movies – Page 8 – Looking to God

Hero Girl

Posted on December 25, 2013December 27, 2013 by Jack Flacco

She doesn’t have a name. Her costume consists of a nightgown. By the time it’s all over, she sports the moniker “Leader”. I’m proud to include Hero Girl from the movie Polar Express in my Women Who Wow Wednesday series.

Polar Express' Hero Girl — Polar Express’ Hero Girl

During its release, not many people liked the film Polar Express. Ratings on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes confirm the movie’s status as, if at best, average. The production budget for the flick came in at $165 million while the overall take at the box office worldwide netted $308 million. I wouldn’t call it a financial disaster. Far from it, I’d call it an opportunity movie where it’s best to watch with the lights turned low a few days before Christmas.

Since its release in 2004, this film has become a staple viewing tradition for our family every evening of December 23rd.

Why do we like it so much? For us, the song Believe by Josh Groban says it all:

Believe in what your heart is saying
Hear the melody that’s playing
There’s no time to waste
There’s so much to celebrate
Believe in what you feel inside
And give your dreams the wings to fly
You have everything you need
If you just believe

That’s where Hero Girl comes in. We don’t know her name and throughout the movie she second-guesses every decision she makes. In some respect, she wouldn’t qualify as a hero at all. But her faith in what she doesn’t see is what pulls everyone together to work as a team, lending credence to her belief in something altogether greater than anyone or anything they know as real.

Hero Girl also provides the direction the group needs to continue on their way to the North Pole. Not an easy task for a young child, let alone a girl who doubts everything she says. Her strength, however, lies in her ability to lead those willing to follow her to their true destination. This involves trust on the part of her friends, and an eternal hope that she will lead them to their true destination.

Once Hero Girl affirms her leadership status, not in name but in action, the group of kids follows this time without dismissing her ideas. She leads them to where all the magic begins.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, now on sale.

Have you seen Polar Express? What did you think of Hero Girl’s role in the film?

Monday Mayhem

Zombie Kids

Posted on December 23, 2013December 25, 2013 by Jack Flacco

I don’t see that many zombie children in movies. Most of the zombie movies I’ve seen have one or two token kids, but what about a whole schoolhouse filled with them? Something must have happened to the children. Something must have made them all disappear. Or is it that film producers shy away from such a scene knowing parent groups may rebel against such a movie?

My Monday Mayhem series wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t talk about such a controversial subject as children in zombie movies. I say controversial because of the ramifications a film may possess if kids became the focus of a zombie apocalypse.

If the opening scene of 2004’s Dawn of the Dead is any indication, I can see why movie studios would repel ideas depicting children as undead corpses craving human flesh. Although the producers presented the notion in a tasteful matter (no pun intended), the fact of the matter lies with the question posed, “What do we do with the kids when they’ve completed their task?” Of course, the answer to that dilemma has more to do with the answer to the same question exchanging the word “kids” with “adults”. And we all know what happens to zombies when their turn is up.

I’m sure the decision not to include more zombie children in movies has to do more with child labor laws than creative license. For instance, hiring a child in a movie involves having that child work limited hours, whereas adults can work round-the-clock. Also, there’s the moral question that would come into play portraying kids in a bad light. Would it benefit or detract from the production if a child has blood dripping from its mouth?

Again, if the production has one child to work with, the director could utilize some creative means in order to not represent the scene in a most brutal and gruesome way. Dawn of the Dead does a good job at that.

What if, though, it wasn’t one child? What if the script called for a whole schoolhouse filled with them, as I had mentioned? What kind of logistical problems would that pose for the production?

Given each child actor would probably have to sign a contract, the parents or guardians would probably do their best to ensure their child does not commit something that would present them in a unfavorable light. This would otherwise pave the way for a lawsuit, should any of the children do anything beyond their stringent agreement with the studios.

And the schoolhouse filled with children, what happens to them?

It’s an idea that may never come to fruition, given the legal nightmare such a scene would present.

Therefore, we may never see that schoolhouse scene in the theater. Or anywhere else, for that matter. But at least we have zombie movies that can still cause heads to turn (no pun intended).

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, now on sale.

What do you think of a group of children attacking an unsuspecting victim on the street? Do you think it’s something you’ll like to see in a movie?

Monday Mayhem

Classic Films Zombie Style II

Posted on December 9, 2013December 11, 2013 by Jack Flacco

Remember the movie Jurassic Zombieland? How about Star Wars: Attack of the Zombies? Tell me you remember Zombies of the Lost Ark. Well, I don’t remember them either. They don’t exist. However, for a short time in August, I wrote about these fictitious films in my post Classic Films Zombie Style. I wrote about them as a fun way to enjoy Monday Mayhem.

How does it work? Well, I pick a film everyone ought to recognize, then I add a few zombies, amp up the violence, throw in a generous splattering of gore and voilà, you have yourself a zombie classic. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

Let’s see what Part Two of this series holds for us adventurous hunters of the undead.

Zombienator XVII—Sent from the future, a zombie hunts a boy named John Kenner in an effort to ensure the zombie apocalypse occurs as planned. The eater, an undead beast fitted with an indestructible endoskeleton coated in mimetic polyalloy, hungers vast quantities of human meat. In its mission to find the young man, zombienator leaves behind a vast swath of death and chewed bodies in the wake of its attacks, from one side of Los Angeles all the way to when they first meet. Unknown to the evil maggot bag, another zombienator makes an appearance. This one, as John’s protector. A cat and mouse game ensues until the zombienators clash in a final battle that will determine the fate of humankind. Regardless of who wins, will there be a zombie apocalypse?

Planet of the Zombies—When a U.S. spacecraft breaches the atmosphere and crash lands on what first appears as a uninhabited planet, the astronauts on board have all they can do to escape the destructive inferno. On their trek to find life, they encounter a band of primitive humans grazing in the corn. Without warning, a hunting horn sounds and the humans scatter. The hunters ride on their stallions shooting and tripping snares, capturing the humans as they storm through the cornfields. Within a matter of minutes, the former astronauts discover the riders’ identity is none other than zombie. On this planet, the undead have evolved to become the top species on the food chain, and their plans involve nothing more than to serve human as their main course. Can someone please pass the salt.

Close Encounters of the Undead Kind—Ships from another planet visit Earth with the seedlings of a zombie apocalypse. Their mission to conquer humanity from the inside out propels ordinary citizens into extraordinary actions of courage. Who knew tearing apart a garden would lead to the central headquarters of the alien invasion. Zombies functioning as the aliens’ protectors take to the streets killing all humans who dare stand in their way of total world domination. Only one species will survive, but the aliens may have underestimated the zombies’ ability to yield to their commands. No one knows who will win.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, now on sale.

What classic movies would you like to see done with a zombie makeover?

Women Who Wow Wednesday

Nikita

Posted on December 4, 2013December 6, 2013 by Jack Flacco

Convicted for the cold-blooded murder of a police officer, Nikita finds herself at the end of a needle crying for her mother. Women Who Wow Wednesday celebrates Luc Besson’s signature character in the 1990 film La Femme Nikita.

She awakens in a sterile, white room thinking she may have gone to heaven. But a man dressed in black tells her otherwise. On the record, she died committing suicide taking a massive dose of tranquilizers and her remains lie in Maisons-Alfort, Row 8, Plot 30. The man reveals he works for the government and the government is willing to give Nikita a chance to make amends for all the wrong she had committed.

If she refuses—Maisons-Alfort, Row 8, Plot 30

Nikita’s first order of business entails her to undergo a rigorous set of training exercises dedicated to computer wizardry, weapons mastery, martial arts and beauty. Her task? To become someone else. Someone she would never have imagined possible of becoming when she had taken the life of that police officer.

The film stars Anne Parillaud who underwent a year’s transformation to make her believable as the rogue government agent Nikita. She had received the script ten days prior to filming, allowing her to create realistic reactions to many of the film’s brutal scenes.

Nikita came from the cold streets of drug abuse. She eyed every pharmacy as a potential score. The company she kept equally hated society. Their dark world consisted of scoring and getting high. Between the binges of scores and drugs, they lived empty lives lacking hope for the future and direction for a better life.

In some ways, when her mentor and boss, Bob (Tchéky Karyo), recruits her, he did her a favor by removing her from the streets, saving her life in the process.

And when she meets Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade), the wave of an ordinary life washes over Nikita. She finds happiness for the first time in her abused life. She finds love for the first time as well. His love for her grounds her, keeping her sensibilities pure.

But as in every fairy tale, reality sets in forcing Nikita to realize there’s only one solution to ending her double life.

Don’t worry I won’t spoil it for you. Suffice it to say her reality is what she wished for all along.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, now on sale.

Have you seen the movie La Femme Nikita? What did you think of it?

Monday Mayhem

Zombie Sounds

Posted on October 28, 2013October 30, 2013 by Jack Flacco

Whenever I watch a zombie movie, the very first thing I notice is the sounds emanating from those vile beasts. If I hear cricking and cracking, then I know I have a winner on my hands. It’s those movies where the undead lurch but remain silent that I think why hadn’t the director thought of what real corpses sound like and insert those effects into the picture. Monday Mayhem is all about zombies, and today I want to spend some time on zombie sounds. Sounds weird, doesn’t it?

In my previous posts Rising from the Dead and Indestructible Zombies I detail the various states of human decomposition. One of the phases that a body goes through once it dies is Rigor Mortis. In this state, the body stiffens to the point of rigidity whereby muscles harden and become difficult to move by an external force. Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy depicts a perfect example where someone attempts to compel a body to do what it can no longer do due to stiffening. In Frenzy’s case, the murderer attempts to retrieve a lost object but then has difficulty doing so because of the body’s inability to bend like it did when alive.

That’s why the movie The Mummy has a certain appeal. Throughout the entire film, the mummy, which is nothing more than a glorified zombie, cricks, cracks, spurts, and oozes all sorts of noises toward its transformation to becoming human again. Why don’t all zombie movies sound like that?

My town's cemetery at twilight — My town’s cemetery at twilight

Imagine if you will a horde of the undead giving chase. You hear the dragging. You hear the hauling. You hear the moaning. Wouldn’t it be all the more terrifying to hear their bones snapping back and forth on their way to making their victim their supper?

There’s a saying: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. What if the saying went: Where there’s cricking and cracking, they’re zombies. Wouldn’t that be something?

I suppose the sound of zombie cartilage readjusting is impossible in a movie where a virus takes over the victim. After all, depending on the virus, the victim hasn’t really died—at least not in the traditional sense of the word. They’ve only changed to become movable corpses. And if an antidote exists for zombies in the form of changing them back to their former selves, then by all accounts, they never really died in the first place.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

If they never died, there’s no opportunity to make the sounds I wish they could make. The only way that could happen is if zombies rise three hours after death just when Rigor Mortis had set.

Then again, zombies could rise during that sweet moment after death with bodies unaffected by the decomposition phase. In that instance, you will not hear them coming. In a sense, they could appear and eat you while you’re still alive.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather hear them coming.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, now on sale.

What do you think? Should future zombie movies have the undead sounding like an army of breaking bones as they march for the attack? Or would you fear them more silent?

Women Who Wow Wednesday

Rachel Keller

Posted on October 2, 2013October 14, 2013 by Jack Flacco

A first for Women Who Wow Wednesday—during the month of October I will feature tough heroines who rock the Horror genre. They will at times seem victimized, but their strong resolve carries them through, overcoming whatever obstacles get in their way. In the end, they will make it out alive from their terror-filled world to rule the day.

Naomi Watts as Rachel Keller in The Ring

To kick things off, let’s have a look at Rachel Keller of the movie The Ring.

*spoilers ahead*

When The Ring came out in theaters, I missed seeing it. In some ways, I’m glad. The premise leaves a person with a sense of heightened awareness of the dangers of watching something someone might recommend as a must-see.

The story goes something like this: Someone finds a video tape. Within minutes of watching it they receive a phone call telling them in seven days they will die.

I don’t know about you but when I heard about this movie, it sent shivers up the back of my neck. To add to the mystique of the film’s allure, the DVD release features the short film as a hidden item on its menu. If you haven’t found the video, you can simply press the up arrow a few times until the cursor disappears, then press enter on the remote.

I have never seen the video in its entirety.

Rachel Keller (Photo credit: The Ring Wiki)

Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) is a reporter investigating the mysterious death of her niece who rumors state died in an unnatural way. Taking a personal interest in the case, because the victim was family, Rachel heads to a cabin in the woods where her niece and a few friends had stayed a week before. Examining the contents of the room, she finds a video tape. Unsure what it contains, she watches it. Soon after it ends, Rachel receives a phone call from a child who says, “Seven days.”

As creepy as it sounds, things get worse. After having copied the tape to show to her ex-boyfriend Noah (Martin Henderson), Rachel begins to experience nightmares and surreal experiences. Nosebleeds are a common occurrence. In one scene, she pulls a fly from the monitor where the tape plays. The fly belongs in the video.

Later on in the week, as the events turn more sinister, Rachel discovers her son Aidan (David Dorfman) has watched the video. In horror, she calls Noah and admits Aidan is his son.

Eventually, Rachel’s investigation leads her to Moesko Island, the site of the lighthouse in the video, and the reason the video exists in the first place.

Rachel’s character makes the movie a treat for those of us who enjoy a slow plot reveal. She’s a woman caught in a trap, and has every reason for wanting to escape in order to save her and her son from unseen forces churning within. The big surprise, though, does not come from the events unfolding in the film but from her reaction to the results. In stark contrast, what would otherwise rattle most of us, if caught in the movie’s horrific web, Rachel handles with a firm conviction.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale October 22.

Have you watched The Ring? If so, what did you think of the film’s concept?

Women Who Wow Wednesday

Trinity

Posted on September 4, 2013September 4, 2013 by Jack Flacco

Imagine living in a world filled with hope, dreams and aspirations. A world where nothing really mattered other than doing your part to make things better. And you’re convinced, that no matter what anybody tells you, there’s nothing else beyond it. You feel it deep within your bones that it’s a true and faithful representation of your beliefs.

Now what if it weren’t real? What if everything you knew turned out to be wrong. You were lied to, threatened, cheated of what rightfully belongs to you. What would you then do?

Women Who Wow Wednesday explores Trinity of The Matrix.

I’m of the firm belief 1999 was a year of great movies. Films like American Beauty, Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, Magnolia, The Green Mile all came out with story lines that were unique, different and inspiring. Could it possibly have been the threat of Y2K prompting writers to create such thought provoking moral vehicles Hollywood had never seen before?

January that year started like any other January, fairly lackluster with the notable exception of She’s All That. When February rolled around, things began to pick up with the February 5 debut of Payback and the February 19 unveiling of October Sky. But once March reared its face, no one expected what was to happen next. In the midst of Analyze This and Cruel Intentions, The Matrix snuck in, and like a percussion bomb, left nothing in its wake. It pillaged the box office—something unheard of for a March movie.

No one’s ever seen the kind of effects The Matrix owned. Bullet Time became the talk of the town. And the best part? The movie had a massive story arc based on incredible issues such as government control over information, society’s inept ability to rebel, and cultism. The movie proved to be a bulwark against critics.

In all this comes the character Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), unknown in origin but a faithful of the computer program the Matrix. Like Neo (Keanu Reeves), at some point in her life, Trinity discovers the world she lives in is not real. She dares to find the truth. When she reaches out for salvation, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) rescues her from the clutches of the Matrix. Through Neo’s eyes, she relives her first days away from her origins. Neo sees everything as they really are, dank, dark, and dreary. Anything’s better than the fake world the Matrix created. Trinity helps Neo, who the audience later finds out is The Chosen One, to conquer the Matrix’s archenemy, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving).

Rather than continue with a synopsis and bore those who have seen it or spoil it for those who haven’t, I’ll do one better.

What does Trinity mean to me?

Trinity is the epitome of the learned mind who questions their existence and finds the truth through study. She’s someone who, once she finds her real identity, goes to the extreme of helping those still caught in the evil claws of the Matrix. In the finest sense of the word, she’s an exit counselor. Even more so, she comes packing. Whatever obstacles should happen to get in her way, she mows down with her machine pistols and lightening fast reflexes.

In other words, she’s a woman who wows!

In Latest News: Jack Flacco presents RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE jacket reveal.

What do you think of Trinity?

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: