I took a risk watching I SAW THE DEVIL and although I do not entirely regret it, there really is no reason to see a movie like this.  Right from the opening scenes I thought, “I am going to turn this off.”  Why would I think that?  Because I have no need to see people graphically tortured on screen, and I have no stomach for gore of any kind, never mind this kind.  Not that I would know, but this is not like one of those torture based movies that are the new kind of popular horror now.  It is still mostly a hardcore thriller, just the violence the characters do to each other strays into torture with gore.

I blame Harry from Ain’t It Cool News for choosing DEVIL as one of his top ten movies of 2011 and mentioning OLD BOY in his review, and saying DEVIL was currently available on Netflix for me deciding to watch this movie.  OLD BOY was very hardcore, especially the end, but it was a very interesting and unique badass movie.  DEVIL was not because I personally see no reason to create evil stories as entertainment.  I am pretty sure everyone knows serial killers are bad.  There is no need to make a statement about them, like it was so debatable topic.

The opening is chilling.  A pretty Korean girl is stranded on some country road with a flat tire.  She is talking to her fiancee secret agent on her cell phone while she waits for a two truck.  Some dude stops by offering help.  She refuses, but he does not go away.  Her badass secret agent fiancee can do nothing.  That was the best part of the movie and the last moment I thought, ok, maybe this will be a super tense thriller.  Then the gore was unleashed, and the torture.

IF this movie was made at a normal U.S. Rated R level, it could have been that super tense thriller that was still watchable by normal people.  Yes, if you can easily watch all the hideous scenes in this movie I do not think you are normal.  I learned right away to cover my eyes during the violent scenes.  So basically I missed probably 20% of the movie!

The secret agent fiancee naturally wants to kill the guy that killed his girl.  The girl’s dad was the former chief of police, so there is no problem getting info on the four main suspects.  He goes extreme vigilante right away.  However, once he gets to the actual guy who killed his girl early in the movie, surprisingly he does not kill him, just torture him, and then release him with a bunch of money!  He is going to hunt and release him the rest of the movie, but at his own peril.

That storyline was interesting and I liked the twist to it.  I just could not take seeing girl after girl killed horribly.  By the way everything turns out in the end, there absolutely is no redeeming quality to the movie.  DEVIL was hailed as showing perhaps for the first time ever, absolute and complete revenge.  If so, no one needs to see that.

I swear this is the last time I ever make a mistake like this again and watch a horrid, violent movie that has no purpose existing.

All aspects of the movie are flawed, save for some ok cinematography work, but when you have Monument Valley to work with, that would be really hard to mess up. The pacing of the movie is horrid, in particular a dancing scene. There is yet another case of old movie instant love where a young couple goes on one date and then are in love and want to marry! The main character is an absurd Colonel who has been, much to his dismay, transferred to Fort Apache in the middle of nowhere in Arizona. He is beyond strict and knowing nothing of the west asks for no advice from the soldiers who have been there with years and a wealth of local knowledge.

There is no action to speak of in the movie at all for at least the first half of the film. The only bit of intrigue is seeing the Colonel first show his military tactics. He seems just plain stupid at first, but then reveals his clever plan, though it is highly flawed nonetheless.

Oh yeah, John Wayne is in the movie as a captain who should be the one really in charge of the fort. He is no where near the main character, the Colonel is, so why Wayne is on the movie poster alone is beyond me. He seemed to play an interesting character, but since everything he said was basically summarily dismissed by the insane Colonel, he might have well not even been in the movie.

The only real thing about the movie I liked was seeing Shirley Temple in a non-child role for the first time. If I had not seen her name in the opening credits I do not think I would have recognized her trademark curls.

The ending of the movie, I guess what could be called the climax, is the most absurd thing of all. I simply cannot believe any fort full of soldiers would follow an insane Colonel showing complete disregard for common sense. Basically the Colonel orders everyone to ride into a valley everyone knows is filled with Apache on the high ground who can shoot at them in a crossfire at will from distance. Oh, and they ride in fighting with swords, and then only later manage to break out a pistol or two, again to fight an enemy high up on hills!

The absolute lack of logic in the story just ruined the movie, not even counting scenes that should have never been filmed, like fussing about moving in, setting up furniture, training new soldiers that we never see do anything significant again, etc. In every aspect FORT APACHE Is a bad movie with no entertainment value.

I wish I could now be recommending to you a great very low budget, sci-fi thriller, but I cannot do that for MONSTERS.  I thought Netflix might have really discovered a hidden gem of a movie for me, something like a much lower budget but nonetheless interesting DISTRICT 9.  Starting with the title being very lazily and inappropriately applied, such criticisms can trickle down all the way to the screenplay, characters and pacing.

There is one thing great about MONSTERS, its premise.  I hope it gets remade with a competent screenwriter who changes the characters and provides an actual plot that makes us care what happens.  As mentioned, the premise is super interesting . . . scientists discover life within our solar system, a probe is sent to bring back samples, as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere it breaks up and crashes into Mexico near the U.S. border.  The samples infect the area causing new, monstrous, creatures to emerge from the jungle.  A huge infection zone is created, with the U.S. having a wall the size of the Hoover Dam for protection, while on the Mexican side there is basically only a batting cage fence.  Very cool setup, but it is nearly totally wasted.

There really only are two characters, an American photographer working for a large publication who has been in Mexico photographing the carnage.  Sounds good right?  Well, he is using a measly Canon 40D, which already two generations old in our timeline, never mind the movies, he has no external flash, but worst of all he cannot even speak Spanish!  How hard can it be to find someone bilingual to send to photograph the area??  Plus he has no redeeming qualities, is an idiotic hedonist, and basically screws everything up because he is a drunkard.

The other character is a semi-attractive blonde pixie of a girl, also American, and she just happens to be the daughter of the owner of the publication the photographer works for.  Why in the world is this rich girl in such a crazy dangerous area?  Who knows.  Through the photographer’s idiocy, her once safe chance to leave Mexico and return to the U.S. via ferry is wasted.  Does she even express one word of anger toward him?  No.  I was like, “umm, do you even have a pulse?”  Gandhi would have blown his top even.

I really need to someday write my own screenplay completely devoid of IDIOT characters.  Or, if there are idiots, they are very soon killed or suffer grave consequences for being idiots, not rewarded with continuing to survive despite being total idiots.

They have to spend the night on the border of the infected zone.  The fence is literally 10 feet from the back of their hotel.  Me?  I would already be an expert on the creatures.  I would be packing the most powerful gun that is practical to carry and I would be on CONSTANT alert.  How do the photographer and pixie spend that night?  Getting drunk and ambling around the border town.  Idiots.  Oh, and early the pixie was attacked by a creature miles from the border of the infected zone.  So it’s really hard to know what is dangerous and what is not.

Also, why just a ferry to leave the country?  There are no airports anymore?  Why put the ferry RIGHT ON THE BORDER of the infected zone?  Why make people travel right to the edge of the fence?  Why not put the ferries way further down the coast so people do not have to come anywhere near there?  Just preposterous plot holes.

So since the idiot photographer blows her chance to leave via ferry, he accompanies her on a super dangerous land route THROUGH the infected zone just before the monsters start their seasonal migrations.  She is totally ok and calm about this.  She’s just like, ok, let’s do this.

The first 30 minutes of the 90-minute movie you are just waiting for the bad thing to happen that will bone them into having to take a dangerous way out.  This takes way, way too long to happen, especially since we learn little about the characters and care about them even less.

Super excitement once they are in the infected zone?  Umm, no.  Some mercenaries who apparently live in the infected zone and clearly say that if you do not mess with the monsters, they leave you alone.  So obviously a few minutes later an unprovoked attack kills them all.

And the monsters?  They are just walking octopi.  They look JUST like an octopus.  Can you not think up something creative at all?  And they are HUGE.  Why is everyone, including the U.S. army, only equipped with machine guns that would have a hard time stopping an elephant, let along a creature five times that size.  Preposterous.

The movie ends with an unbelievable whimper.  Everything is crazy easy for the two idiots.  At their final waiting/hiding spot, they portray yet again more idiotic behavior, taking less precautions than I do crossing the street in day light in my own neighborhood!  You just see a huge carcass of a monster, you think you would be a bit cautious.  Nope.  You need to get to shelter while there is still daylight.  There are abandoned cars all around.  Do you try each one to see if it still works?  Nope.  We’ll just explore some abandoned buildings so that we have to end up walking down a long road in the dark.  Idiotic.

Great concept, extraordinarily poor usage of that concept.  Someone please take this premise and make a proper movie with it.  I will even help you write the script.

I would say that in 2011 it is no longer possible to release a silly romantic adventure movie, thus THE JEWEL OF THE NILE is more certainly a product only the 80s could produce. While old memories of the first move in the series, ROMANCING THE STONE, lingered in my head for decades finally prompting me to revisit it in late 2009, I am fairly certain that come 2030 I will have no such lingering desires to revisit NILE. This time there is absolutely no story and the traps the characters find themselves in are escaped in ludicrous ease, just breezing past the important things like how they did it, etc.

Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner are still pretty good on screen together, and at times Danny DeVito does well playing the hard to like foil turned partner, at least when he is not literally spitting out his lines. The villain though is just a cartoon character and the harsh desert backdrop does not work nearly as well as the lush Colombian rainforest did in STONE.

After some quick setup events, Douglas is on a rescue Turner mission again that should have ended the movie at about the 30-minute mark. Why Douglas does not rejoin the people who helped him be in a position to save Turner is a massive plot hole. Instead they just plunge deep into the desert without even a bottle of water. Movies do not have to be totally realistic, but there should be some basis on plausibility in at least the remotest sense.

If you like STONE, I would try and preserve those memories and resist seeing NILE. Your own imagination for what happens next to the characters would be much more pleasing than watching NILE.