Netflix And Chill: 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days (2010)

I first watched 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days about ten years ago, and I remembered it being okay. It just wasn't 30 Days Of Night. That's fine. There's no need to compare a movie to any movie it is remaking or sequelising. Usually. I wasn't feeling as kindly towards the film this time around though. It may not be 30 Days Of Night, but it really wants to use that film to gain some goodwill that it cannot earn by itself.

Starting off immediately after the events of the first movie, Stella (now played by Kiele Sanchez) is spending her time trying to inform the public of the vampire menace, and she has an effective way of dealing with any that may turn up to see her at any of her speaking engagements. There are still too few people who believe her, but she's eventually approached by Paul (Rhys Coiro), Amber (Diora Baird), and Todd (Harold Perrineau). They know how things really are, and the big threat is coming from a powerful vampire named Lilith (Mia Kirshner).

Co-written by Steve Niles and director Ben Ketai, the former also being a main creator of the comic and the latter having worked on some of the different TV shows developed from the property, this is a disappointingly dull affair. It aims to stay true to the tone of the first film, but has neither the budget nor the talent to even come close to it. I don't know why they didn't just decide to use the name recognition on something that could have been a blend of entertaining and over the top bites and bloodshed.

There are some great people in the cast here, and every single one of them is sadly wasted. Sanchez cannot make up for the fact that she's not Melissa George, but Coiro, Baird, and Perrineau deserved much better. The same goes for Kirshner, hampered by the vampire makeup required for her character. There's even a small role here for Katharine Isabelle, but viewers will forget she was in it by the time the end credits roll. That's no way to treat Isabelle. Ben Cotton is treated better, playing a vampiric ally named Dane, and Troy Ruptash is good value as Agent Norris, someone working on behalf of Lilith and co.

When it comes right down to it, there's nothing here that will appeal to those lured in by the 30 Days Of Night "branding". Everything, from the production design to the score to at least one of the lead performances, is disappointingly lacklustre. Everyone involved had a chance to do something interesting, but they went for the safest option instead. Hell, I would have given this a bonus point if it had just taken us right back to Alaska and shown us a complete underground city of vampires all biding their time until the next extended period of night-time.

Ironically, the only thing here that comes close to feeling like 30 days is the 92-minute runtime. Toothless and worthless, although I'll always give bonus points for some of the cast members (Baird, Kirshner, Perrineau, and Isabelle). 

3/10

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Sabotage (2014)

Despite the addition of guns and gore, Sabotage is little more than another riff on And Then There Were None, a fine thriller by Agatha Christie. A group of people are invited to come together, their numbers start to dwindle, and everyone wonders whodunnit. I'm not sure if Christie first came up with the concept, in fact I highly doubt it, but she seemed to package everything in a way that was much more desirable to mass consumers. Unlike David Ayer, who seems to package everything in layers of unpleasantness and misanthropy. That sometimes pays off, and I actually like most of his movies, but not in this case.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the leader of a crack undercover team of DEA agents. They kick down doors where angels fear to tread. And the film opens with them setting themselves up for a nice payday. They're raiding a major drug den, containing a MAJOR pile of money, and skimming about $10M off the top for themselves. Unfortunately, the money then goes missing, the team are investigated, and nobody is happy as they are forced to spend a fair bit of time sitting on their hands, as it were. Things could be looking up, however, when the investigation is ended and the team can go back to doing what they do best. Which is when someone starts killing them off, one by one. And it must be someone good, because these guysare trained to stay alive in some dangerous situations.

Starting off strong, the first 5-10 minutes are pretty great, Sabotage quickly starts dropping in quality with each scene, all the way to a finale that it's hard to care about. That's not to say that there aren't moments of easy entertainment. The nasty deaths are a highlight, and you do (or . . . . should, hopefully) at least want to find out who the killer is. It's just a shame that the rest is such a mess, with a script, written by Ayers and Skip Woods, as weak as any I can think of in recent years. The macho posturing bullshit starts to grate after that opening is over and done, and that's pretty much all that the rest of the movie has to offer.

If you want an object lesson in how to waste a potentially great cast then this is a movie to watch with a pen and notepad beside you. Arnie is the leader of the gang, so he fares better than the rest, but Mireille Enos, Sam Worthington, Terrence Howard, Joe Manganiello, Josh Holloway, Max Martini and Kevin Vance are just one mass of muscular douchebags waiting for their potential deaths. Enos is particularly ill-treated, especially considering what a kick-ass first impression she makes in the opening sequence. And we get poor Olivia Williams struggling, both with an American accent and the fact that she has to be a tough investigating officer one moment and then warming to big Arnie the next. In comparison, Harold Perrineau, playing her partner, comes out of the whole thing relatively unscathed. Relatively.

You get some gunfire, you get some blood and guts, you get the eye-rollingly frustrating cliche of tough men and women who work hard and play hard, and you get one or two minor twists to enjoy. What you don't get are characters that you'll enjoy spending time with. Not a one, which leads to the growing apathy that will stay with you even during those last 20 minutes or so. You may as well watch the Beastie Boys video instead, which is much more fun.

5/10

http://www.amazon.com/Sabotage-Blu-ray-DVD-DIGITAL-UltraViolet/dp/B00JU94ZPS/ref=tmm_blu_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1416355373

Sexy Evil Genius (2013)

Sexy Evil Genius is a great title in search of a great movie. The film itself isn't bad, but it's yet another in a long line of movies that isn't quite as cool or funny or hip as its creators would have everyone believed. It's a decent distraction for 90 minutes, but nothing worth revisiting, and certainly not one that will be brought up by film fans reminiscing a few years further down the line.

Seth Green, Harold Perrineau and Michelle Trachtenberg play three people brought together by Katee Sackhoff (playing Nikki Franklyn, the sexy evil genius of the title). They have been asked to wait at a bar at a certain time, and they have all obliged. When Nikki eventually appears she is accompanied by a rude and corrupt lawyer (played by William Baldwin). But, more importantly, she also has a plan. A plan that started falling into place as soon as her friends started to arrive at the bar.

Written by Scott Lew, the premise and pacing of Sexy Evil Genius may appear achingly desperate to be cool, but the dialogue isn't actually all that bad. At least, it's not bad during the first half of the movie with the three strangers getting to know one another. Things take a bit of a dip, however, when Sackhoff appears and Lew seems to free himself from his previous self-restraint, investing the titular character with all of the attitude and soundbites stereotypical of so many other movies that have tried to score themselves lots of cool points. It's clear that Lew cares about his creation, and also clear that he cares about her a bit too much, to the detriment of the others who are simply pawns.

Director Shawn Piller doesn't do a bad job at all, considering that the movie is mainly just a group of people talking to one another around a table in a bar. He doesn't really do much to detract from that fact, but he doesn't make it into a tortuous exercise either.

The casting helps a lot, something I never thought I'd say with Trachtenberg onscreen (I'm not her biggest fan). With so few characters holding the attention of viewers for the duration of the movie, they have to be easy enough to like, and they are. Trachtenberg is just the same as she always is, but that works this time. Perrineau is one cool cat, and Green is, well, he is also the same as he's been a number of times before. Again, no problem as it works here. Baldwin is enjoyably sleazy, and the only real weak acting onscreen comes from Sackhoff, but I'm not sure whether that's her fault, as she breaks out the manic tics and tricks, or perhaps the fault of the writer.

Sexy Evil Genius isn't a complete waste of your time, but it doesn't do enough to stand out from the crowd. You may enjoy it for 90 minutes, but you won't feel as if you've missed out on some gem if you end up never seeing it.

5/10

http://www.amazon.com/Sexy-Evil-Genius-Michelle-Trachtenberg/dp/B00B1MJNKE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1389567774&sr=8-2&keywords=sexy+evil+genius