Predator: Killer Of Killers (2025)

It has actually been a few weeks now since I watched Predator: Killer Of Killers, an animated entry in the franchise that seemed to delight many fans. I found a decent amount here to enjoy, but, if I'm being completely honest, I also found the very last act to be quite forgettable. I'm also a bit reluctant to give so much praise to something so obviously designed to please fans. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with pleasing fans, but there are times when this feels as if it is moving in a direction that is allowing the fans to think they have too much say and control in the direction of the franchise.

What you get here is an anthology that makes use of some ideas bandied around after the success of Prey. There are four main sections - The Shield, The Sword, The Bullet, and The Battle. The Shield is centred around a Viking warrior named Ursa (voiced by Lindsay LaVanchy). The Sword is all about a Japanese rōnin (voiced by Louis Ozawa) battling his brother. The Bullet shows is John J. Torres (voiced by Rick Gonzalez), a mechanic who ends up piloting a fighter jet in World War II. All of the main characters find themselves in trouble when they encounter a Predator, and things tie together nicely in last act.

Written by Micho Robert Rutare, developing a story co-written with director Dan Trachtenberg (sharing his directing duties with Joshua Wassung), there's nothing wrong with the ideas here. The animation is generally well done, although it took me a bit of time to get used to the style, the voice cast do good work, and it's not a film I would criticise when it comes to the technical side of things. It's just a shame that all of the anthology segments show the potential that everyone seemed aware of after the success of Prey, yet also shows a disappointing lack of confidence in great premises that could have easily been fleshed out into at least three separate features.

Although LaVanchy, Ozawa (who voices both of the main characters in his main segment), and Gonzalez all do what is asked of them, the dialogue is very much secondary to the set-pieces that feel ripped from the pages of some top-tier comics. It's good to have voice performances not distracting viewers with any familiarity (stunt casting would have been an irritation), although a small role for Michael Biehn subsequently feels a bit misjudged, and in line with just another fan note . . . adding an extra name that can be said in answer to a popular movie trivia question from the past couple of decades.

This is good. It was also a welcome surprise when it appeared on streaming, giving fans something to enjoy until the next live-action Predator movie hits cinema screens later this year. It's not great though. A couple of the big moments don't land as well as expected, and I have a niggling feeling that the very end of the film kind of undermines the endings of a few of the other movies in this franchise.

Some people won't watch this just because it's animated. They'll miss out. They won't miss out on anything unmissable though. This is fun and cool, but it's also arguably more disposable than any of the movies featuring this iconic sci-fi beastie (even the ones that are subjectively worse). 

7/10

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Noirvember: Jade (1995)

If you only see one William Friedkin movie in your lifetime then I think you know the one you should opt for (clue = it is a horror movie, and the title rhymes with Schmexorcist), but there are one or two other strong contenders. If you only see one erotic thriller penned by Joe Eszterhas then I would always make a strong case for Basic Instinct. Want to see Linda Fiorentino being sexy and dangerous? The Last Seduction is for you. Fancy taking a chance on the film work of David Caruso? Session 9 will scratch that itch. Basically, what I am trying to say is that there is no reason to ever prioritise a viewing of Jade.

The plot revolves around a murder, of course, and David Caruso is the main investigating officer, David Corelli. It isn’t too long until some potentially embarrassing footage is discovered, requiring the investigation team to be much more sensitive. That is the plan anyway, but Corelli gets distracted when he has to question an old flame, Katrina Gavin (Linda Fiorentino), who is married to his good friend/defense attorney, Matt Gavin (Chazz Palminteri). There’s also an elusive woman to be found, Jade, who is said to be the best of the many sexual partners that the murder victim would spend his time with.

What Jade gets wrong, in terms of it being an erotic thriller, is, well, everything. The few sexy moments aren’t sexy, the cast have no chemistry, and absolutely none of the murder mystery elements matter, because viewers don’t ever care about the deaths onscreen or the main characters. It’s almost as if Eszterhas started writing a parody of his own work, with everything shown up for the dumb it is, and then forgot about it, having left it in a drawer for some time until he was asked to write another slick erotic thriller trying to recapture his career-best form.

It doesn’t help that Friedkin doesn’t seem interested in the expected tropes and story beats. Aside from one or two decent flourishes, he seems to blindly stumble from one scene to the next, only seeming to become energised when he gets to shoot a car chase that suffers from a) feeling shoehorned in to a film that is otherwise completely sluggish, and b) not being half as good as the other famous car chase sequences that he has delivered onscreen. It’s almost as if he felt that the script and cast would be assembled by people who cared about everything more than he ever could, and that would be enough to make it all work well. 

The perceived antipathy from Friedkin filters throughout his cast, which is a real shame as the leads struggle through the movie as if they are wading through a treacherous bog. Florentino should be superb in this role, but her character  isn’t convincingly built up in any way, and the less said about the horrible dialogue she had to deliver the better. Caruso does his usual schtick, which doesn’t fit for this kind of film, and Palminteri feels underused (as if there’s a whole sub-plot that was excised at the last minute). There are some treats in the supporting cast, which includes Michael Biehn, Donna Murphy, Richard Crenna, and Angie Everhart, as well as very small roles for Holt McCallany and a few other familiar faces.

Beyond a basic level of film-making competence on the technical side of things, there is nothing here to make it worth your time. The relatively brief runtime is a plus (it clocks in at about 90 minutes from the opening to the start of the end credits), but I would easily recommend 100 erotic thrillers ahead of this, including a multitude of films that didn’t get anywhere near a cinema screen.

3/10

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The Rock (1996)

Despite being directed by Michael Bay, The Rock comes oh so close to being a perfect modern action movie. SO close. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that it's only a horribly-edited car chase sequence that drags it down. Everything else, from the predictable moments of cheese to the interplay between the leads, is absolutely spot on.

A group of soldiers, led by General Francis Hummel (Ed Harris), steal some very nasty chemical weapons and take over Alcatraz. They have a number of citizens held hostage and are threatening to send some guided missiles to give many of the people of San Francisco an instant death sentence. The people in charge need to send in some Navy SEALS, led by Commander Anderson (Michael Biehn), but that team needs to be accompanied by a chemical weapons expert, Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage), and John Mason (Sean Connery). Mason is the only person to have ever escaped from Alcatraz. In fact, he is pretty good at escape, which is why the main government representative is wary of getting him to help out. Mason was alleged to have stolen a microfilm just chock full of many dark and dirty secrets decades ago, and he's been held without trial ever since. Maybe revisiting Alcatraz will help him to become a free man once more.

You may not have thought so from the first sentence, but I tend to enjoy the movies of Michael Bay. They're absolutely fine when you're in the mood for some slick, bombastic, action. But they are rarely truly great. The Rock is truly great, and that is often despite the usual style of Bay being stamped all over it. It’s great because of the characters scattered throughout the groups of heroes and villains, and great because of a script, by David Weisner, Douglas Cook, and Mark Rosner, that makes things more morally shaded and complex than most of these action blockbusters. Ed Harris gets to play arguably the most interesting and ambiguous “villain” of the nineties, and he is just one essential part of the puzzle.

Cage is fun in his role, playing someone who steps up to do what needs done, despite being way out of his depth. Connery is perfect, an old survivor who has retained skills that make him a great ally or dangerous enemy. And Harris holds your attention completely every time he’s onscreen. The supporting cast also includes fantastic performances from John Spencer, William Forsythe, Michael Biehn, Tony Todd, David Morse, and many other familiar faces, all making the most of their screentime. Vanessa Marcil isn’t given much to do, she is “the girlfriend” who helps Cage to explain his personal investment in stopping those rockets being launched.

There’s a superb score, mainly from Hans Zimmer, some great fights that mix fun choreography and moments of brutality, and every interaction between Cage and Connery is gold. You cannot do much better than this if you want a fun action movie to fill a couple of hours during a Saturday evening. Almost an outright modern classic.

9/10

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Sci-Fi September: Clockstoppers (2002)

Clockstoppers has such a great idea that it's hard to imagine it failing, which makes the fact that it DOES fail so disappointing. Director Jonathan Frakes (still best known to many as Commander Riker from Star Trek: TNG) had shown such potential with his work at the helm of a couple of Star Trek movies, including one of the best in the series, but shows here that he's not quite as comfortable when away from the comfort zone of the USS Enterprise.

A scientist (French Stewart) has invented a device that can send people into "hypertime". It may seem like the rest of the world has suddenly frozen, but that's not the case. Everything else just moves really, REALLY slowly in comparison. Some others want to get their hands on this technology, of course, but that isn't something that young Zak Gibbs (Jesse Bradford) is aware of. He just finds himself with a watch that can almost stop time, and he starts to have some fun with it. While he's impressing the new girl at school (Paula Garces) and helping out his mate, Meeker (Garikayi Mutambirwa), Zak is also putting them all in potential danger.

The potential fun of this movie is twofold. First of all, bringing time to such a grinding near-halt is something that we'd all like to do. Secondly, anyone moving at such high speed then becomes invisible to those still running on normal time. Unfortunately, the writers - Rob Hedden, J. David Stem and David N. Weiss - take the premise and stretch it way beyond breaking point, breaking the basic rules of the time trickery in almost every scene, which makes suspension of disbelief pretty impossible.

Thankfully, there's still fun to be had, but it's a much more basic kind of fun. Some of the special effects are great, especially in the first few scenes showing Zak discovering hypertime, and a few pranks raise a smile, but most of the film is standard teens in peril stuff that could be pulled from 101 other films.

Bradford, Garces and Mutambirwa all do well enough, and Stewart does much better with his role here than he's done in other family films, but the one actor raising everything up a point is Michael Biehn, playing the main villain who wants to get his hands on the technology at any cost.

The good and bad aspects of the movie balance out to provide viewers with an experience that's distinctly average. The sad fact is that everyone involved, from the cast, to the writers, to Frakes in the director's chair, could have done a bit better. It wouldn't have taken too much effort either, which makes this flat end result all the more frustrating.

4/10

http://www.amazon.com/Clockstoppers-Jesse-Bradford/dp/B00005JKZM/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1409931905&sr=1-2&keywords=clockstoppers

Tombstone (1993)

As is sometimes the way, Tombstone is a fantastic film that really seems to have defied some long odds to come together as well as it has. Kevin Jarre, who wrote the main script, was initially due to direct the film, but was fired just after he directed a number of scenes featuring Charlton Heston. George P. Cosmatos is the man who now has his name listed as director, but Kurt Russell played just an important, and maybe even more important, role in getting everyone back in the game and getting the movie finished. It's not surprising. Russell had a plum starring role in a movie chock full of great actors being allowed to do great things.

The film is all about Wyatt Earp (Russell) and his brothers (played by Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton) as they settle into life in Tombstone and try to enjoy some peace and quiet. Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer) is also in town and it seems like everyone may get to enjoy life a bit more with the days of being a lawman in Wyatt's past. But people don't always get what they plan for and Tombstone soon starts to see more and more violence in its streets, so much so that the pressure mounts for Wyatt to return to his old role. That is something that he just doesn't want to happen, but he may not have a choice in the matter if some of the more trigger-happy cowboys keep causing so much trouble.

Kevin Jarre's script was, apparently, pared down quite a bit from its initial size, but what's here is all good stuff. There are some superb lines of dialogue and characters are well sketched out. Despite how densely populated the film seems, everyone is given a decent share of the screen-time. Oh wait, that's not quite true. All of the men are given enough time and space, but most of the women in the movie are given fairly short shrift. Dana Delany fares better than most in the role of Josephine Marcus and Paula Malcomson and Joanna Pacula have one or two good moments, but Lisa Collins and Dana Wheeler-Nicholson needn't have bothered turning up, considering the little that they have to do. In fairness, the film is a look at Wyatt Earp and his friends and family and that famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral so decisions would have been made to keep the focus on the men about to get themselves involved in a historic shoot-out.

The direction, from whoever was in the big seat, is absolutely fine, but the cinematography, set design, etc. all pale in comparison to the work done by the casting department. Simply put, Tombstone has one of the best casts in a 1990s movie that you can think of. Let me just reel off the better-known names and see how long the list gets: Russell, Elliott, Paxton, Kilmer, Delany, Pacula, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Charlton Heston, Jason Priestley, Stephen Lang, Thomas Haden Church, Michael Rooker, Harry Carey Jr, Billy Bob Thornton, Billy Zane, Wyatt Earp (you read that right, he's a distant relative of the lead character), Terry O'Quinn and the voice of Robert Mitchum.

Feel free to re-read that list and soak up just how much quality is scattered throughout it. The fact that, despite so much competition, this film ends up being owned by Michael Biehn and Val Kilmer, in their separate scenes and also any that see them sharing the screen, just shows how good those two actors are. One moment in particular, with Biehn's Johnny Ringo showing off his gun-twirling skill before being delightfully mocked by Kilmer, is up there with the very best in the Western genre (maybe even THE best, in my opinion). Russell is very good in the main role, as you'd expect, but Wyatt Earp is the unshowy, earnest heart while Biehn and Kilmer get to be a lot more flamboyant and fiery.

While not an entirely perfect film, Tombstone somehow manages to put so many individual great moments together that it feels almost like an instant classic. It becomes more than the sum of its parts, but that's because all of those parts are so well cast.

9/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tombstone-The-Directors-Cut-DVD/dp/B001QOGXPU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363068604&sr=8-1

 

The Victim (2011)

Based on a story by Reed Lackey, The Victim is written and directed by, and stars, Michael Biehn and provides a lot of fun for horror fans and, of course, fans of the leading man.

The movie begins with a surprising and sudden death before cutting to a young woman (Annie, played by Jennifer Blanc) running through some woods in a state of fear. Typical horror/exploitation movie fare. She then finds a cabin in the woods, knocks on the door and meets loner Kyle Limato (Biehn). He doesn't want to be bothered and he certainly doesn't want any trouble, which is what he suspects he's in for when Annie tells him about police officers chasing her through the woods after the accidental death of her friend. Kyle really doesn't want to get involved with this situation, but when the police officers (played by Ryan Honey and Denny Kirkwood) come snooping around he starts to think that Annie may be telling the truth and that he might be able to help her. It's not long until both of them are in danger as the two men in pursuit of Annie grow more and more desperate.

While it doesn't quite overcome its limitations - low budget, small scope, relatively small cast - I was pleasantly surprised by how much The Victim gets right. Biehn obviously knows his stuff and he gets it all in the movie in just the right mix. There's some violence, a bit of nudity, more violence and plenty of gruff one-liners delivered by the reluctant hero dragged into the big mess.

Ryan Honey and Denny Kirkwood are very enjoyable as the two men trying to cover up one horrible mistake, with the latter at least showing some regret as things spiral further and further out of control. Jennifer Blanc is fine as Annie and Biehn is his usual good self as Kyle. There's also a fun role for the lovely Danielle Harris, who has her most memorable "screen entrance" to date.

I can't think of anything more to say about the film, really. It doesn't want to be anything deep and meaningful and it isn't. That's not damning the thing with faint praise. On the contrary, The Victim is slightly refreshing in its approach, coming along after so many movies that have felt the need to emulate old film stock, throw in fashions and props from decades gone by and take any opportunity to nod and wink at the audience while often failing to get the basics right. This film gets the basics right and also contains a few nice references to past classics. It's not unmissable, it's not great, but it is good enough to watch and lend some support to. Do it for Biehn.

6/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Victim-Blu-ray-Michael-Biehn/dp/B0084DOK9W/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1359392744&sr=8-2

Take Me Home Tonight (2011)

Based on a story by Topher Grace and Gordon Kaywin, Take Me Home Tonight is a 21st century John Hughes movie in the mould of Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller's Day Off and that, in case you didn't know it, is a good thing.

As well as coming up with the central idea, Topher Grace also stars in the film as Matt Franklin. It's 1988 and Matt has never realised his potential since he left MIT. He just can't bring himself to be passionate about the materialism surrounding him. Thankfully, there's a BIG party to attend that should take his mind off things for a while. He goes along with his friend Barry (Dan Fogler), who was JUST fired, and his sister Wendy (Anna Faris), who is considering throwing away a potentially great future to settle into the role of supportive partner to her boyfriend. The party should be a lot of fun but, more importantly, it should also be graced by the presence of Tori Frederking (Teresa Palmer), the girl with whom Matt has been in love with for many years. Everything is in place for a wild and crazy night and the four partygoers may just find that they look at the world a little differently in the morning.

Directed by Michael Dowse, with Jackie Filgo and Jeff Filgo responsible for spinning the story into a full screenplay, Take Me Home Tonight is energetic, funny and also quite sweet in places. But if you like your comedy a bit more raucous and illegal then never fear - there's also car theft, a LOT of cocaine and a weird sexual encounter between Barry and a character played by Angie Everhart.

The cast all do a great job. I've always liked Topher Grace and he's never turned in a performance yet that's changed my mind (do check out the excellent In Good Company f you've not seen it already). Anna Faris can do the light comedy stuff in her sleep but she doesn't go over the top here and her character is one to root for, as are all of the leads. Fogler is just hilarious and gets the lions share of the best lines, most probably due to some great improv. He also gets a great dance off sequence. Teresa Palmer is required to look lovely enough for Matt to desire so badly and she does that easily. She also acts just as well as anyone else onscreen even if she has the least to work with, in terms of character development (her character is already set, pretty much, but Matt has to find out about her while also aiming to impress). Michael Biehn is excellent as the father just wanting his son to try to do something with his life, even if he screws up in the process, while Lucy Punch and Michelle Trachtenberg play two very different party attendees. Oh, and Angie Everhart takes part in that hilariously weird encounter already mentioned above.

Just writing this review has brought a smile to my face and made me want to rewatch the movie and if that's not one of the best recommendations for a comedy then I don't know what is. I'm going to be buying this one ASAP and rewatching it whenever the mood strikes. I advise others to do the same. Or at least give it a watch if it pops up on the TV schedules.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-Me-Home-Tonight-Blu-ray/dp/B004V2U4IQ/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1348996092&sr=1-2