Tag: Lionsgate Films

Cinema Dispatch: Borderlands

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Borderlands and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate Films

Directed by Eli Roth

Video game adaptations have certainly gotten better in the last few years, but there’s still a wide gulf between genuinely good movies and good-for-a-video-game-adaptation. I had mixed feelings about this when the trailer dropped as it looked like a Guardians of the Galaxy knock-off which worked out well for Dungeons & Dragons, but it’s also directed by the guy whose made some of my least favorite movies of all time. Does Eli Roth finally prove himself to be a competent mainstream director with a fun adaptation of a beloved game franchise, or will he be just another director who couldn’t crack the code on turning games into movies? Let’s find out!!

Welcome to Pandora! The planet that is to late-stage Capitalism what Rapture was to Objectivism! Corporations have stripped the planet bare, everyone is a jerk only out for themselves, and the masses are placated with a false promise of ascending up the social ladder by achieving the Pandorian Dream; in this case, finding a secret vault full of ancient alien treasure. Bounty hunter Lilith (Cate Blanchet) is far too savvy to buy into that nonsense, but she makes her way to the planet anyway in order to rescue Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), the daughter of an industrialist (Edgar Ramirez) who was taken to Pandora by Roland (Kevin Hart). When she arrives, she finds the foul-mouthed teen bumming around with Roland and Krieg; the latter being a jacked dude with a mask (Florian Munteanu) who’s surprisingly good with kids. Let’s just say that the rescue goes a bit sideways for Lilith, a situation not helped by a bunch of space cops trying to grab her bounty out from under her, and she ends up stuck with this group of misfits who are there to find the vault and prevent Tina’s dad from using it for evil! With the help of a local scientist (Jamie Lee Curtis) who knows more about the vault than anyone else on the planet as well as a robot named Claptrap (Jack Black) who follows Lilith around and seems to be programmed for maximum annoyance, will they be able to find the one thing on the planet that the wealthy can’t get their hands on and use it to make things better for the people of Pandora? Why did Roland need to take Tina in order to do this, and is does Lilith have a connection to all this that she has yet to understand? Perhaps they can also solve the mystery of how her hair is able to look like that without using super glue and spray paint.

“Seriously, do you use a diffuser when blow-drying it, or is all in the hair gel?”     “Can we talk about something else, please?”
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Cinema Dispatch: Spiral

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Spiral and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate Films

Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

I’ll admit that I broke down and went to the movie twice this year to see movies at a theater; Nobody a few months back and Mortal Kombat a few weeks ago.  This however is what I will consider the genuine start of me returning to theaters to see movies; not just because I’m finally vaccinated but because studios are starting to trickle out the movies that they had been holding onto for a year now starting with this reboot of sorts for the Saw franchise.  Now I thought Jigsaw was a perfectly well executed movie that sadly did same tired thing we saw in the previous films.  This movie on the other hand looks like it will be going in a different direction which is what I was hoping for from the last movie, but can Lionsgate deliver on that promise and reinvigorate the franchise with a bold new vision, or will we be begging for Tobin Bell to be written back into this franchise by any means necessary by the time this movie is through?  As much as I’d like to see Tobin Bell’s head in a jar I’m hoping this doesn’t turn out THAT badly, but let’s find out!!

We begin our story many years after the death of the Jigsaw Killer John Kramer and follow detective Zeke Banks (Chris Rock), a cop who doesn’t trust other cops; especially after he ratted on one of his officers for straight up shooting a witness in the face and has had to look over his shoulder ever since.  Because of this he likes to work alone, but after a recent undercover job goes sideways (one that he neglected to tell anyone he was doing), he’s assigned a rookie named William Schenk (Max Minghella) to try and keep him in line and reign in his behavior.  He would have been out on his butt if his father (Samuel L Jackson) wasn’t the former police chief that everyone still respects, but that’s where the good luck ends as his best friend on the force is murdered in some convoluted death trap and his body parts along with taunting clues are sent to him at the police station; all mimicking John Kramer’s MO down to the red spiral symbol.  It’s a race against time as everyone is working to find out who the new Jigsaw Killer is, but with so many enemies on the force can Zeke trust any of them to have his back?  On top of that, why is this new killer targeting Zeke, and what secrets will he uncover about his own past along the way?  I wonder how much nonsensical lore they had to read while going through the old Jigsaw case files.  Was anyone in the world of the Saw movies able to ACTUALLY figure out what the heck was going on?

“Wait, so he was dead by 2006?”     “Yeah, and he had two disciples, but one of them died in 2006 as well.”     “I thought he had three.”     One was a SECRET disciple.”     “So who killed all those people after 2006!?”     “Well there were those two as well as the traps Kramer set before he died, and then there was that one guy who cut his leg off in 2004. ”     “So HE was part of all this too!?”     “Maybe?”
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Cinema Dispatch: Jigsaw

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

JIGSAWCD0

Jigsaw and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate Films

Directed by Peter Spierig and Michael Spierig

I have a… complicated relationship with the Saw films as a few of them are ACTUALLY pretty solid thrillers, but ALL of them suffer from some fundamental problems that dogged this series throughout its seven film run; not to mention accruing brand new problems along the way that only made it harder and harder to take seriously.  I guess that’s not unusual for a series like this as the downfall of horror favorites like Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers are about as stark, but at least with THOSE films I found something to like even in the bad ones as the very loose commitment to continuity allowed for new voices and interesting ideas to permeate the series even when they were in a slump.  Saw is one of the few franchise that took its continuity VERY seriously which is one of the many reasons the films became such a train wreck but is also why I’m genuinely interested to see where this one goes.  Does this new iteration in the franchise right the course and set the stage for a whole new series of much better films, or should they have just let well enough alone?  Let’s find out!!

The movie begins as most Saw movies do with someone dying in a horrible way.  Okay, maybe not THAT horrible as he simply gets shot by the cops, but what appears to be just a car chase gone badly soon reveals itself to be the start of a new Jigsaw game which Detective Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie) is itching to solve along with his partner Detective Hunt (Clé Bennett) and forensic pathologists back at the station (Matt Passmore and Hannah Emily Anderson).  As the game goes through the usual Saw paces of picking off its victims (Laura Vandervoort, Mandela Van Peebles, Paul Braunstein, and Brittany Allen) the bodies start showing up around town to mock the detectives’ lack of progress and to give them subtle clues that will lead them to solving this mystery.  The biggest mystery though is how exactly these games are going on as John Kramer (Tobin Bell) who was the original Jigsaw killer has been dead for over a decade and as far as we know all his protégées have bit the dust by now.  Okay, maybe not Dr Gordon, but if this movie wants to ignore what happened in THE FINAL CHAPTER, I’m perfectly fine with that.  Who is REALLY behind this latest round of murders and could it somehow be John Kramer coming back from beyond the grave?  What do the latest victims of the Jigsaw Killer have in common, and what will they need to sacrifice in order get out of these deadly traps?  Seriously, how many of those freaking puppets did he make anyway!?

JIGSAWCD1
Seems like a lot of effort to go through; especially when he uses his real voice anyway…

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