observation notes: Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus

A lot of people seem to question or even doubt my unwavering love of The Asylum, thinking perhaps I do this with my tongue-in-cheek; I do not, and I shit you not, I have been waiting for this moment since the first crude picture of the Mega Shark vs. Gigantosaurus poster made the rounds following this year's Cannes Festival: the moment I press play on Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus. No build up can do this justice, so let's just get right into it. 

The film opens in a beautiful, remote jungle in the interior of the Congo, where a shady coal mining operation is interrupted by the awakening of a massive, massive fucking crocodile-thing, big enough to make Supercroc look like an asshole.

Cut to a battleship, the USS Gibson - nice - where Jaleel White, portraying the Navy's "shark guy," in title an "aqua acoustical engineer," is summoned by his Captain (Mike Gaglio) to examine strange heat projections picked up by their equipment. The Captain thinks it's a pod of whales, but Jaleel disagrees, says it's too big, and the signature is uniquely shark. The Captain angrily dismisses this, accusing Jaleel of holding on too tight to his theory that the Mega Shark is still alive, which Jaleel himself confirms by restating his point that no carcass was found, nor was there any visual confirmation of the Mega Shark's death. The Captain shoos him away, but Jaleel is more convinced than ever that the Mega Shark is alive and out there somewhere just waiting to strike again. It doesn't wait long, however, as about two minutes later it belly flops onto the deck of the battleship. Awesome to see you again, Mega Shark.

In the course of the ensuing chaos, someone important to Jaleel is killed, making his interest in Mega Shark now more than intellectual, it's personal. That's right: this time it's personal.

Back in the Congo we're introduced to Nigel Putnam (Gary Stretch), a dashing, adventurous, mecenary cryptozoological trapper. He's approached by a representative of the mining corporation and asked to capture the creature responsible for the deaths of 34 of their men, which we know is the Crocosaurus. As the price is right, he naturally accepts. 

Now, I made a promise earlier this week to try and stay as spoiler-free as possible, and I really want to do so here as I believe everyone in the world should see this for themselves, so I'll cease with the plot description for now but to say, by way pf praising Naomi Selfman's script, that how these creatures come together and what happens when they do is nothing short of inventive, plausible for the world in which they exist, and pretty fucking fun to watch, more fun, I have no problem saying, than even its predecessor, and you guys know how much I love the first one. Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus's script trades scientific explanations for adventurous hunts, pitting men with personal commitments to capture/destruction against these mega monsters, as opposed to scientists who chance upon the creatures and clean up the mess. This makes for a more engaging story that flows better than the first, which at times felt interrupted for exposition. Overall, this film is a perfect progression from the first, more confident in its world and therefore more at ease in its narrative; there's less halting, instead just a constant stream of mega-awesomeness.

In addition to Naomi Selfman's script, this progression is made possible thanks to stirring performances from all of its leads. Now, as much as I love the first film, we all know the acting was not its strongest suit. Here, however, the roles are better cast and everybody's on top of their game. The two male leads, Jaleel White ("Family Matters") and Gary Stretch (Alexader), are perfect counterpoints to each other, seemingly different sorts with similar agendas and inspirations. White comes off calm and confident, suave, while alternately intense and brooding. He shows a real penchant for action movies here, and could have a future in the genre. He isn't hard-looking enough, in the face, I mean, to pull of roles like those taken by the likes of Wesley Snipes or Arnold, but he'd make an awesome Bruce Willis-style of hero, and I think that's better. Plus, he's got a great running scream. Stretch is perfect in his role, elegantly coarse and rough-and-tumble believeable, abrasive as a means to his ends but underneath a good man with a great mind. He too should show up in many, many more action films. 

This film also marks the return of Sarah Lieving (The Beast of Bray Road, The Hitchhiker, Invasion of the Pod People) to a billed role in an Asylum film for the first time in four years, and when she comes back, man does she come back. She plays a special agent who's badass and belittling, cold and spare, an efficient employee, terse and effortlessly capable. It's almost like an evolution of her character from The 9/11 Commission Report, here honed into a sharper weapon, more acerbic in her confidence, in turn making her much more potent a character.

And of course there's Robert Picardo ("Star Trek: Voyager") as the admiral in charge of coordinating the hunts, seemingly in a hardass contest with Lieving; we'll call it a draw. He commands a bridge like he's been thinking about it a while. Asylum regular Mike Gaglio also shines as the gruff, disbelieving Captain.

As for the FX, they too top those of the first: they're sharper, more complete - instead of snippets and blurred close-ups we get many, many, awesome full-body shots of both creatures, not too mention battleships, helicopters, submarines and missiles. The battle/rampage scenes are deftly directed by Christopher Ray and are among the best - if not the best - in The Asylum's catalogue. Be it in the ocean, in the air or even on land, the chaos and destruction these two creatures unleash is legendary, and looks the part. The last forty-five minutes of this thing are just one skirmish after another - shark alone, croc alone, shark vs croc - that culminates in a truly spectacular climax well-deserving of the surging symphonic score that accompanies it. And the end? Well...I'll just say there's a certain image - you'll know it when you see it - that I want tattooed on my back. My whole back.


Oh, and for those of you wondering if there's a scene to top that from the first film of the shark snatching the plane from the sky? No spoilers, remember? But yes. And yes and yes and yes.


So, in short, this was worth every second I waited for it. As much as I enjoy, nay, love the first film, this one is just smarter, better-made, much better-performed, and more thrilling. If you enjoyed the first one, you won't be able to help but love this one. In fact, I'm gonna go ahead and place it in a category with Godfather II - that's right, I said it, Godfather II; bring it - as being a highly-anticapted sequel that surpasses the accomplishments of the original film. 


So there. Add it to your Netflix cues and whatnot to enjoy it this Tuesday, December 21st.

observation notes: 2010 Moby Dick

Man oh man have I been looking forward to this."Moby Dick" is my favorite novel of all time, and when I heard it was being adapted by my favorite studio, well, let's just say I've been beside myself with anticipation. I mean, as far as American writers go, Melville's pretty much the Godfather, and "Moby Dick" is his coup de grace, and, in my and many others' opinions, the finest work ever produced by an American novelist. So, some pretty big shoes to fill here. Or should I say "mega" shoes? Let's get into it.

The Asylum's version opens in the arctic in 1969 aboard a submarine on which there serves a young seaman by the name of Jonah Ahab (Jay Gillespie, #1 Cheerleader Camp)(love the addition of "Jonah," as in, that dude in the Bible lived in a whale for a while. in the book, it's just Ahab. but Bales, he's cross-referencing his whale lore. awesome!). On the young Ahab's sonar there is sensed something large and biological approaching the sub. He tries to inform the others, even records it's sound, or song, on a Maxell cassette, but his superior dismisses his suspicions as glitches of equipment and inexperience - that is until that something Ahab detected, a gigantic and ruthlessly aggressive white whale, attacks the sub and body slams it down on the ice shelf, killing the majority of the crew in an instant. Young Ahab, as you would expect, gets out alive, but loses a leg.

Cut to our modern era and the coast of California where Cetologist (whale scientist/actress Renee O'Connor, "Xena") Michelle Herman (get it? Ismael and the last name of the author. brilliant!) and her assistant Pip (Derrick Scott) are recording the songs of her specimens in a purple bikini on a boat cutely named "The Coffin," a reference, no doubt, to the buoyant slab of wood that saves Ismael's life in the novel. 

I'm going to tone down mentioning all the little references to the novel, promise, I just wanted to make the point that this script, whatever else it is, is firmly loyal to the original story. Back to it, now:

Said specimens are responding just fine until something below the surface spooks them and they take off. That something, it's revealed seconds later, is a U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine, the Pequod, whose crew has breached to request - in a rather forceful manner - the services of our whale doctor and her associate. This request comes on behalf of the Pequod's unseen captain, Ahab, now forty years older.

Cut to a nice little scene here where a whale-watching tourist boat is crushed by the underbelly of the great white whale of sea-faring lore, Moby Dick. More on this in a bit.

Back in the sub, the doc is being briefed by first-mate Starbuck (easy BSG geeks, the name was ours first) about the incidents leading up to her specific, shall we say, acquisition by the sub. Seems there's been a lot of weird whale attacks lately, but not by any ordinary whale, oh no, but by a five-hundred-fucking-foot white whale, a whale like no other, a prehistoric megawhale freed from the arctic and now wreaking havoc off the coast of Southern California. Doc dismisses this as ridiculous, impossible, besides, it's a myth, a legend, no one's ever actually seen this thing. Enter modern-day Ahab (the great, gray Barry Bostwick, Animal House, "Spin City"). Not only has he seen the foul leviathan, he's still got its song on cassette (enter your own "Moby Dick" '69 bootleg/Zeppelin joke here). To Ahab, Moby Dick is no mere myth, no slight story made up and meant to scare sailors, oh no, this whale to Ahab is all too real, he feels it in his phantom leg, and over the last forty years he has become quite insane with vengeance (while still being able to hold down a skippership position with the Navy). He will stop at nothing short of this glorious creature's permanent extinction, and that's where the doc comes in: he's been following her work for years and knows that if anyone can use the song he has on cassette to track the real whale, it's her. Doc isn't too pleased about abetting this violent mission, but when Ahab convinces her all they want to do is stop the attacks on innocents, she's reluctantly in.

On shore, an old seaman buddy of Ahab's, and one who served all those years ago on the same sub Moby Dick made mincemeat of (he lost an arm) is being questioned by Navy higher-ups about Ahab's state of mind. Seems the Navy got pretty nervous when Ahab, on his own, tricked out his nuclear sub to become even more dangerous and formidable, and then they got even more nervous when he ceased to make regular check-ins. Navy realllllllllly doesn't like that. Futhermore, these attacks that have been happening, the ones we know Moby Dick is responsible for, well, no one else believes in a prehistoric whale freed from arctic stasis, so naturally, they're blaming these things on the rogue sub captain with the pimped out vessel. Ahab's buddy is commissioned the responsibility of finding his old friend and bringing him in.

In the meantime, however, another sub on the lookout for the Pequod conveniently chances upon the latter vessel, although before it can take action, in another ridiculously convenient chance encounter, Moby Dick is there as well, honing in on the pinging of the former sub's radar, and quickly making said sub no more. Now it's getting personal.

On shore again, Ahab's buddy interviews the only survivor of the whale-watching debacle, a Russian chick who dispels the rumor it was a sub that attacked them, instead blaming the tragedy on a massive white whale.

The Pequod is tracking that very whale at that very moment in the wake of its attack on the other sub. What it finds first is a truly chilling scene I won't give away here, I'll let you experience it on your own, but I will say it's the most illustrative scene - for me, at least - in regards to the sort of dark tone screenwriter Paul Bales establishes here; this is no mere creature feature, it is, as is the novel, a tale of violently irrational obsession, the most shadowed sector of the human soul, played out against a grandiose and horrific setting in which nature comes to personify man's basest attributes, or something like that. The whale kicks mad ass, takes out a bunch of impressive shit.

From here things only get more harrowing. Ahab accidentally invokes further hostilities from his own Navy, but then so does the whale. This does, however, produce the single greatest scene in cinema history involving a whale and a helicopter, undisputed. But after this, Ahab's battle is two-fold: get the whale before the Navy gets the Pequod.

I'm going to leave the rest for you to discover on your own, but I will say that thus far, Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus still pending, this is easily my favorite Asylum production of 2010, and I say that honestly thinking this year has been their best so far. Everything is upped here - the script, the FX, the direction, the acting; The Asylum is just plain functioning on a higher level here. I loved the shit out of this movie, I honestly did.

Paul Bales' script honors the original, changing very little in the way of the story but to modernize it. The result is a story that maintains the venerability of the novel and blends that with the excitement, suspense and terror of an Asylum flick. It's a flawless thing, this blend, complete with inventive twists and imaginative reworkings of the source material - I'm thinking here of The Coffin, Ahab's second peg leg and the awesome harpoon gun Ahab uses (that, according to bonus features, Bostwick built himself one weekend out of shit in his garage. Awesome!) - that help this ambitious undertaking become realized.

As for FX, the whale looks great, really great: tremendous, vicious, formidable and frightening. The centuries' worth of harpoons embedded in its back is a particularly nice touch. The other FX also, the helicopters and subs and whatnot, look a lot cleaner, crisper, all around better, than they did even a year ago. This is not the work of Tiny Juggernaut, as I expected, but of visual effect supervisor Mark Kochinski, a veteran of "Star Trek" and "X-Files" and, yes, "Xena," who also worked on Titanic II and whose FX can next be seen in Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid and Battle of Los Angeles. Sounds like we're going to be hearing a lot about him in the next year. 

As for the actors, there wasn't a weak link in this chain. All of Melville's characters are here - Ahab, Ismael, Starbuck, Pip, Doughby, Bulkington, Queequeg - and the actors portraying them did so with loyalty to the original but also with the flexibility to make the roles their own. Particular standouts include Derrick Scott, Adam Grimes as Starbuck, Michael Teh (Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus) as Queequeg, and, in too brief an appearance, Mike Gaglio as an officer on younger Ahab's sub. Renee O'Connor is acceptable in her role, but truthfully it isn't big enough or given enough development to really judge. Overall, however, she's vibrant and urgent and it's great to see her in action again.

But the real standout, the irrefutable ace in this deck is Barry Bostwick as Ahab. In a word, the man is simply incredible, the best I have ever seen him, so impassioned, so violently desperate and insanely disciplined. He gets Ahab in a way no one else has, really sees the madman at the root of this guy and lets him run loose. Pound for pound, and I say this with the utmost respect and admiration to the eras of moviemaking that have come before us, Barry Bostwick captures the maniacal intensity of a man behind such a delirious quest at least as well as the late, great Gregory Peck (from the John Huston 1956 adaptation). Let the hate mail commence, but I say stovepipe hats off to the man for a truly wonderful and stirring performance.

Man, I feel bushed after all this. I knew I liked this movie when I sat down to write up these notes, but I don't think I knew exactly how much until just now. I've seen a lot of Asylum movies, quickly approaching all of them, and though I have my favorites - I Am Omega, The Beast of Bray Road, Titantic II - this one in time might take the cake as my absolute favorite. And again, I fully admit I'm biased because a) the book's my favorite, and b) so's the production company, but I truly believe this is a great action-adventure, above par when it comes to story and FX (barring a scene or two at the end when some crew are hiding from the whale behind a rock), and anchored with the utmost capability by a strong, fierce lead performance by Barry Bostwick, in my opinion, again, the best he's ever been. 

2010 Moby Dick  was directed by Trey Stokes, who makes his feature debut here. Mr. Stokes, I'd like to see a lot, lot more. A lot.

Kudos!

Mega Shark vs. Giant Dorito!

So you guys gotta check this out. I got an email today from Brandon over at The Asylum, in marketing, with a link to a video the guys shot while Mega Shark Deuce was in production that has been entered in the Dortios/Pepsi "Crash the Super Bowl" ad campaign contest. 

Bottom line, this thing is awesome. Check out Asylum regulars Mike Gagli and Seth Cassell and, of course, everyone's favorite prehistoric shark, hamming it up in the commercial right here, then, just like I asked you yesterday regarding your Netflix cues, tell everyone you know, bombard the shit out of this thing and show The Asylum that we committed are out in full force!

Voting for ads begins in January. Stay tuned here for details!

observation notes: MILF

There are certain movies, that when they're made, the concept seems so simple and classic that I can't believe it took us as a culture so long to produce it: 30 Days of Night is my go-to example of these; someone should've thought about vampires in a sunless environment long before the 21st century. And MILF, the latest comedy from The Asylum, is another such concept: hot moms have been all the rage for decades now, thanks to the invention of the minivan, the rise in America's divorce rate, recreational youth soccer and the internet. And while yes, there are plenty of films that extol the virtues and myriad pleasures of taking an old lady lover, none of them have had the balls to flat out call themselves, MILF, which is an acronym, but if you don't know for what, then you my friend need this movie more than the rest of us.

MILF is the story of four sexually-frustrated college freshmen ( i guess i could've just said "college freshmen" and gotten the same point across) who have absolutely no game when it comes to picking up hotties their own age. But when one of the four sees a naked cougar - one of the other four's moms, no less - teamed with the discovery of the aforementioned naked cougar caught by the four in the midst of  two-person "passion party" with another of their moms (i knew going into this it was about somebodies' moms as sex objects, i just didn't know it was going to be the moms of half our principle characters. this took some adjustment), the idea becomes planted in the boys' collective dick that the answer to their sexless strikeouts is the tender loving care only someone else's mother can provide. This happens about the same time the cougars in question discover their sons' friends are ripe for the plucking. The end result of this mutual, lustful awakening is sexual exploitation and objectification of the highest, finest order, and where our film really takes off.

Essentially, our heroes concoct an American Pie-style bet to see who can bag the most MILF (yes, i'm using MILF as the plural of MILF, like DEER or SHEEP. the movie will back me up) by the end of the year, then go about attempting to ensnare their prey by stalking the places MILF are known to graze: singles bars, the grocery store, and eventually each others' family homes. Along the way each of our freshmen has their equally raucous, thrilling and emasculating encounters, more often than not with hilarious results. This rampant lust turns complicated and potentially devastating, however, when our main hero finds himself in a full-on Friend With Benefits situation with another of our heroes' moms, the same other hero who saw the first cougar, our main hero's mom, naked and felt so bad about it he hasn't stopped apologizing all movie (it sounds complicated, i know, but believe me, if i can follow it after three vodka/sodas, you can too.) It's at this plot point we realize the true dilemma of our film; it isn't about how many MILF these young men are going to have intercourse with, it's about whether or not our main hero will continue to sneak around with his friend's mom for the best (and only) sex of his young life, or will he throw said sex away for the sake of lifelong friendship? Only in the movies is this an actual question (don't hate, you know it's true. lust always trumps honor, that's why in most religious systems it's an infraction, because otherwise all of us would do it all the time. human nature is ashamedly primal.).

The rest of the story I shall leave unspoiled. As for the performances, I was - as I was with the movie overall - pleasantly surprised. Lead actor Jack Cullison - who makes his feature debut with MILF - is easily the best of the bunch, awkwardly charming where the others are just awkward, and geekily likable in a too-relative way. Philip Marlatt, who plays the hero whose mom is being serviced by his best friend Cullison, tries a little too hard off the bat to be the funniest, which he isn't, coming off a little like a more-realistic version of Michael Showalter's "Doug," but as the film progresses and we get into the thick of his character, he ends up giving the most non-lustful emotional performance of the film. The other guys, the Brit and the Hispanic-American, are pretty much just there - it feels like - to round out the cast, though the Brit has a couple of pretty funny moments.

As for the women of MILF, though the film abounds with them, there are three of particular note: Amy Lindsay as the main MILF doing her son's BFF (and who's filmography makes the 12-year-old CInemax-viewer inside of me very happy), who in this film manages to accomplish the near impossible: she's hot, slutty, kinky, yet still three-dimensional, that is, not a caricature of any of these qualities, but somehow simultaneously believably maternal and the victim of an emotional roller-coaster that has her even considering such a relationship. (MILF surprised me over and over, and most often it was in this sense: at the heart of this bawdy sex comedy is, well, a heart.). Molinee Green plays the mom of the mom-banger, a tigress with a little kinky secret of her own, and she's just pure sex in this one, but she's also my only complaint about the cast, and not because of her performance, but her age; Molinee's currently 28 years old, according to IMDB, and no matter where you're from, that's a little young to be the mom of a college freshman. But she looks good naked, and that's the point, so what am I even talking about? And finally there's Jamie Bernadette, who plays the actual love interest - because every bawdy sex comedy in truth revolves around an actual love story - of our mom-humping hero. Another relative newcomer, hopefully we'll see more of her in the future.

Now, what I'm about to say, I don't mean it as criticism, but as a compliment, I really do: I found this film to be much tamer than most other Asylum comedies, not in terms of content, but in delivery, it was more subtle with it's humor - not that it wasn't delightfully crass and lewd, there's ample cross-generational nudity, lesbian coeds, wet sports bras, nipple slips, circle-jerk jokes, requisite fist-bump explosions, ball gags, pasties, sexting, inappropriate son-mom banter, further inappropriate son-friend's mom interactions, chips, dip, chains, whips, lollipop innuendos, hernia tests administered by non-medical professionals, eastern sexual philosophy, dessert toppings, more fake boobs than a fake boob factory, unintentional threesomes (Mike Gaglio is the funniest single moment of the film), sex lies and digital video and everything else you'd hope to find in a sex comedy - the film doesn't smash you over the head with these elements, rather it weaves them into an actual story, a higher level of comedy that results in a sophisticated yet blissfully sophomoric romp that entertains and scintillates all at once.

The first observation notes I posted were for #1 Cheerleader Camp, which I began by saying I wasn't the biggest fan of Asylum comedies, and concluded by saying #1CC had caused me to reconsider that stance. With MILF, that stance is hereby reversed. I really liked this one, mostly because it really surprised me by being attentive to character and not just situation. It's a damn funny movie, not near as drastically distracting  as some other films in this vein, and ultimately a touching cautionary tale about the real-life emotional ramifications of balling your buddy's mom, or just old chicks in general. 

So, you laugh a little, learn a little, and get to see a bunch a boobs. And isn't that what the movies are all about? In my world, they are.