solidgameboy12-1

Kevin Smith, if you are reading this, then recognize how hard it is for me to say this: Red State isn't perfect, but it's got enough good ideas going for it, that it makes what could have been average seem slightly better, and I didn't enjoy watching it as much as I wanted to, but I am glad I did see it.

For Everybody else, Red State follows three kids, all generic no-names, who find a website that allows them to find women who are more than willing to fool around. As such, they set out to meet with said stranger, finding out the next day that the person that has drugged and is holding them captive is actually Abin Cooper's Five Points Church, a cult based off of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church from Kansas.

The movie has an intro, a middle and an end, and it's sad to say that both the middle and intro lack so much character and definition from Smith's previous movies that if you didn't recognize it was a Kevin Smith film from the beginning, you'd assume it was some random pulp exploitation picture made by a bunch of no names starring Melissa Leo, Michael Parks and John Goodman and a bunch of kids in movies you've probably never seen.

The movie had so much riding on it, from the moment Kevin announced it, I was on board. I've been a Kevin Smith fan for some time, perhaps not as long as most fans, but I still enjoy his work. However, when he made this movie, it didn't feel as strong as a Kevin Smith film or even a horror film, for that matter.

The villianry of Abin Cooper's flock comes off as silly in some parts, and it's sad that it had to be done in such a cut-paste style of other cult pictures. An Example has a man being executed and one of the members starts chanting, "Send the Sinners straight to hell", and while not a poor delivery, it's so cliché that it took me out of the picture. Not to mention, nearly the entire flock sport accents that sound native to the deep south and again, hearing phrases like, "I'll take care of it, Daddy", seem comical, which is wrong, because it shouldn't be so funny, but it breaks the flow because the accent and the nonchalant delivery makes it seem so average.

None of the characters have backgrounds, being more caricatures than people. The saving graces (A term I use lightly) of the picture are the actors, who do a fine enough job with what is written in front of them. Michael Parks in some scenes tries to act with dialog that's rather wooden, where I get the feeling if he were allowed to ham the performance up, it might have made the character seem more villainous. He does have some moments, such as when he's surrounded by death all around him, Parks makes Abin seem so detached that all he does is remark how the Bible says they did good. Not to mention, a real tense scene with Abin talking to a cop over a radio was the type of evil that really needed to be within the whole picture.

Melissa Leo does as good as she can, most of her scenes have her doing the kind of overacting that made Raul Julia's performance in 1994's "Street Fighter" fantastic.

The film sadly squanders the other actors, John Goodman, Kevin Pollak and Stephen Root do what they can, and of the time they are on screen, they don't do too much.

The problems with the film are simple: if you have a villain that's toted as "so bad, Nazis don't even want to have their politics associated with them", It would help if we got some kind of indicator, instead of lots of talking.

However, the ending is probably going to be the polarizer of the year. I actually like the ending, because of the way Smith ends the picture, it's an ending that people should follow whenever we see the WBC protesting for one reason of another. Short of that, the first two halves of the film don't make the picture seem anything more than generic, the horror isn't horrifying enough and the action is nearly non-existent.

I will say as a Kevin Smith fan, however, don't watch the film expecting "Clerks" or anything living within the View-Askew universe. I recommend it for seeing what an director can do wrong, but what he can do right, All the same, if you saw the movie and didn't like it, I understand entirely why, but if you liked it, I could understand why all the same.

I won't lie when I say that I liked 1990's Dollman. Tim Thomerson running around as Brick Bardo was simply the highlight of what could have been the worst movie in the world, but oddly enough, that movie was filled with enough humor and camp to make a movie that was only a hour and 17 minutes feel like a complete picture, even if one or two parts of the movie kind of slowed everything down.

Now, I cannot speak on the behalf of either "Bad Channels" or "Demonic Toys", but all I can say is that if "Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys" is an indicator, "Demonic Toys" would be an insult, but somewhat laughable attempt at trying to cash in on the "Child's Play" series of films from the 80s, and Bad Channels would seem like something of an original idea kind of like how "Dollman" was an original idea.

When I sat down for "Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys", I wasn't expecting anything other than maybe a less than average horror movie with a movie character I would be rooting for to defeat the Chucky Knockoff possessed toys. What I got was a movie that was padded so much, leaves so little explained and a plot that was squandered, which I feel is disrespectful for its target audiences, which would have to be the purists who watch these low budget movies to begin with.

The problem with Versus movies is that for the most part, you have to cover both sides of the tracks for the characters that are going head to head, and you run into the issue of giving away almost all the back story or none of the back story. This movie, unfortunately, pads the entire picture with all three major characters' back stories, With Dollman's back story being the longest, since he actually has more plot and character to work with.

This is insulting for the audience, because if you already know the back story (again, only the fans would watch this sequel because they have seen all the movies), this stuff you just fast-forward, and then you take off what feels about 4 to 5 minutes of film. The film also insults its audience by using lots to tactics to make the movie longer, such as having almost four minute intro credits, four minute out credits, and one very obnoxious long shot of a guard reading a magazine that didn't look like he was reading a magazine so much as it looked like he was...ahem, having "fun" with himself.

The movie also avoids explaining how in the beginning, Dollman was hitching a ride, and the next time we see him, he magically meets Nurse Ginger from "Bad Channels", or how the cop found Nurse Ginger without anything more than a reporter saying she lives in a select town.

The movie is really nothing more than continuous padding, and by the time we get to the versus part of it all, it's so anti-climatic, you almost feel like apologizing to somebody that's not you for wasting the complete hour you used to watch this movie. And let's not even touch on the fact that every one of the Demonic Toys is more obnoxious than Beetlejuice and Drop Dead Fred on a caffeine high. I don't understand how there are fans of the toys, but I know that Chucky is more tolerable than the continuously laughing clown or the baby doll with a potty mouth so lame that George Carlin would have cried in embarrassment over the thought that somebody would find some part of this threatening or even funny.

The movie is an insult to us all. For all the fans of their respectable films, watch those movies over again. At least you know you can honor their films with more respect than this. It doesn't matter whether the film is "Alien Vs. Predator", or "Freddy Vs. Jason", if you watch this versus, it really, really doesn't matter who wins, we all lose.

2/10

I remember the first time I saw the previews for Jonah Hex, and I'm sure you might have seen it too. It had shown, in the brief flashes of a 30 second commercial, a scene where the aforementioned lead is shown, on horseback, cranking the handles of two Gatling guns along the back of a rearing horse. I think people that went into this movie thinking it was going to be a serious picture were probably the same misinformed people who thought a movie like "The Watchmen" was going to be a action packed superhero movie for kids based entirely on the fact that everybody was in costume.

Jonah Hex is a sci-fi western quite unlike any other. In fact, I would be more inclined to think less about The Good, The Bad and The Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West and more along the lines of Hellboy or The Crow when seeing this movie. The Story begins almost immediately as Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin), tied up outside his home and approached by a villainous Confederate general, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), who we learn, is proclaiming vengeance for the death of his son, kills the only family Hex had, and then branding him with a mark he will never forget.

Supranaturally, Hex dies and is brought back to life by a Native American tribe. Hex, reborn, now has the ability to speak to the dead, and his first order of business; Find and kill Quentin Turnbull.

I will say right now, this movie had no aspirations of being serious. Even in the opening credits, the Warner Brothers logo comes up and the sound of "As Time Goes By" is played on a swaggering guitar more suited for the score of Raising Arizona than a comic book movie, or even a western, for that matter. That should be an indicator that this movie is not going to be a real serious affair. Hell, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World did it to the Universal Logo, and that was a blast.

The film is actually just fine. It's not great, but it's not utterly horrible, and everybody involved seems to do, well, okay, not great, but given the script by Nevaldine and Taylor (Who wrote and directed Gamer and Crank's 1 & 2), What else can you complain about?

The problem with the movie is that it is a cash-in. It has to be, because if anyone truly respected the source material, we would have had more told to us about Jonah himself, or the hooker with a heart of gold, Lilah (Megan Fox from Transformers), or Quentin Turnbull himself. In Fact, Jonah's story in the beginning is told with two minutes of animated visuals, so instead of showing us like a Superhero movie might do, this one tells us. The movie score seems to mix together a traditional western sound in some parts, but it's mostly electric guitar chords, which told me the movie is, again, a cash-in. The problem with this movie is that is was written as a sequel and not as a real origin story. Had the movie been written as a real origin story, We would have seen Jonah Hex develop his abilities as a speaker of the dead instead of telling us; We would have learned how Lilah and Jonah are so comfortable with one another, and we could have understood the story a little bit more and it wouldn't have had to been so frantic in its presentation.

Strangely enough, though I criticize everything wrong with it, I just can't get myself to give it the truly negative review I want to give it. The movie isn't a brain drain, more like a brain shut off; you go in for about 1 hour and 10 minutes and there you go. If nothing else, you killed time watching a steampunk fantasy about a supernatural cowboy and a loyal hooker. I can't think of any movie more deserving of being called a guilty pleasure quite like this one. I certainly couldn't recommend it to anybody without laughing about it, but I enjoyed it enough that on a TV edit, I'd watch it again.

5/10.