Scream (1996)

Scream (1996)

Download link: hxxp://www.megaupload.com/?d=N9P693I6

Every once in a while, a horror film comes along that is well made and well designed, and uses the genre in a way not seen before. One such movie is Scream. Unfortunately the creation of a good film like this inspires countless clones and inevitable sequels which detract from the quality of the original.

Scream starts with a good idea, a killer is stalking people in a small town called Woodsboro, and dispatching them in horror movie fashion gory ways. Sounds like its been done before. But this killer is used in the film to satirise the whole field of horror movies, from the killer being a very obsessed student of horror films, (He corrects the first victims answer that Jason was the killer in Friday The 13th) through to the other characters acting as though they are characters in a horror film, which of course, they are.

A clever idea, although it does backfire on itself. All the primary characters, especially the rather annoying Randy, played by the equally annoying Jamie Kennedy, take the "rules" and conventions of a horror film as absolute gospel truth.

The good points of the film outweigh the negatives. It is a very well crafted whodunnit, with a logical, but unexpected reveal of who the killer is. It does satirise the genre well, (one of its aims), and caters for the expected quota of blood and shock scenes. It is also quite clever. The mask used by the killer is based upon a painting called "The Scream".

It is hard however to view Scream as a solo film. It is touted now as the the first chapter of the Scream Trilogy, a series that starts out good and rapidly declines in quality. Scream also was the inspiration for other "whodunnit" style slashers such as Urban Legend, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Valentine and other boring as hell films.

If only Scream was a solo film instead of a chapter in a trilogy (soon to be four films).

4 Darios

Halloween II (2009)

Halloween II (2009)

Download Links :

Part 1 : hxxp://www.megaupload.com/?d=IDMCHWIJ

Part 2: hxxp://www.megaupload.com/?d=5C2WBVV0

(1.3 GB split into 2 parts. Use VirtualDub to rejoin them)

I like Halloween. I like the series of Halloween movies. I even can tolerate Halloween :Resurrection (barely). I can see good points in Rob Zombie's reimagining of the concept in his Halloween (2007).

I, however, cannot bring myself to like this film. I can appreciate what Zombie is trying to do, in taking the mythos of Michael Myers in a different direction to the original series, but surely he could do it in a way that makes some sort of sense. Did you know that even though Myers' mother shot herself in the head last film she still hangs around Michael? Zombie does. Did you know that the appearance of her with a white horse is supposed to mean something? Zombie does, (or he is trying to be very Twin Peaks like). Did you know that you can get your victim out of an impossible situation by using the old Dallas trick of... it was only a dream? Zombie knows this quite well. In fact he uses that old, annoying and downright lazy trick more than once in this film.

This film is confusing as hell. Is Michael dead? Is he back stalking Laurie? Is Laurie mad, is she the only sane person? Is Michael even there for all the film? How the hell can his dead mother be around? How the hell can Laurie see her? And why is the white horse so important that it keeps cropping up?

The answers are......never revealed!

Damn lazy effort Rob Zombie.

One and a half Darios because of some cool death scenes.

Punisher : War Zone (2008)

Punisher : War Zone (2008)































Well I feel like I should go back and edit my comment in the review for the 2004 Punisher. Punisher War Zone, while it is tailored to the action loving audience, is not as bad as I had originally sensed. My comment was based upon only watching the first thirty-five or forty minutes, and has changed after I have seen the entire film.



I made a mistake in reviewing the Punisher films, and it was one made by many other people. I compared the 2004 Punisher and Punisher War Zone. War Zone is a completely different animal to the other film. Based on the Marvel Knights version of The Punisher, where Frank has been doing his thing for six years before the film even begins, War Zone throws us straight into a story of Frank vs a Crime Family, not slowing down to develop a revenge plot for Frank. While Thomas Jane's Punisher showed development of his reason and growing probability of his revenge on Howard Saint (Punisher 2004), War Zone pushes an even more simple point. It is this: Frank hates criminals, therefore, he kills them.



Not to say that Punisher:War Zone is a masterpiece, because it isn't, by a long shot. There is some terrible acting, especially by Dominic West, who plays the scarred-face villain Jigsaw (no relation to the killer in Saw), horrible cheesy lines by a lot of characters and a focus on action for the sake of it. (The "high on meth all the time" gang's acrobatic displays, and Ray Stevenson (The Punisher) being able to kill people from a variety of positions. Look at me, I can kill heaps of people while hanging upsidedown from a spinning chandelier. Well OK. good for you. Looks great, but I don't see The Punisher (as a character) ever really doing that.
)


Punisher : War Zone is good fun, if you want a graphic action film. Sit back, switch the brain down for an hour and a half and enjoy.


Three Darios













(And before anyone asks, yes I am going to review the original Punisher film from 1989, starring Dolph Lundgren)

The Punisher (2004)

The Punisher (2004)

The Punisher. For those who are not familiar with the character, the backstory is quite simple. Frank Castle, Vietnam veteran, stumbles across a mob execution in a central park, (where all mob hits happen apparantly) with his family. In the crossfire, Castle's wife and kids are brutally killed. Feeling that he has lost everything, Frank (with a nice looking death's head shirt) declares war on all crime, and decides that he will punish criminals for what he has lost. He becomes "The Punisher"

Thats the character from Marvel comics. Pretty simple backstory, but a ton of story potential. The Punisher cropped up on animated series (Spider-Man:The Animated Series) with only minimal tweaking to his personality, and starred (portrayed by Dolph Lundgren), in a movie in 1989, called ...err..., The Punisher. Both these portrayals were fairly similar to the original Marvel comic character.

The Punisher (2004) gives the Punisher a good stretch of time in giving him his origin. Because he's fairly young in this film, mid thirties maybe, the Vietnam aspect is removed and replaced by Castle (Thomas Jane) being a FBI agent. In the course of a sting operation, the son of evil businessman Howard Saint (John Travolta) is killed. Saint doen't appreciate this, and at the urging of his wife, has an attack on Castle, and his family planned. Castle's entire family is killed. Not just wife and children, but his Mother, Father, various Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Nieces, Nephews, and anyone else around at the time is killed. Of course Frank survives and takes up his revenge upon Saint and his family. (And with a nice point, he does so only when the official system has failed. He gives law and justice time to do the work for him. Only when he sees there will be no justice from the system, after five months, does he pursue what he calls, "natural justice")

I know an awful lot of people who do not like this movie. A lot of them are disappointed that Frank doesn't just pick up a gun and go a blazing away. Instead he is smart, playing off members of the Saint family and organisation against themselves so they do all the fighting. In fact, for a movie called The Punisher, there is a lack of intense gunplay scenes. There are only two extended battle scenes, the first is the killing of Castle's family, and the second is the final attack on Saint. Various other scenes crop up but are not dwelt on as much. There is one other fight scene worth mentioning, and that is the fight between Castle and the assassin called "The Russian" played by WWE Wrestler Kevin "Diesel" Nash.

Castle, in a great move by director Jonathon Hensleigh, spends the movie punishing the Saints, not just executing them. It is remarkable that an action movie, and a comic based action movie at that, has that much thought put into its construction.

The Punisher, is a very faithfull adaptation of the character of Castle, and while it did alienate the action-loving audience who don't care to dig deeper into this movie, it has hidden depths, and is well deserving of the four Darios I am awarding it. It has two other positives. The score is great and the original song by Mark Collie "In Time" is brilliant.

Unfortunately, The Punisher was "rebooted" in 2008 with Punisher:War Zone, which was designed precisely to appeal to the action crowd.

Four Darios

Official Trailer (From Youtube) :

Wishlist II

As I have unexpected access and ability to obtain a few more movies, my wishlist is growing. Here's a few additions.


Blacula (1972)
Scream Blacula, Scream (1973)
Hostel
Hostel II
Nightbreed (1990)
The Fly (1986)
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
The Punisher (1989)
The Punisher (2004)
Punisher War Zone (2008)
Billy The Kid vs Dracula (1966)

Darkman II: The Return Of Durant (1995)

Darkman II: The Return Of Durant (1995)

Darkman II : The Return Of Durant is almost exactly like the original Darkman, expect it lacks Liam Neeson as Darkman, and the direction of Sam Raimi. The plot is remarkably similar to Darkman, in that Durant ends up attacking and killing a scientist working on artificial skin, as Westlake was. This time Westlake's collegue ends up dead, prompting a Darkman rage revenge.

Darkman II starring Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy from The Mummy) as Darkman is still a fun old film. Worth a look.

Three Darios

The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension (1984)

The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension (1984)

hxxp://www.filestube.com/6e43f59194668f1903e9,g/Buckaroo-Banzai.html


This is an action, sci-fi, comedy, superhero film. Sound a bit complicated? Not as complicated as the lead character, Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) who is a particle physicist, musician, brain surgeon, comic book superhero, action hero and celebrity.

Over at Double Viking there is this:

"The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension may well be the ultimate cult classic film: it’s corny, hilarious, action-packed, and combines damn near every film genre imaginable into 104 minutes of pure badassery. If you haven’t watched it, then you are seriously missing out on a cinematic gem."

(http://www.doubleviking.com/real-men-love-the-adventures-of-buckaroo-banzai-across-the-8th-dimension-5921-p.html)


Is he right? If he is he was using completely different criteria for enjoying a film than I do. While he is correct about just about every film genre being squeezed into the film this detracts from it for me. Buckaroo Banzai tries too damn hard to be a cult movie. You cannot manufacture a cult classic, and while Buckaroo Banzai is not a bad film, it is way too confusing to be a great one. If the film took its plot, of an alien invasion from the 8th dimension (The dimension that exists within solid matter) and played off that, It would earn another Dario, as it is Buckaroo Bonzai tries to be too wacky, an attempt, as I said before, to try and become one of those cult films.

It worked too, there are fans that will rave on and on about how brilliant this film is. Maybe it was the fact I was on painkillers at the time of viewing, but I don't think it's quite that much of a classic.

Three Darios