must fight his way if he wants to survive behind the bars. On that road he becomes a ruthless prison lord, transforming both physically and mentally.

Script doesn’t tend to offer some memorable climax or conclusion, dwindling heavily in the last third of the movie, but Nikolaj manages to show us some decent acting and keep us on our toes during the larger part of the movie.

„Shot caller” is a typical modern Hollywood thriller about modern prisoners filmed for the modern, blood and violence thirsty men.

SHOT CALLER – 6/10

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BIGGER, BETTER, STRONGER

Concept of sharknados hitting the big screen every year may just the ultimate answer to the Hollywood’s decaying scriptwriting, baring its helplessness to the bone with each new Ian Ziering’s cheap C-production long feature.

After a couple of hickups in the franchize, the final installment is just bigger, better and funnier than any of the other four previous ones.

Production is now steadily growing at an even pace, while the trademark hilarious scriptwriting just keeps getting better and better. NATOnado, Shark-God, Stonehenge, British queen, Rio, Tokyo, Pope, Sharkzilla and ultimately, time travelling with the biggest and baddest of all the cameos at the very end will just make laugh your heart out and spit in the face of modern Hollywood.

„Global swarming” is the biggest, best and strongest of all the Ian Ziering’s hillarious stories about sharks as weather phenomena.

SHARKNADO 5: GLOBAL SWARMING – 8/10

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BEAUTIFUL AND EMPTY REPLICANT

Some movies are just not to be touched, revamped and continued, since they represent cult features that changed cinematography, redefined entire genres and influenced the entire pop culture.

One of those revolutionary stories and unbeaten representations of the future is the Phillip K. Dick’s and Ridley Scott’s masterpiece SF-noir about the robots and artificial intelligence as the ultimate frontier of mankind, ''Blade Runner''.

Unlike the many similar contemporary cash driven desires to continue the story and finally give some of the much needed answers to the 80s classics, the production team for „Blade Runner: 2049” lead by the creator of the original, Ridley Scott, did their homework and did it well.

They chose one of the best directors in Hollywood right now, Dennis Villeneuve and casted one of the more stellar crews in recent history of SF making (Gosling, Wright, Leto and of course, Harrison Ford).

The visual result was just stunning, since gifted director meticulously solved every single detail in each scene. Transferring the legendary atmosphere of the first part of the (unfortunately) saga was just done with flying colors and that deserves every appraisal.

However, this is where the good things top and give way to the cancer that’s eating 21st century Hollywood.

Lame scripts.

Just to be clear, the original „Blade Runner” was probably the weakest script of all the Top 10 movies of all times it rightfully belongs to, but was also the revolutionary insight into the future, offering some of the most intriguing and so exploited concepts that followed it.

„Blade Runner: 2049” doesn’t have any of those things, since it offers neither new concepts, neither viable characters, nor acting or even some decent answers. It just wanders off, not showing any signs of life and driving the stellar crew into the average, while making the script look blunt and unfinished.

„Blade Runner: 2049” is a beautiful replicant of the original movie, with some great camera, color, production and light, but also with a mediocre script unworthy of the name it continues.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 – 5/10

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PUSHING THE LIMITS

Will Michael Bay ever let go of one of the most famous child’s franchises of the ’80s, the one about the alien robots disguising into common objects?

If there were some doubts, after the last installment of testosterone and cash driven high end production about the Autobots and Decepticons, „The Last Knight”, now there isn’t any.

Michael Bay will film Transformers until his death. The story won’t matter any more, linking Stonehendge, submarines, wizard Merlin and his Knights of the Round table with Dynobots and dragon robots spitting fire while the Earth is being plowed by gigantic... turfs falling from the sky. Budget will keep rising, attracting such acting giants as Sir Anthony Hopkins. Effects will become more and more diverse, confusing and irrelevant.

None of this will matter, since there will be more and more retarded stories about Transformers in the years to come, attracting the numbed audience just going into the theaters from the habit or because of the childhood memories.

„The Last Knight” is the most spectacular and most retarded of all the sequels in „Transfomers” saga.

TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT – 2/10

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NOT ENTIRELY BRAINLESS

Shark horrors are sort of thing of the past. Once revealed to the world in „Jaws” they became a thing of the lowest productions, often crossing the line of self-parody.

However, not everything is bad, cheap and empty in the latest installment of the subgenre, the story about two sisters trapped by the vicious underwater beasts in the diving cage 47 meters below the surface. The acting is just plain horrible, and the effects will follow, but the final twist will beef up the overall impression at the very end.

„47 meters down” is an almost watchable movie, but only if you are a trash horror lover.

47 METERS DOWN – 3/10

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ALL MONEY AND NO BRAINS

Russian cinema is rapidly changing in the past decade. Huge budgets are making their way into the mainstream movies and that cash flow is now being clearly visible.

Fedor Bondarchuk is one of the directors that received one of those productions and he managed to film a movie that looks like the modern western SFs. However, like in all the other of his flicks, there just isn’t a decent story to follow it.

In a Russian version of „Independence day” meets „Starman” there just isn’t a story at all, not even if you are a Moscow teenager. And that’s a pity, because the money isn’t the issue any more.

„Attraction” is a great looking empty vessel that not only won’t succeed in amusing you, but will manage to seriously annoy you in the end.

ATTRACTION - 4/10

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HALFWAY SOLID

There was a wave of innovative movie scripts in the nineties that wanted to offer a different perspective of war insanity and its futility. „A midnight clear” is one of those attempts, although it may be considered only half successful.

Intro about the group of American reconnaissance soldier stranded deep in the Ardennes prior to the Nazi offensive experiencing eerie provocation from the enemy is certainly the better part of the movie, playing around with the viewer’s mind.

However, the second part of the movie and its conclusion fail to materialize that leverage, leaving the script and a solid cast of young actors (Hawke, K. Dillon, Berg) to hang somewhere in between.

„A midnight clear” could have been a great war movie, but it’s only a solid one.

A MIDNIGHT CLEAR – 6/10

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