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rebelco
Reviews
Depth Charge (2008)
Kinda Like "Under Siege" Except In A Submarine And Really, Really Horrible
You know how some movies are really bad that instead of being shown in theaters, they end up directly released to DVD? Well, this one is about a couple of levels lower and released directly to the bargain bin (although the garbage bin would've been more appropriate). Aside from all sense of logic and common sense being thrown out of the window, there isn't anything vaguely original about this film as they cut out slices from other more superior movies and tried to piece together a very messy pizza of a movie that was totally predictable and an insult to any semi-intelligent person watching it.
It was essentially "Under Siege" except in a sub but they also stole scenes from "Crimson Tide" and "The Hunt For Red October" and ripped off "Air Force One" by repeatedly saying "Get Off My Sub" (by the 5th time I heard it, I was about ready to put myself in a self-induced comma). One of the fight scenes were reminiscent of "Total Recall" and when he got shot on the gut and treated his own wound, clearly an imitation of "Rambo 3". There were a couple of semi-familiar actors that played a very minor role on some semi-successful movies a million years ago but the rest of them, a collection of forgettable nobodys. The sets were decent enough but I wished they would've made more instead of using the same four ones 50 times. In the sound department, I was really annoyed by the non-stop continuous inspirational music as they had it on a little too loud that on some of the talking scenes, I could barely understand what the characters are saying. Had they have a scene of the president taking a dump in the toilet, they would have surely had loud, patriotic music blaring at the background....a moment of silence here and there would've been more appropriate. They left a lot of things unanswered so in order to save time and space, I'll list it in question form:
- Where did Doc get his medical training....at 24's Jack Bauer's School Of Medicine/Counter-Terrorism Unit?
- At the beginning of the movie, why was Doc given the self-destruct codes for the sub....isn't that kind of information reserved exclusively to the Captain or Executive Officer?
- At the ridiculously high security level it takes to board an airplane at an airport nowadays, how come it was so easy to steal a stealth sub full of nuclear weapons (practically taking candy from a baby)?
- The mercenary squad who took over the stealth sub, which most likely had specialized training in operating a sub....how come they're so incompetent in finding a doctor and his token black dude sidekick in a tight, confined spaces of a submarine?
- When the mercenaries shoot, why do they keep missing and hitting the wall behind whoever they are shooting instead? Of all the people in the sub, they are the ones that are supposed to be good with firearms.
- The president, his security, his staff with all the fancy high-ranking officers with the uniforms full of ribbons and medals....how come the only one working is that one female secretary that keeps coming up with new intel? Everyone else seems just to be standing around doing nothing, drink coffee, and enjoying the scenery (kinda reminds me of KFC when I try to order at the drive-thru).
- God, oh god why did Doc keep saying "Get Off My Sub"? He's a doctor so what the hell does he know about submarine operation when his duty station is the infirmary. Nobody gave him a sub and technically speaking, the captain or whoever took control of the bridge is in charge....did he think if he repeats the horrible one liner enough times the mercenary would give up? Why did he think it was his to begin with?
- At the beginning, the captain said their plan is to get lots of money for him and his mercenary group so they can retire in style....so why did they still fire the nuke? That kind of action would instantly make them the world's most wanted becoming more hunted that Al-Queada and where are they going to retire to after they contaminate the world with nuclear radiation....and during the end when the captain unanimously changed his mind without telling his mercenary group and instead of the money, he himself decided to go crazy and fire off the nukes instead, why didn't the remainder of his men try to stop him (or at least complain) instead of just blindly followed his orders without question?
- Am I supposed to believe a sub's doctor can single-handedly take out a whole entire mercenary squad all by himself? Following that kind of logic, if mercenaries ever took over McDonald's, there's nothing to worry about because the short-order cook with his specialized training in Deep-Fryer Operation/Israeli Commando Special Forces Tactics will come in handy and save the day.
I highly recommend not watching this "movie". If you are an insomniac or just want to fall asleep fast, then definitely watch it as it was an uphill battle to stay awake all throughout the flick....and even when I was awake, it was pretty painful to watch and during the first 10 seconds, long before the opening credits even finished rolling, I already know where this train wreck was going. Trimming your nose hair, popping zits from your face, and cleaning the lint from your belly button are more exciting activities compare to this and I would rather jump off a cliff than watch this garbage ever again but luckily for me, I live in the prairies so there are no cliffs to jump from but knowing how unpredictable Hollywood is and if somehow, someway, sequel(s) of this are ever made, I may have to dig myself one. Good riddance!!
Zombie Wars (2007)
I prefer slitting my own throat than watching this piece of crap ever again.
Let's face it, the majority of zombie movies nowadays are horrible because of the lack of knowledgeable writers who are familiar with what a zombie is capable (or not capable) of doing so when I saw a zombie defy gravity and began crawling on the ceiling like Spiderman on the movie DAY OF THE DEAD: THE NEED TO FEED, I know the writer of that movie didn't know didly-squat about zombies and just made things up as he went along so as a result, I thought that was the worst zombie movie I ever saw but after seeing ZOMBIE WARS, boy was I wrong....dead wrong!!
After watching only the first 20 seconds of the movie, I knew it was gonna be bad and my brain actually told me to eject the DVD from the player, bury it, and just forget about it but having nothing else to watch that night, I decided to tough it out hoping things would improve (nope....it continually got progressively worse). This movie had absolutely nothing going for it....the actors delivered their lines horribly, the gore budget consisted of a bottle of barbecue sauce for blood and some garden hose covered with ketchup for guts, and they were trying too hard to imitate other successful movies ("The Council" or "The Committee" (whatever the hell they called it) was obviously their cheap version of RESIDENT EVIL's Umbrella Corporation and the occasional narration done by the female voice sounded like she was trying to be Sarah Connor to give it that TERMINATOR 2 "feel").
The plot was also the dumbest I have yet to see. If there was a zombie outbreak, how come the human survivors haven't build a protective wall around their base yet? A wall is the first line of defense and without it, one can easily get overrun by zombies and yet they have not put up so much as a chain link fence or anything....nothing!! And why is it a zombie constantly and continually manages to sneak up behind them? It seems like every second scene consists of a zombie suddenly appearing out of nowhere and jumping them from behind....don't they check their rears?? Isn't the purpose of having a firearm is so that they can fight off zombies from a distance instead of close-range....hey, these zombies are infected and disgusting so I'd want to be as far away from them as possible, wouldn't you? Finally, what about the zombies running a farm that encourages their human captives to have sex so they can have babies in which they will wait 20 to 30 years for them to grow up so they can eventually eat them....what the hell is up with that??!! A zombie, by definition, is a mindless flesh-eating creature that functions only with minimal primal instincts so if they are going to establish a farm, why not a Co-op or perhaps even a Multi-Million Dollar Commercial Enterprise....totally ridiculous!! The writer of this movie was unfaithful to the zombie genre and did not give a damn how outrageously inaccurate he was (nor did he seem to care) and to add insult to injury, he also neglected to finish the story and leave out a few questions unanswered. What happened to the cute blond girl named Star....where did she run off to (and why)? When one of the 2 guards guarding the road shot David in the head and killed him, did his group come back to take revenge or decided to take no offense whatsoever for killing one of their own and just go straight to burning his body?
Zombie Wars is now officially the worst "movie" (if you can even call it that) that I have ever seen in my entire life and the 82 minutes I've spent watching this bull plop is utterly wasted. I was forced to rate it 1 out of 10 because 1 is the lowest it would go making it a very generous score but if I had a chance, I would've gave it a -20 out of 10 because it was that bad....really really bad (I've seen more professional work done in my high school film class). I'm still contemplating whether to add this poor excuse to my respectable zombie movie DVD collection but I'm afraid to do so as it might stink up the joint and devalue everything....it would be wrong of me to recycle it and attempt to "re-gift" it to someone else so I think my only course of action is to take it outside, pour some gasoline on it, and burn it beyond recognition because letting other people watch this ought to be a crime against humanity. If you are like me and tend to boo, curse, spit, and flick popcorn on the monitor while watching a horrible movie, you are going to be doing that a lot here so bring out the Windex and get ready to microwave that second bag of popcorn 'cause you'll definitely gonna need it. Avoid....avoid like the zombie plague!!
Screen One: Filipina Dreamgirls (1991)
Hope For The Hopeless Romantics
I particularly like the movie not only for the fact that it was filmed only my 5 houses away from my childhood home in the Philippines and you can actually see it in some of the shots (imagine my surprise when I first saw the movie in Canada 5 years later) but it also shows how it really is for some men (british or otherwise) who are not so lucky with the ladies but still long to get married. While the movie itself had a "generic" low budget kinda feel to it, it was still particularly interesting to watch....especially for me as it personally took me back seeing my old neighborhood again and finding out that not much has changed. The script was well written and the storyline feeling somewhat predictable but still worth watching. I highly recommend this movie to anyone.
I would like to add an interesting side note. Before I left for Canada, my aunt was being courted by a British man who traveled to the Philippines in hopes of getting married and taking her back to England with him. It's quite interesting to know that not only somebody made a movie about the whole thing but that it actually happened only a few houses away from where it was filmed. It makes me wonder if somebody back then that was looking out of their window and seeing my Filipina aunt dating a lonely single British man could have been the person who got inspired to write the story for the movie....makes you think.