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Final Destination (Blu-ray)
by Decanus
I'll confess to being a bit of a horror fan on the side, though not quite so keen on the modern variations like the 'Saw' series and 'Hostel', which I find a bit too much. More of an Evil Dead/ A Nightmare on Elm Street cartoon horror kind of guy! which is probably why I like the Final Destination series in general, as they nicely tie ... together the twin strands of horror and humour. A direct descendant of Wes Craven's fun take on horror with the 'Scream' series, the films are low on plot and character, high on silly yet creative methods of killing people.Luckily there is still a market for that sort of thing.
'The Final Destination in 3D' (Really, marketing people?! that's the best title you could come up with? sheesh) is actually Final Destination 4 for all intents and purposes, but now with that irritating studio-led format, 3D!. Released in 2009, this was directed by David Ellis and written by Eric Bress, both of whom worked on Final Destination 2. Interestingly, Director Ellis persuaded the studio to shoot the film in New Orleans, to help with the city's regeneration after Hurricane Katrina.
THE (largely identikit and disposable) CAST:-
Bobby Campo as Nick O'Bannon
Shantel VanSanten as Lori Milligan
Mykelti Williamson as George Lanter
Nick Zano as Hunt Wynorski
Haley Webb as Janet Cunningham
Krista Allen as Samantha Lane
Andrew Fiscella as Andy Kewzer
I could be sly and write a plot summary in just 4 words - 'You can't cheat Death' - but I'll be using that when I review Final Destination...and Final Destination 2....and 3. You get the picture. The studio knows what sells, and you are getting pretty much the same as the other films in the series. You get the teenage central character, this time Nick O'Bannon, suddenly hit by a premonition that features a suitably horrific event which leaves them and their friends as dead victims, this time a huge race car crash at a speedway track (previous ones include a plane crash and a motorway pile up). The premonition allows the character to warn their friends, and although the disaster still occurs and people die, the character and his/her friends escape. However, fate is not pleased when this happens, and takes steps to 'correct' universal harmony by killing the people who should have died....in a variety of wacky and gruesome ways. Hey, fate has to have some fun, right? Honestly, this plot fits any of the films.
So what does this particular installment have going for it? well, it has 3D. it was shot specifically in 3D, so you do get several blatant instances in the film where the camera angle is obviously dictated by having something fly out at you. What I liked though, was that the use of the 3D was very knowing, so as well as flying body parts one minute you'll get a bottle cork the next. In fact, probably the biggest thing the film has going for it is the humour. Quite often, a character will do something that they know is blatantly stupid, but do it anyway, almost as though they 'know' they are just disposable characters in a film. The acting is pretty much what you expect from the teen horror genre....passable. You do, however, get great hair and great teeth. Hey, who wants to see ugly people die horribly, right?
The bad things? quite a lot. As low on story and character development as these films are, this is by far the worst. Almost any sense has been jettisoned in favour of the 3D gimmick, and by just having these more and more outlandish set-pieces in which someone dies. Vacant acting, terrible dialogue. The characters? couldn't even call them that, virtually no discernable personality at all, just archetypes/ stereotypes waiting to be killed.
and yet...I didn't totally dislike it, I'm ashamed to say. I enjoy the humorous take on these things, and at only 80 minutes long, it is not bad as brain dead entertainment. Don't get me wrong, it's the worst in the series by a mile, but it had a little charm...and death by tyre IS pretty funny (you'll have to watch!)
BLU-RAY SPECS
Firstly, this is old-school 3D, so you get the annoying specs to wear, but they come packaged with the blu-ray.; you can watch in either 3D or 2D, a menu option allows this. There a handful of featurettes to watch as well:-
'Body Count: The Deaths' - marvel at the skill needed to kill people!the crew show us how they do it.
'Racecar Crash' - this was actually pretty good. We see how the opening race car crash scene was made, through storyboard, animatics and rough visual effects.
'Mall Explosion' - as above, three ways to look at this big set-piece scene
'Alternate Endings' - the film could have ended even worse than it did. Watch this to see 2 other endings.
Ironically, 'The Final Destination in 3D' was the worst reviewed of the Final Destination films, yet the highest earning of all the series. These studio boys know their audiences! Pretty cheap to pick up these days, so take a peek if curious, but there's a lot better out there.
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Zaat (Blu-Ray)
by hogsflesh
A review of the dual-format release from America which contains a DVD and Blu-ray. The Blu-ray seems to be region A, so won't work on most UK players. The DVD is region free. It costs about £12.
This is a spectacularly bad American monster movie from 1971. Hundreds of films were made in America in the era, far away from the ... resources of Hollywood - regional movies, usually in exploitation genres, made in the hope of some local drive-in action and maybe getting the filmmakers noticed. While the regional horror boom gave us a few genuinely great films - Night of the Living Dead is the most famous example - the large majority of them are dreadful. Zaat is very much in the latter category.
A mad scientist, who is an ageing Nazi for good measure, is obsessed with trying to splice humans and catfish to create a hybrid creature that will rule the universe. (He definitely specifies 'the universe'. It's nice to see a villain who thinks big.) He dutifully transforms himself into a monster, swims around some Florida swamps, and kills a few people. A local sheriff and a marine biologist investigate, and soon call in the big guns: INPIT, some kind of federal agency for fighting pollution-based swamp monsters (I honestly can't remember what INPIT is meant to stand for). Meanwhile, the monster sets out to look for a mate...
I wouldn't worry too much about him finding one, though. The film was PG rated, so there's not even so much as a hint of side boob. We see one lady having a shower, but only from behind a shower curtain. A few bikini shots are as sexy as this gets. There's also no gore to speak of, although we do see a dead fish apparently dipped in acid, and a few scenes featuring blood without any visible wounds or gore.
Swamp monsters on the rampage - especially those created by man (the most dangerous animal of all, let's not forget) - are quite an endearing little subgenre. Creature From the Black Lagoon is the best known, but cheesier, sleazier efforts like Slithis or Humanoids From the Deep are more fun. Zaat is a tame but intermittently hilarious entry into the cycle.
The vast majority of the people in this film never made another, and there's a good reason for that. The film is full of the kinds of problems you get with non-professional actors: over-emphatic or deadening line delivery, and people speaking too quickly in an effort to get all their lines out before they forget them. Sometimes this kind of bad acting is inherently loveable, and the cast of Zaat are ultimately quite endearing. The heroes are a black guy who looks about 12 (even though his character has some kind of fancy shmancy college education) and a man who looks a bit like Gil Gerard out of Buck Rogers.
The characterisation is horrible inadequate, though. Everyone is just bland. You'd expect the sheriff in a film like this to be a head-cracking redneck, but when he stumbles across a group of hippies singing in an abandoned building he sits and listens to their songs for a few minutes, tapping his knee in appreciation. He then locks them away for their own protection. (And apparently out of a genuine desire to keep them safe; not in the same way as we invaded Iraq 'for its own good'.) The two INPIT agents are apparently lovers too, but we never find out enough about them to care, apart from the fact that they wear awful red jumpsuits.
The scientist's motives are shaky at best. No purpose at all seems to be served by having him be a Nazi, and I've still no idea what the spermy-looking stuff he sprayed into the swamp was meant to do. But he turns into one of the funniest monsters I've ever seen. It's huge, green, and made of plastic. It faintly resembles the Star Wars character Greedo in profile, but is a lot bigger and a lot bulkier. The monster costume is slightly too buoyant in the underwater scenes, and water can be seen pouring out of the mask when it comes up for air. Best of all, the guy in the suit obviously can't see a thing in that mask. He stumbles pretty much every time he appears. The rubbishness of the costume defeats any chance the film had of being taken seriously, and it's so awful there must have been at least some awareness of how bad it was.
The best monster moments come when he decides to raid a pharmacy, for reasons that aren't made completely clear (although the way the creature keeps grabbing at its midriff while bending over slightly suggest he's got an upset stomach). He trashes the place, knocking bottles of pills flying. Rather wonderfully, he manages not to disturb the rack of sunglasses by the counter. There's also a lot of footage of the monster wandering round his mad science laboratory tinkering with cheap-looking mad science equipment.
There's a lot of padding in this. There are frequent cuts to rather muddy looking footage of various sea creatures. At the start of the film we see the mad scientist pottering around his lab and turning himself into a monster in a sequence that takes a staggering 15 minutes. And then there's the sheriff's bizarre and completely irrelevant encounter with the hippies (who look authentically scuzzy and stoned, and who sing a lame song about following Jesus). We spend at least 15 minutes watching them sit around happily singing together. Otherwise the music is either terrible library stuff or semi-endearing electronic howl noises.
Zaat is a fun little monster movie which you should enjoy as long as you don't expect it to make sense or scare you. It's great that films like this were made, even if they don't really go anywhere or work on any meaningful level.
This has had amazing care lavished on it for such an obscure film. I think it was sneered at on Mystery Science Theater 3000 once, so maybe it's a bigger deal in America than it is here. The Blu-ray picture quality is pretty good - amazing considering the type of film this is, but obviously not so hot compared to, say, Jaws or Star Wars. I guess the DVD serves a purpose for UK viewers, as most people won't have a multi-region player. It looks fine, although the Blu-ray is obviously better.
There are interviews, a piece about the guy in the monster suit (who recently passed away) and a commentary. All are kind of nice but won't add a lot to your enjoyment of the film. The best extra is about three minutes of outtakes, most of which see the monster bumping into things or tripping over its own feet. To be honest, though, it does enough of that in the actual feature.
I'm delighted that films like this exist, and am still seriously surprised that this has been released on Blu-ray. It scratches that 'terrible swamp monster film' itch pretty well, but otherwise I wouldn't worry too much.
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Brave (Blu-Ray)
by Decluttering
When I first heard of Pixar's latest project, I have to admit I was a little sceptical. Despite the fact that Pixar have never disappointed me with their films, I was wary of the fact that they were keeping the exact details of the plot a secret. I was lucky enough to go to the European premiere and this meant that at this point, very ... few people knew the content of the story and I think this is the best way to watch it. I was completely taken by suprise by every turn the story took and it had me enchanted from the very beginning to the very end. The film centres around the fate of Princess Merida, the archery loving redhead who is encouraged by her mother, the Queen, to act more like a princess. This is a sharp contrast to her triplet brothers, whose main purpose in life seems to be to cause mischief wherever they go while her father, the King, entertains some special guests to their kingdom.
Pixar have completely transformed the graphics used for "Brave" and while I did not see it myself, I was informed by my boyfriend that I should be impressed. Pixar have undoubtably came a long way since the first feature film, "Toy Story".
The Blu Ray of the film comes with a variety of special features including Audio Commentary, Extended Scenes and my personal favourites, the Pixar shorts. As well as "La Luna", the short shown in cinemas before the film, the Blu Ray contains "The Legend of Mordu", a short which develops the story of one of the characters introduced in the film. At a 93 minute running time for the main feature, this film is a satisfying length as opposed to becoming an epicly long "Lord of the Rings" style film.
Although Disney films are often viewed as being designed for children, there is a lot of enjoyment to be had from the film for people of all ages and can be watched together with the family. The film itself is full of humour and the simple but engaging plotline makes this a brilliant Scottish fairytale.
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