Prime Time: Dead Ant (2019)

AKA Giant Killer Ants.

There seems to be something about ants in movies. Modern films just don't seem to be able to make good use of them. While we had the likes of Them!, It Happened At Lakewood Manor (AKA Ants!), The Naked Jungle, Phase IV, and (one I have a soft spot for) Empire Of The Ants many decades ago, nothing in the 21st century seems to have managed to use our hard-working insectoid friends.

You can always find a selection of films to scare arachnophobes. But for the ants? I can only think of It Came From The Desert, The Hive, and this one. And The Hive is one I have yet to see. Maybe it's the best of the three. It's certainly unlikely to be the worst.

Dead Ant is a film about a rock group travelling to a festival to play a set. The group has their best days behind them, but this performance may give them a boost. Their manager (Tom Arnold) is certainly hoping for that result. But all of that pales into insignificance when there is some cursed peyote smoked that then leads to an assortment of pesky ants, growing larger in size every time one is killed.

Although writer-director Ron Carlson doesn't do a terrible job here, he doesn't do anything particularly great either. The script isn't as funny as it could be, the ant attacks aren't all that exciting, and the only highlights are some amusing gore gags in the third act (especially moments that show a character losing their hands).

Thankfully, the cast are all game, almost all of them giving more to the material than it deserves. Arnold is fine, if you don't mind his schtick, in the role of the manager who has made it his life's work to look after one band, and both Sean Astin and Jake Busey are very entertaining as band members, given fine support from everyone else onscreen, whether they are portraying temperamental musicians, disruptive girlfriends, or festival attendees.

I REALLY wanted to like Dead Ant, mainly because the cast take on their roles with such gusto (and it has an amusingly cheeky opening that shows a young woman discarding her clothing while being chased down by a giant beastie). But it never does enough to make it a decent entry in this particular subgenre of the creature feature realm. I just couldn't stop thinking about better movies, even when the film was supposedly working through an action-packed final act (that also left me cold).

Not enough laughs, no tension, not enough bloodshed, Dead Ant is disappointingly lifeless. Maybe the NEXT killer ant movie will buck the trend. I won't hold my breath though.

4/10

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Christmas With The Kranks (2004)

Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis star as the Kranks in this enjoyable Christmas comedy from director Joe Roth that is adapted, surprisingly, from a novel by John Grisham entitled Skipping Christmas.

After waving their daughter, Blair (Julie Gonzalo), off at the airport the Kranks head home and start a new chapter in their lives. It's not long until Luther Krank has what he thinks is a brilliant idea. Instead of spending the $6000+ that they spent on Christmas last year he wants to go on a Caribbean cruise and just . . . . . skip Christmas. His wife, Nora, is tempted and agrees only after Luther promises that he'll match the main charity donations that they included in their Christmas spending the previous year. When Luther informs his colleagues of his plan to skip Christmas he is labelled a Scrooge and sense no small amount of resentment but that's nothing compared to the feelings of his neighbours, who are marshalled by do-gooder Vic Frohmeyer (Dan Aykroyd). It's not long until the Kranks have upset many of their friends, their neighbours, the Christmas tree salesman, their local priest and even a couple of police officers who raise money each year by selling their own calendar. Can the Kranks actually skip Christmas or is there no escaping the festivities?

Everything you associate with a Christmas movie is here (the tree, the decorations, the songs, the need for certain foods, the monetary cost and stress, the life lesson about the real meaning of Christmas) but it's nicely inverted for a good 2/3 of the film. The Cranks do only have themselves to blame as the pressure and pressure builds for them to join in with the fun but they also get some sympathy due to the fact that Christmas should be up to what any individual wants to make it.

Director Joe Roth keeps things moving along nicely and the script from Chris Columbus only really starts descending into his usual mawkishness during the last 10 minutes or so. Everything before then is coated with cynicism and the feeling of an ongoing war so that makes it more digestible than many other, overly sweet, Christmas movies you could take a look at.

I've been a fan of Tim Allen for a long time and he does his usual schtick here. I like it, some folks don't. If you don't like him then, obviously, you're not going to enjoy the movie as much as I did. Jamie Lee Curtis is a lot of fun as the wife struggling to keep her resolve in the face of mounting festive pressure and the supporting cast is full of many great stars: Dan Aykroyd, Austin Pendleton, M. Emmet Walsh, Elizabeth Franz, Cheech Marin, Jake Busey and even young Erik Per Sullivan (who is probably best remembered from Malcolm In The Middle).

Christmas With The Kranks is a lot of fun and does, deliberately or not, make some of the usual points about the yuletide season. It's not all about the materialism and the money spent but it's also not a time to skimp on anything that may put a smile on the faces of others.

7/10

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Nazis At The Center Of The Earth (2012)

*****************************MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD*****************************


Another day, another release from the lunatics who run The Asylum. This time it's Nazis At The Center Of The Earth. Reminding people that they don't just try to cash in on the success of big blockbusters, The Asylum try to make a quick buck off the b-movie greatness of Iron Sky. Considering that the last time they tried to copy such an enjoyable cult hit we ended up with the awful Snakes On A Train I wasn't holding out too much hope for this one. Thankfully, I was very wrong and this movie turned out to be absolutely mad in all the right ways, a deliriously ridiculous slice of hokum. In fact, it's SO hilarious and over the top that I couldn't help thinking I'd already seen it all done before in an episode of Futurama. Fans of great cinema should turn away now but anyone who shares my fondness for the dubious delights released from The Asylum should enjoy this one.

As if I really needed to explain the plot to you, it's all there in the title. A bunch of young folks working in  Antarctica are a bit bemused when a couple of their colleagues disappear. They're quickly even further bemused when they go looking for the missing colleagues and find an underground area that houses a bunch of zombie Nazi types engaging in experiments to prolong their lifespans.

Nazis . . . . . they just don't know when to stop exfoliating.

The experiments are being led by a certain Dr. Mengele (Christopher Karl Johnson) and he's very pleased when he captures his latest group of "test subjects". Surely it won't be long now until he discovers the breakthrough that can lead to a big, pissed off, zombie robo-Hitler.
See what I mean now about the Futurama episode? Am I right or am I right?

Whatever could that be? Oh, of course, it's a big, pissed off, zombie roboHitler!!!

With this completely ridiculous premise to work with, everything else pretty much has to aim at a certain level. The script by Paul Bales is suitably hilarious (in a number of intentional and unintentional ways) while the direction from Joseph J. Lawson just rattles through one gloriously daft moment after another. The special effects are often a bit better than past efforts from the studio (I think they just maybe have more programs locked in place and stock footage in the vault after each movie) and the whole film is boosted by the fact that it's so hilariously tasteless.

As for the cast, they're not really a memorable bunch. Jake Busey is the most recognisable one here, and his first scene is very funny (he gets to spout a lot of scientific nonsense before we are quickly made aware of just what a maverick he is). Dominique Swain is likeable enough, as is Josh Allen, while Christopher Karl Johnson makes Mengele into a good villain. As for everyone else, they all do well enough and deserve a bit of praise for going along with the whole absurd concept.

If you can tell me what real purpose this guy serves except to be onscreen looking like a strange cross between Jay Leno and 'Weird' Al Yankovic then please send me answers on a postcard.

Once again, this is a movie that shouldn't be rated highly by anyone who loves cinema (and I like to class myself as a cinema lover, despite my dodgy viewing choices) but it's so much fun and so damn entertaining from start to finish that I can't place it on the lower end of the scale. Therefore, I shall defend my rating in this way - the movie is fun and lively and deserves an above average score BUT it also tries to cash in on the success of another movie, has one or two moments of tedious exposition and doesn't really step up a gear during the third act so it sinks to a below average score BUT it has some good effects here and there, a distressing male takeover of the pro-choice movement and zombie frickin' Nazis. I fully expect to be met with derision on this one but the final score manages to edge just above average.

6/10

http://www.amazon.com/Nazis-Center-Earth-Dominique-Swain/dp/B0073HYCCA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1338389233&sr=8-2