Fear, Inc (2016)

Fear, Inc is a fun and inventive little comedy horror, light on actual big scares or gore moments but easily making up for it with the sheer entertainment factor of the main premise.

There's a company that you can hire to bring your greatest fears to life. That company is called Fear, Inc. As a treat for Joe (Lucas Neff), a huge horror movie fan, his friends decide to place a call and throw themselves into a real life horror movie scenario. Then they change their minds. Or do they? Are they even able to cancel the plans that have been quickly put in place? What's real and what isn't?

The good thing about Fear, Inc is that it mentions the fact it is very similar to The Game. Paradoxically, the bad thing about Fear, Inc is that it mentions the fact it is very similar to The Game. There's no getting away from the fact that this is a horror riff on that idea, and I appreciate the film-makers being upfront about that, but there's also no getting away from the fact that this doesn't have the resources or smarts to quite match that film. It also doesn't throw in enough references and gags, unless my eyes were deceiving me. If I paid to be thrown into my favourite genre for a life experience then I'd want to be picking up on little details that keep me on edge and make me think of the many horror movies I love.

Director Vincent Masciale, making his feature debut with an expansion of his short, written by Luke Barnett (who also stays on board here), does a decent job of sketching out the plot, making the steps from unease to horror as logical and believable as need be, and allowing the characters to have some fun and appeal to viewers before the tension starts to build. Barnett doesn't excel with the actual characterisations, the cast sell this more than the dialogue, but he does well with the film-related banter.

Neff does fine in the lead role, I can't imagine many horror fans who don't enjoy seeing someone portray a big horror fan onscreen, and the other three main players - Caitlin Stasey, Chris Marquette, and Stephanie Drake - all do well as they joke around and have fun en route to being potential murder victims. There's also a fun small role for the always welcome Richard Riehle.

It gets bonus points for not being just another typical slasher film, and for not just joining the ever-growing hordes of zombie movies and found footage films, but Fear, Inc is an entertaining near-miss rather than an outright home run. Worth your time, worth your support, and probably even worth an occasional rewatch.

6/10

You can buy it here.
Americans can buy an import here.

The Three Dogateers (2014)

Don't judge me. I don't mind watching movies aimed at kids. In fact, most of the time they're absolutely on my wavelength, which supports the many times that my wife has accused me of immaturity. The fact that I respond to that accusation by blowing raspberries may further support the idea, but that's beside the point. Anyway, I had another reason for watching The Three Dogateers. Actor Bill Oberst Jr, a hard-working thespian who I always try to support in everything that he does (although, admittedly, he does so much that I struggle to keep up half the time).

Unfortunately, I didn't like this film.

The story concerns three dogs, of course. They've been left home alone when their master (Dean Cain) has to rush off to meet a client. He wants to get there, make his pitch, and get home as quickly as possible, allowing himself time to get everything ready for the Christmas dinner that his partner will be expecting when she walks back through the door. Anyway, while he's away, a couple of robbers break in and help themselves to the tree and gifts. The three dogs (small, white and cute - not exactly the best guard dogs) decide to track the thieves, which results in them eventually being stranded in the middle of nowhere. Who can help them get home in time for Christmas? Perhaps a Santa Claus (Richard Riehle), but only if they can avoid the clutches of a master dogcatcher named Barney Gloatt (Oberst Jr), a man who only needs to catch three more dogs to break a world record.

My Spidey-sense started tingling when I saw how many hats Jesse Baget was wearing on this movie. Not that I dislike Baget. I wasn't even aware of him before this movie, although checking out his filmography has reminded me of a couple of titles that I've been meaning to see at some point. He wrote, directed and co-produced the movie. He also provides two of the main dog voices, with Danielle Judovits providing the third.

That tingling got stronger when the dogs started "talking". I expected them to talk, of course, but I didn't expect the FX work to appear quite so cheap and ill-fitting. You could say that I was naive there, and the film can only work within the budget it has, but I would counter by suggesting that Baget could have gotten around this problem by either a) simply allowing the dogs to be voicing thoughts that only other dogs could hear or b) simply shooting less scenes that put all focus on a dog with CGI mouth movements stuck in front of its face.

The acting style is broad, no doubt about that, and no crime in it either. This is aime squarely at kids. Movements and quirks are exaggerated, with most of the adults appearing onscreen shown to be stumbling, bumbling figures obviously needing help from, or to be outsmarted by, the three dogs. Cain only has a few scenes, and he's over the top in all of them, while Riehle basically comes in for the final third of the movie and has the easier job of playing a mall Santa. Oberst Jr. has the biggest role, and he has fun being a cartoonish villain. My biggest problem with his performance was the accent, which seemed to start off as Eastern European and then switch, at some point, to French. The man usually isn't so inconsistent, which leaves me to wonder whether or not writer-director-producer-dogateer Baget started the movie with one idea and then decided to change things as he went along.

Younger children should be reasonably amused by this, but only if you catch them at just the right time. There are some amusing verbal gags, a few ill-timed farts, and a sequence in which the dogs make good their getaway by driving a car (never mind the physical impossibility of it all - it's teamwork, dammit). And the dogs are cute.

Everyone else should probably give this one a miss.

3/10

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Bad Ass (2012)

Danny Trejo is a badass. You know it, I know it, everyone has been well aware of it for years now. But in this movie he IS Bad Ass. He gets his own theme tune and everything, which makes it all impossible to deny.

Springboarding from a real incident (shown here on YouTube), Bad Ass is all about Frank Vega (played by Trejo), a man who hasn't had much luck since the days that he spent serving his country in the war. Time and opportunities kept slipping away from him until he was an old man without much in his life. But all of that changes when he retaliates against two thugs on a bus and the whole incident is recorded by witnesses and uploaded online. Frank becomes a hero though he doesn't think of himself as a hero. He just wants to get on with his life and be left in peace. But it's not long before more violence occurs in his life and he has to continue being a badass while others are left to clear up the mess.

I, and many other movie fans that I know of, think Danny Trejo is great so I'm happy to see him getting more lead roles than ever before. His biggest role might always be Machete but films like this one are good enough to keep fans happy, even if they aren't actually great.

Directed by Craig Moss (who also pitched in here and there to tweak the screenplay by Elliot Tishman), the movie is an easy sell to anyone who has enjoyed films such as Walking Tall, Urban Justice, Death Wish and Harry Brown. The fact that it has Trejo in the lead role and a supporting cast that includes Charles S. Dutton, Ron Perlman, Richard Riehle in a small role and Craig Sheffer in a blink-and-miss-him cameo also helps. Joyful Drake and young John Duffy may not be as well known but they're likeable enough in their roles.

Sadly, other aspects of the movie are quite poor. The action isn't too bad but the script is weak, and laughably bad in places, and the actual plot is a bit cheesy and ridiculous (e.g. the moment in which Frank Vega easily finds some evidence missed by police). Then we have the way in which Frank gets to know his neighbour, Amber Lamps (Drake, playing a character actually named as a nod to the way in which the word "ambulance" was said by the asswhipped idiot in the original, real life event). It's just unbelievable even if it allows for a number of nice domestic scenes showing a softer side of the character, and a softer side of Trejo.

So it's unbelievable at times, cheesy and ridiculous and has a very weak script. Despite those flaws, I still can't help rating the movie above average because Trejo is just so enjoyable in the lead role.

6/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Ass-DVD-Danny-Trejo/dp/B0083TZXSE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347906754&sr=8-1

Office Space (1999)

Written and directed by Mike Judge, Office Space resonates with a hell of a lot of people just as much now as it did when it was first released. The fact that the film wasn't given much, if any, support and advertising when it was released perhaps explains why those who love the film are so loyal to it. It's a cult hit but it's a cult hit with a lot of appeal to anyone who has been stuck in an office job at some point in their lives. It's a movie that you can watch nowadays and share with others, an experience full of familiarity and wish-fulfilment that makes for perfect viewing when you need cheering up after a bad day at work.

Ron Livingston plays the central character, Peter Gibbons, one of the hundreds of thousands of people who seem to spend their working days trying to hold on to whatever is left of their sanity from the moment they wake up to the moment they leave the office. He stares at the cubicle walls around him and spends a lot of his day just zoning out. That all changes, however, when he takes part in a unique hypnotherapy session that leaves him completely calm and not caring one bit about his job. This could get him fired, of course, but actually ends up making him look better to the two consultants who are checking out the company and "streamlining" some departments.

It's a bit rough around the edges, and not quite as sharp as it could be, but Office Space well and truly deserves the reputation that it has amongst people who have been praising it for years. The central characters are all superb but the biggest laughs come from the supporting cast of downtrodden workers (especially Milton, played by Stephen Root - a pretty perfect physical interpretation of the animated character*).

Ron Livingston is ably supported by David Herman and Ajay Naidu, both portraying fellow sufferers, and there's yet another wonderful turn from the always wonderful Richard Riehle. Gary Cole is hilarious as the office boss while John C. McGinley and Paul Wilson prompt more laughs as the two consultants impressed by Peter's attitude. Then there's Jennifer Aniston, giving a bright and breezy performance as Joanna, a woman stuck in a different kind of workday hell at an eatery named Chotchkie's.

It's a shame that a subplot about the workers trying to make themselves a small, dishonest profit feels shoehorned in and not that well thought out but there are enough brilliant scenes (many of them involving a frustrating printer) to raise the movie well above average and make the whole thing worth repeated viewings.

*For those who don't know, Mike Judge made the film based on his own animated works, "Milton", that proved to be very popular on Saturday Night Live.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Office-Space-DVD-Ron-Livingston/dp/B0000BZNIU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342348922&sr=8-1

Chillerama (2011)

Chillerama is an anthology movie mixing a little bit of horror with plenty of comedy and plenty of that old grindhouse/drive-in cinema style. We've seen plenty movies in this vein recently - Grindhouse seemed to lead the resurgence but I'm happy as long as we keep getting fun flicks like Black Dynamite, Machete and Hobo With A Shotgun - but for every film that takes care to emulate the style and still throw some great content onscreen we seem to get one or two that just use the trappings to excuse a low budget that could have been put to better use. Or something that just misfires like Nude Nuns With Big Guns. Chillerama really falls in between the two extremes and, like many other anthology movies, it's a mix of good and bad.

The basic wraparound premise involves a bunch of folk going along to enjoy themselves at the last night of their local drive-in cinema. But there's danger between the cars as well as on the big screen and in between each story segment we catch up with the action as a strange condition develops amongst the cinema patrons.
But what's the cinema actually showing on this final night? Well, first up we have "Wadzilla" (written and directed by Adam Rifkin), the demented tale of a man (also played by Adam Rifkin) with such a low sperm count that he only tends to produce one at a time. When he receives medication to strengthen that sperm there are unexpected side effects and it's not long before one giant monster sperm is destroying New York City. The second tale is "I Was A Teenage Werebear" (written and directed by Tim Sullivan), another demented tale but this time all about sexuality, acceptance and teenage angst. And then it's on to "The Diary Of Anne Frankenstein", the segment written and directed by Adam Green and worth bonus points for the title alone. The fact that it's about Adolf Hitler (played by Joel David Moore) trying to make a giant monster that will help him win the war guarantees fun. There's the promise of "Deathication" but it proves to be just a tease as we then get carried away into the finale of the ongoing "Zom-B-Movie" (written and directed by Joe Lynch).

With the talent involved behind the camera and a cast that includes an eclectic mix of Richard Riehle, Joel David Moore, Ray Wise, Lin Shaye, Eric Roberts, Ron Jeremy (?!?), AJ Bowen, Sean Paul Lockhart, Anton Troy, Kristina Klebe, Kane Hodder, Kaili Thorne, Briana Mackay, Corey Jones . . . . . . . . well, you can't say that those involved didn't give things a good try.

Sadly, while some of the humour works and a lot of the madness is impressively outrageous, there's a lot here that doesn't hit the mark. A lot of references are scattered throughout the movie but a lot of lines of dialogue are also spoken by cine-literate characters who rarely seem to use their own words (or, at least, that's how it feels). "Wadzilla" is a lot of fun but it's almost too over the top compared to the beginning of the movie and suffers because the tone hasn't been set for it. "I Was A Teenage Werebear", I'm very sad to say, is the weakest segment. It has some fun referencing the likes of Rebel Without A Cause and Grease but the treatment of the material is coarse and too heavy-handed in a way that ends up being off-putting. Camp material can be absolutely great entertainment, especially delivered by someone like the great John Waters (for example), but Tim Sullivan doesn't get it right. Which is a shame, as I like Tim Sullivan. Redemption comes in the second half of the movie, however, with both "The Diary Of Anne Frankenstein" and "Zom-B-Movie" making up for plenty. There are still mis-steps, and the fact that the film clocks in at about the two hour mark doesn't help at all, but the fun is in full swing and viewers are completely accustomed to the vibe of the film by the halfway point.

So it's nowhere near as good as many other movies I could mention (and, indeed, already have) but it's nowhere near as bad as the very worst you can watch either. Which makes it decidedly average.

5/10.

http://www.amazon.com/Chillerama-Unrated-Richard-Riehle/dp/B005G02LD8