Posts Tagged ‘Movie Reviews’
Fast and Furious Movie Review
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Fast and Furious Movie – Plot After a successful run of hijacking fuel tankers in the Dominican Republic, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) has become an international criminal. Under increasing pressure from the local police, Dom’s partner Han (from the third film) decides to flee to Tokyo. Dom tries to convince Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) to run away again with him to another country. She refuses, and so he leaves her. (The prologue ends here.)Some time later, Letty is found to have been shot dead in her wrecked car. Dom returns to the scene of her murder just outside of L.A.. There, he discovers traces of nitromethane, which allows him to lead a personal investigation up to a certain David Park, who had purchased the nitromethane for the driver who killed Letty. Park is coerced into helping Dom get a spot in a street race, arranged by Ramon Campos, where he will supposedly find Letty’s killer.Meanwhile, Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), now an FBI agent, is assigned to track down a notorious drug lord named Arturo Braga. Brian’s investigation also leads him to David Park. He arrives at Park’s apartment while Dom is still interrogating him. At the FBI bureau, Park also tells Brian that the aforementioned street race grants the winner a spot on the team that traffics heroin across the United States-Mexico border for Braga. Dom and Brian participate in the race, and Dom wins. Having lost the race, Brian uses his position at the FBI to wrongfully arrest Dwight Mueller, another of Braga’s drivers, in order to usurp Mueller’s spot on the team. Ramon Campos, Braga’s right hand man, invites the drivers to a party, where Dom ends up in a confrontation with a driver called Fenix, and Brian looks for signs of Braga.The next day, the team’s drivers and their cars are smuggled into Mexico to receive the heroin which they are to import across the border at night. They are to meet with Fenix en route and pass through a path of tunnels to evade the surveillance systems used to monitor the borders. Gisele, Braga’s liason, gives Dom a subtle warning in the form of the Spanish phrase “vaya con Dios” After the run, Dom realizes that the drivers are routinely shot and killed after each import job, to avoid having to pay them. Letty, having been in the same situation, was the only driver to get away when they shot her team. The ensuing pursuit led to her car crash and getting shot. Now, just before shooting Brian and Dom, Fenix admits with no remorse that he killed Letty. Suddenly, the cars behind them explode due to sabotage by Dom, who had anticipated the betrayal. Brian uses this diversion to hijack one of the Hummers carrying the heroin, and escape the gunfire with Dom.Back in L.A., they hide the Hummer in the LAPD impound lot, and Brian claims that Dom now owes him a “10-second car”, echoing Dom’s line from the first movie. Dom smashes the window of an impounded Subaru Impreza WRX STi, which he “gives” to Brian. They go to the Torrettos’ house, where Dom learns that Brian had been contacted by Letty, who had agreed to infiltrate Braga’s organization to collect information in exchange for clemency for Dom, so that he could return home to her in LA. This is how she had ended up being one of the drivers for the Braga import job which led to her death. Mia forgives Brian for his past betrayal five years earlier.The next day, he tells his superiors about his plan to lure Braga into a trap, offering him his heroin back in exchange for $6 million, which Braga is to deliver himself. However, Brian requests that the FBI pardon Dom before proceeding with the plan. Campos agrees to Brian’s deal, not knowing that the FBI is poised to arrest Braga at the exchange site. However, the FBI only succeeds in apprehending Braga’s decoy, realizing too late that Campos is the real Braga. Because of this error, Braga is able to evade capture and flees to Mexico, out of the FBI’s jurisdiction. Read the rest of this entry » |
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"Stay Alive" Review
Plot:After the brutal death of a friend, a group of friends find themselves in possession of a video-game called ‘Stay-Alive’, a blood-curdling true story of a 17th century noblewoman known as ‘The Blood Countess’. However, after playing the game when they know they shouldn’t, the friends realize that once they die in the game – they die for real. As their numbers begin dropping and as they begin dying in the ways they died in the game, the remaining friends realize they must defeat the Blood Countess or accept their fates.
Cast: Jon Foster, Samaire Armstrong, Frankie Muniz, Sophia Bush, Jimmi Simpson, Adam Goldberg, Milo Ventimiglia.
My Thoughts:What it lacks in style when it comes to the kills, it makes up for with an original story.
Review:Movies like Stay Alive usually have me leaving the theater going what the hell was that?. But oddly enough, that’s not the way I felt about Stay Alive after seeing it. While the movie did have it’s problems from the standpoint of being a balls to the wall horror movie, it works really well as a dark mystery with horror elements sprinkled in. The jist of Stay Alive centers around a weird video game that someone created and found a way to send out into the world. The bad part of the game is, if you die in it, you die for real, and weirdest of all, you die in real life the way you died in the game. I admit this movie would’ve been hella lame if the game started frying people or killing them in freak accidents ala Final Destination, but writer William Brent Bell is smart enough to give us a villain or should I say villainess that we can identify with, in the legendary countess Elizibeth Bathory. For those of you not familiar with this historical ghoulstess, she killed countless young women back in the dark ages and bathed in their blood, believing that doing so would grant her eternal youth. The dark aspect of the movie makes it’s presence felt early on because when victims number 1,2, and 3 are claimed, it’s by the countess character that appears in the game as it’s boss villainess, if you will. The mystery and burden of one of the first victims death falls upon his avid gamer friends Hutch (Jon Foster), Abigail (Samaire Armstrong), Phineus Bantum (Jimmi Simpson), his sister October (Sophia Bush), Miller (Adam Goldberg), and Swink (Frankie Muniz). Bell manages to keep the mystery of the film fresh, dark, and intriguing as the gamers soon start playing the game in honor of their deceased buddy, and begin to unlock it’s dark secrets. One of the biggest ones being about countess Bathory, and just how the heck can she be back as a video game character? Although this all sounds pretty cheesy in some ways, watching it all play out on screen with these particular actors is quite entertaining and creepy in alot of ways. Alot is revealed about the countess such as how she killed her victims, and when the first of the gamers dies at the hands of the games countess, Sophia Bush’s character begins to draw conclusions connecting the eerie circumstances surrounding his death, to that of past incident involving a few murdered local girls. Stay Alive slinks on blood, guts, and other related nastiness, and instead relies on it’s strong solid mystery aspect. It is after all a pg-13 flick, and while some horror fans might be turned off to the fact that the film is shy with it’s graphicness, the mystery of what is occuring is so engaging, it acts as a distraction from the fact we aren’t seeing people chopped to pieces on screen. Stay Alive also manages to keep Ms. Bathory well hidden most of the way, not fully showing the countess until near the middle of the movie…where one female character in peril utters a pretty bad ass one liner before she’s offed, in what is about the only graphic or semi-graphic death scene in the whole movie. The countess character is pretty creepy looking, and makes for a fantastic villain, especially because she sports a pair of rusty hedgeclipper like weapons in one hand when she pops up on screen…and has a very demented twisted look to her. Bell does show a weakness in his writing though when his story nears the end, which is where the remaining gamers after discovering a way to destroy the blood countess, visit the house of their dead friend to do so. Many things take place in the final act that don’t make sense and work to create more questions while giving little to no answers. That doesn’t do much for the story since there were already many unanswered questions from act 1 and 2 that had yet to be answered – and for those who didn’t pick up on it early on in the movie or who just weren’t paying attention, the films ending manages to square away one of Stay Alive’s biggest mysteries for you all. Despite it’s story-flawed final act, Stay Alive manages to Stay Alive (no pun intended) with an interesting and intriguing story and a pretty creepy looking and viciously wicked villainess, which manages to ensure that the viewer will be able to Stay Awake.
Pros: A very Dark,sinister, intriguing, and interesting story. Pretty good acting, great villainess, and nice sceneries especially in the movies climax which shifts locations from a large house, to a cemetary, to a forest. The ending was also a total curveball.
Cons:Again the story is too open ended and alot of questions about the countess are left unanswered at the conclusion. Another graphic death or two would’ve helped as well, too many cut aways.
Overall:I liked it alot more than I though I would, and I think you might too. It’s not a splatterfest, but in terms of it’s strong story, it’s a movie that will leave you thinking after it’s all over, and is mostly for the horror fan that can appreciate a good mystery with strong horror elements included.
Mr. HoRrOr Webmaster/Administrator at Horror Movies &stuff
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