Seagal Vs. Zombies and My Unnatural Thirst For Red Wine

So far on this blog, when I drink some hooch, its usually just that, hooch. Cheap beer or hard booze, likker. Recently I have come to the realization that rye makes me completely insane a la Jim Lahey, so I've decided to give the hard stuff a break. What do you drink when you can't drink hooch? Wine. Cheap, strong, red wine is the best place to go in such situations. In my younger days I tangled with the Carlo Rossi and the Livingston Cellars and the Franzia. In fact, my expertise in the cheap wine category led to the crap wine area in the liquor store where I worked to be named after me. It is still referred to as my wing at this particular store, which brings me no shortage of adulation.
I am older and more refined now, so I passed up the opportunity to get poisoned and hungover for two days by drinking a jug of Rossi and went for the Georges Duboeuf's Cuvee Rouge. At most fine package stores, this French red table wine is cheap as hell. Mine was $4.99 a fifth or two for $9. Noting this value, I went for the twofer. This stuff is no joke. Its not the greatest wine you'll ever taste, but its leagues better than Rossi and them. After feeling very buzzed after only two or three glasses, I noted that the wine is 12.5 % alcohol. Lots of bang for your buck.
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I settled down with my classy beverage to watch what looked like a very promising film. Steven Seagal versus vampires, as the synopsis on the back of the case describes it. Its actually Steven Seagal versus zombies. Holy moses, if done right, this could reach new levels of awesomeness not known to human beings. I felt like this was the OT VIII of Seagology. Unfortunately, like my life, this blog and the new Tacos at Midnight Doritos, this film is an exercise in blown potential.

I had a hankering that this film wouldn't be as awesome as it should be when I realized that there were tons of central characters besides Seagal. We watch Seagal movies to see Seagal. Sure, there are zombies in it, but they are just things for Seagal to destroy, in hopefully very gory ways. Instead, we have all these survivors walking around an abandoned hospital and having the exact same conversations that zombie survivors in approximately 1,000,000,999 zombie movies have had. Nobody is watching this lame zombie film for the lame zombie film in it, we want Seagal. Big, fat Seagal, in his three quarter length coat and his samurai sword. BUT no, either he didn't get paid enough to be in most of the film or whoever wrote and directed this is a commie and wants Seagal to share the spotlight with a bunch of other people. Never a good idea. Seagal is too big of a celestial body, all smaller things that enter his orbit get sucked in by his greater gravity and burn up in his atmosphere.

Not only are there lame survivors, but Seagal is part of a team of zombie hunters. Lame. It should be Seagal alone, protecting the survivors and slicing and dicing and kicking the crap out of the zombies. The Seagal inflicted violence just isn't there, as well. How come they can show zombies eating people's guts, but not show Seagal poking their eyes out and breaking their limbs? Talk about your screwed up values. Its fair to say that the zombie genre is dead, when even a force like Seagal can't breath new life into it. Its not his fault. About two or three straight to video Seagal movies come out a year and it seems like every single day, two or three zombie movies come out. That's around a thousand or so zombie movies a year versus his two or three movies. Even a monster like Seagal can't turn the tables on the never-ending tide of zombie movies. Damn, this could have been good though. Will somebody cool make a Seagal movie, please? Quentin Tarantino or Rob Zombie or somebody cool, please save this fat old bastard's career, thanks.

Death Sentence: Death Wish for an Emo World

{Author's Note: This is what happens when I'm actually drunk when I write a review.

"Death Sentence" is a good movie. For people who like to watch regular movies, and new TV programs as well, most likely. Its a dark tour of one family's tragedy and one father's search for revenge, and sure to be the most hardcore action movie on the average "Lost" viewer's Netflix cue. (Did I mention that I hate "Lost" and Netflix as well? Support your local independent video store! And stop watching crappy TV!) Well, for a person like me, who has seen tons of revenge films, and loves them, this one is just okay. I want to get that across right now. If you don't own every "Death Wish" movie on DVD (Well except for part 5, but that one doesn't count), this is probably a great and amazing movie to you. To me, its an emo style look at revenge. I am probably the only film critic in the blogosphere that would say that there is such a thing as over developed characters. While all of North America and even some of the outer Aleutian Islands was popping giant wood for "The Dark Knight", I thought it was an over-long, over-blown, over-developed telling of a simple revenge story. You know what was a great movie, and by far the best Batman movie? "Batman" from 19 Eighty FUCKING 9. Because it knew how to tell a great story with enough character development to make you care but not the over-indulgence of the new Bright Eyes version of the bat. The over-developed characters on display seem more like an insult to the audience than so-called underdeveloped characters of the films of old. Do we really need everything this spelled out for us? I say no. You know what was another amazing revenge movie that knew how to portray an amazing battle of good versus evil without extremely emo bullshit that insults the audience's IQ? The original "Dirty Harry". I would completely hate to ruin anybody's viewing experience of "The Dark Knight", a film that I have no particular desire to ever see again, but at its best moments it was a somewhat gay remake of "Dirty Harry" for kids.

That said, "Death Sentence" is definitely a re-telling of "Death Wish" for the tight pants, tight shirt, Bright Eyes listening emo wimp in all of us. No, I'm leveling my extremely manly gaze at this film a little too squarely. I just like my movie vengeance served cold, not with horrible emo music and Kevin Bacon looking like a clown with a crappily shaved head and bright blood lipstick on his face. You know Charles Bronson is truly dead when movies like this are coming out. I have a feeling he would have killed everyone involved before it could have been released. See, why would I write that? Maybe because Bronson is an icon from his revenge movies, and this one merely makes me think that Kevin Bacon is a capable actor. Kevin Bacon will never be feared by anyone, so this film fails at that. I guess it makes him succeed at looking like a heartbroken, insane guy, but seriously, where is the fun in that? A heartbreaking, sad look at revenge yes, but I'll take "Vigilante" any day. A movie that makes the same points without looking like a crappy music video that tries to make me cry.

My final point: You can make hugely emotional revenge movies without wallowing in emo bullshit (like the Kevin Bacon crying in the shower scene, what is this, Stella?), just watch Kill Bill 1 and 2.

This film's target audience:

You know who's way more badass than Kevin Bacon?
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