I Know Who Killed Me

This was Richard Roeper's pick as the worst film of 2007 and the the 3rd worst reviewed film of 2007 according to Metacritic. I approached this with the hope that it was so bad it would be fun. Alas no fun is here...

Lindsay Lohan plays Aubrey who is a shy gal who aspires to be a writer. Something tramatic (a kidnapping) happens to her and she starts losing a grip on reality with her fictional persona Dakota. You see Dakota is a tough talking stripper who uses her sexuality to get what she wants. So while the mystery of that tramatic event hangs over everything, Audrey lives out her dark side. (Minus a hand and leg)

I Know Who Killed Me wastes Brian McNamara (Arachnophobia, Caddyshack 2) and Neal McDonough (Boomtown, Ravenous) in inconsequential parts. The second half of the films consists of a horrid guessing game as to who may have been the kidnapper blah blah blah. Lindsay Lohan is absolutely miscast here. Her smoker's voice seems barely able to read aloud the narration at times. Plus, how many strippers don't actually get naked when they strip? Not that nudity would have been the answer, but the director seems to try and add that lurid sexuality to the film, but fails.

Basically all this amounts to is pretentious trash. Look for a cameo from 24's Gregory Itzin midway through the film coz God knows you'll need some reason to stay awake. Pretty bad, not sure if this was the worst of the year. Here's hoping screenwriter Jeffrey Hammond stops for good.

0/100

Brad Renfro dead...

The kid from The Client dead at 25. Read about it here.

The Science of Michel Gondry

Michel has directed lots of weird videos including Radiohead and Massive Attack, but the past few years he has been doing feature films. Gondry did one absolutely brilliant film in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and a flawed one in The Science of Sleep. His next film seems to be a step back for him with Jack Black. 95% of all Jack Black films are nothing more than moronic concepts stretched out over 90 minutes. So how do I feel that Gondry's next one smacks of the same stupid Jack Black? I feel dirty...that's how I feel. Check out this article over at Indiewire about the man behind the weird.

First Snow

Mark Fergus and his screenwriting partner Hawk Ostby have already contributed a strong screenplay in last year's Children of Men. They have another in production for this year with the much anticipated Iron Man... but their first collaboration with Fergus in the directing chair was this tiny film called First Snow.

Guy Pearce is Jimmy Starks; a flooring salesman always looking for the next big thing. Pearce always happens to be a bad driver... he winds up waiting for his car to be fixed one day... he decides to have his fortune told by a roadside psychic (JK Simmons). Simmons tell him of a windfall of money that will be coming his way and a darker event that he will not go into that will come with the season's "first snow."

Starks is convinced that the psychic is telling the truth after a basketball game predicted comes true and so does the riches that were foretold. A shooting target is put in his mailbox... is someone out to get Starks? Is it possibly an old childhood friend who was burned in some scheme by the Feds? First Snow sets up possibilities and follows Starks down the path to his fate. Good supporting turns from Piper Perabo as Jimmy's girlfriend and William Fichtner as his business associate.

Pearce is always terrific and does a wonderful job picking offbeat parts. Every since he stepped on the screen in LA Confidential, Pearce has radiated a quiet superiority over the rest of the characters on screen. In First Snow, this lends an air of doom when the Starks character for once isn't in control.

Mark Fergus does a solid job in his first try as director. The shots are well done without being overly showy. Lingering moments combined with the music by Cliff Martinez (Wicker Park, Traffic) create a haunting trip into madness. I am very intrigued to see Fergus's sophomore effort behind the camera.

First Snow seems to have dissenters in regards to the ending. The final sequence is set up consistently throughout. When you think about it, how else could it end?

80/100

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem

The first AVP actually worked for me. You could tell that director Paul W.S. Anderson was a fan of the series. It was back to the basics of the first Alien movie: a bunch of humans trapped in confined space with an alien. Only in AVP, you also had the Predators there hunting the aliens down. I think it gets a bad rap for being a soft movie with a Pg-13 rating, but really it was just a well done film for the genre. I expected much less and got something pretty decent. Anderson did much the same with the first Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat films... neither one of those were really good, but they weren't awful either.

So going into AVP2, I thought hey... remember last time... this could end up being kind of fun. Boy was I wrong...not a good time. My gal Reiko Aylesworth from 24 stars as one of the human fodder in the war between the aliens... she is a mom just back from Iraq who's daughter has lost touch with her. Steven Pasquale from Rescue Me is also here as a troublemaker coming home to a small Colorado town to find his way. There are more people, but none of them are worth mentioning.

The aliens have infected the predator from the first film and cause the ship to crash land on Earth. A mercenary predator gets the last transmission broadcast and sets out to hunt down those damn facehuggers. Cue the small town life... bullies ... pregnant women... all are fair game here. Hardly any back story is set up which would be impossible with all the humans here. Pasquale never really gets anything to do except to follow his friend the sheriff around to each new scene.

Reiko, playing a soldier, doen'st get going until the last twenty minutes. One would think being a soldier she would be pretty badass ala Ripley in the first two Alien films... no no not here.

The first time directors, The Strause Brothers, missed out on a big time chance to really establish this franchise here. I know that the budget was slashed from the first film with the effects looking somewhere on par with a SciFi channel film... hell Battlestar Galactica looks better. My friend commented quite accurately that one scene looked like it was from the remnants of a Babylon 5 episode. So the budget isn't there... you can work around that. You've got a badass leading actress who looks as good sweaty as you can find in an action film... you've got a previous film that has gotten a lot of attention and everyone is just waiting for you to do something good... and then you give us this? Action and sci-fi fans deserve better.

0/100
+ 5 for Reiko... we'll always have 24.
5/100

I'm not dead...

I've just been busy. It seems with the large influx of people to the theatres this holiday season, I've found less time to update this site and watch movies. I'll get crackin' on that this week. First up is Reiko Aylesworth AKA Michelle Dessler of 24 starring in AVP 2 and that poorly reviewed Lindsay Lohan movie that sounds so bad I have to see it.


Here is a feature about my boy Baron Davis's favorite films of the year. Not too bad considering... although he does knock Zodiac.

Closure

Closure is the tale of a business woman named Alice (Gillian Anderson) who hooks up with her young fellow (Danny Dyer) who is installing her security system. She dresses him up and takes him to a company party where they indulge in some alcohol and steamy sex in the woods. A perfect evening is ruined when the happy couple hit a moose. In the process of moving it off the road, they are assaulted and Alice is raped.

The rest of the film devolves into The Brave One times Straw Dogs times Showtime cable crap. There just isn't any character development at all so when the heinous act happens the audience doesn't care. Very limited dialogue so as not to show the fact that Anderson is using an awful British accent.

Closure is a waste of film. The only thing I got out of it was that Gillian Anderson is now in damn good shape. Otherwise, this was 80 minutes I could have been watching X-Files reruns.

0/100