Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014)

For anyone interested, here is my review of Cabin Fever, and here is my review of Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever. And now . . . . . . we return to our main programmed event.

Let's face it, Cabin Fever: Patient Zero is a movie that shouldn't really exist. The first Cabin Fever movie is fantastic (despite me taking a while to warm to it), but it didn't exactly cry out for sequels. When Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever was released, I think there was more talk of the studio interference and problems that director Ti West had than an overwhelming love for the movie. And, on a side note, kudos to West for still visiting some screenings and pragmatically dealing with the end result.

Anyway, now we have a third movie, with the potential for more (I guess). Sean Astin plays the patient zero of the title, a man who is imprisoned, in a medical facility that's located on a fairly isolated island, and forced to try and help find a cure for the deadly disease that viewers of the previous two movies will already be familiar with. Astin doesn't want to be helpful. In fact, he wants to cause some problems. Which makes everything exceedingly dangerous when Marcus (Mitch Ryan) and friends land on the island, aiming to party and celebrate before Marcus gets married. It's not long until people start acting a bit rash.

Written by Jake Wade Wall and directed by Kaare Andrews, this is very standard sequel stuff. It's supposed to be a prequel, but I must confess my ignorance in not being able to see anything that would really pinpoint the timing of this particular instalment in comparison to the other movies. I may have missed a detail or two, but I suspect that this has been classed as a prequel due to the folk making it thinking that they're being clever. Because that's what I felt as the end credits rolled, with some other footage running throughout. This is a film with a script that is desperate to appear cool and clever, despite the fact that it isn't. Andrews tries to work with it, and at least remembers to include some great gore gags in the second half, but nothing ties together as it should.

The cast here is a real mixed bag. For the group arriving on the island, Mitch Ryan is okay, I guess, but he just feels a bit too bland to be a leading man. Thankfully, both Brando Eaton and Ryan Donowho match him in terms of just being a bit too unmemorable, although nobody is awful. Jillian Murray IS memorable, for a variety of reasons, and she gets a lot of great scenes. Elsewhere, Currie Graham is the cold doctor dealing with Astin, while Solly Duran and Lydia Hearst are the two main lab assistants also caught in the crisis zone when things start to turn sour.

There are some great special effects, courtesy of Vincent J. Guastani and his team, some fun moments in which selfishness is punished (of course), and one or two good ideas in the mix, but that undeserved sense of cockiness brings it back down a notch or two. As does the lack of any effective black humour.

Worth a watch, and even worth picking up if you can get it at a good price, but it's the weakest of the three.

6/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cabin-Fever-Patient-Zero-Blu-ray/dp/B00GMFL9BQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1392807180&sr=8-2&keywords=cabin+fever+patient+zero

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Does Lethal Weapon NEED any introduction? I really don't think so. THE buddy cop movie by which all others ended up being measured, this was the film to put Danny Glover and Mel Gibson together with highly entertaining, and explosive, results.

I'll briefly surmise the plot. Mel plays Martin Riggs, a suicidal cop who lives for his job. Danny Glover is Roger Murtaugh, a 50-year-old cop who just wants to keep doing his job well while avoiding any of the downsides of the job, like bullet wounds or premature death. The two men are partnered up together, and it's not long until the case that they're working on places both of them in great danger.

With solid direction from Richard Donner, despite a flurried final fight sequence, and a cracking script from Shane Black, Lethal Weapon is everything that you should love about '80s action movies. All of the cliches are in place, although they weren't necessarily cliches when the movie was released, and every element is added to the movie without any hint of shame. The saxophone popping up all over the soundtrack, the troubled hero, the moment at which it all becomes personal, the mad villainous henchman played by Gary Busey. Admittedly, that last part isn't a cliche. It's just a masterstroke.

After attaining iconic status with his leading role in the Mad Max movies, Gibson finds himself in the enviable position of being able to have fun with another character quickly embraced by, and absorbed into, the pop culture of the time. Glover is in the same position, thankfully, as both men have their fair share of great moments. Lethal Weapon benefits from a central pairing so perfect that one man cannot shine without the other. But it's not JUST all about the men, oh no. It may seem that way, yet Traci Wolfe and Darlene Love also get to make a great impression as, respectively, Mrs Trish Murtaugh and daughter Rianne. Mary Ellen Trainor also pops up as a psychologist, a character she would reprise in the sequels, and she'd even gain an actual name in the third movie. Tom Atkins appears briefly, lending some Atkins greatness to the proceedings, Mitch Ryan is a bad man, and Busey is the REAL, and more entertaining, bad man. Well, he's the one who thinks himself capable of facing off against Gibson's character, which makes him highly dangerous.

Full of great moments, that are deservedly remembered with fondness, and great characters, Lethal Weapon endures, despite the fluffiness of Gibson's oh-so-eighties hair and the potential to teeter into all-out ridiculousness, because of the chemistry between everyone onscreen, be it Riggs and Murtaugh, the goodies and the baddies, or even the warmth between Murtaugh and his loving family. A classic of the genre.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Weapon-Collection-Blu-ray/dp/B0079KGAOY/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1405112139&sr=1-2&keywords=lethal+weapon

Winter People (1989)

Winter People is a film that really reminds you of just what an interesting career Kurt Russell has had. He may have been launched on to the world from the House Of Mouse and in the 1980s he may have won many fans thanks to his work with John Carpenter, but he wasn't a major draw at the box office and he, deliberately or not, seemed to choose projects based more on how interesting they were than how much money they would rake in. Winter People is an interesting film and, especially considering that I'd never heard of it before this year, it's also a very good one.

It's 1930 and Russell plays the upstanding Wayland Jackson, a young widower who moves with his daughter (and her pet pig) to a North Carolina mountain town. The move doesn't go all too smoothly and, with a car stuck in a river and left with only a few things he is able to carry, Wayland and his daughter end up meeting a young woman named Collie Wright (played by Kelly McGillis) who has a young baby, but no husband at home. Wayland and Collie get along very well, thank you kindly, and it's not long until she is helping him settle into his new life by promoting his skills as a clockmaker to her family and encouraging them to accept this new man in her life. To be accepted means more than just a few social gatherings, however, and Wayland is soon taken along on a bear hunt. Meanwhile, Collie is still being pestered by the mean father of her child (Jeffrey Meek) and things might get ugly.

Based on a book by John Ehle, Winter People would seem to be typical of his work (from the little I've read about his bibliography, having not been familiar with his work before now). Carol Sobieski easily retains the essence of the story in her screenplay and director Ted Kotcheff shoots it all competently enough. It all seems just . . . . . . . fine. Yet, by the time the end credits rolled I realised that I'd enjoyed every unsensational minute of it.

While a lot of the credit can go to Ehle, Sobieski and Kotcheff, the other big plus point for the movie is the strong cast. Russell and McGillis are both wonderful in their main roles, but great support comes from a number of people that aren't so well known. And Lloyd Bridges, who is very good here. Young Amelia Burnette is very good as Wayland's daughter Paula, Jeffrey Meek is intimidating and easy to dislike as Cole Campbell while Mitch Ryan is just as good as his fierce father. Then we have Don Michael Paul and Lanny Flaherty, both perfect as Collie's two dissimilar brothers.

It's not a well-known movie (I certainly hadn't heard it mentioned before and had never heard of it myself, anyway) and it's not all that easy to get a hold of, but if you're a fan of this kind of film or of Russell or McGillis then I encourage you to at least give it a one-time viewing if the chance ever arises.

7/10

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