Just in case you’re wondering. This is going to be one of those reviews for a movie that I have no intention of watching carefully, and that isn’t worth your time. Frankly I’d be surprised if anyone in the creation of this film actually sat down and watched it.

We start with probably the most surprising moment of the film – a title-card saying it’s a film from Paramount Pictures. I need to check that that isn’t spelled Paramounntt or something like that. I just checked again. That’s Paramount. They made Indiana Jones. And apparently Escape from Mars as well.

A too-pretty-and-young-to-be-an astronaut tells us why she isn’t scared of flying to Mars. I’m not really listening, but I assume it has something to do with kittens, yarn and the artwork of Mary Englebright. That’s the kind of stuff that girls talk about, after all.

Mission Control looks like it was apparently built in my mom’s basement. And it’s staffed by the same people that work at the natural food market by my house: a bevy of long haired, glassy-eyed hipsters.

Is anything really “starring” Christine Elise? I think I recognize some of the actors in this film, but it’s hard to know with their clothes on. It’s a SkinMax’s stab at legitmate filmmaking. At least in those Cinemax movies, you know you’re making something bad. Ten minutes into the movie, in Cardboard Control, some hippies argue about bringing the shuttle back. Shouldn’t they have discussed this before they launched the most ambitious space mission in human history. Nice that they cram all of this exposition into such a small space. That must mean that there’s going to be a ot of action in the rest of this movie. Yup. Just waiting for that action to start.

Oh great. Along with all this space cheesiness, they slap on some flashbacks featuring meeting rooms that look like a dot.com cubicle. Jesus. Even the memories have to be this boring? One of the most important tennets of Robert Rodriguez’s Theory of Low Budget Filmmakng, is that you should load the front half of the movie with action. It’s bound to keep people interested. Escape from Mars makes no such attempt. This is a movie for the those unfortunate people with spinal cord injuries who can alone not change the channel.

Drifting in space, a crew member makes a veiled reference to the fine music of Nirvana. Yet the music coming out of the headphones sound more like the music Yanni would create by violent slapping his butt cheeks together. I don’t really remember Nirvana using flange guitar and sythesizer in their compositions.

Uh-oh. Someone said aboot. I smell the bacony stink of a Canadian production. I know this is a joke from Mystery Science Theater 3000 because it is one of my favorites. I don’t hate Canada but I generally hate Canadian movies that try to be American. As the ship spins aimlessly in space, the captain announces that he’s getting a divorce from an earthbound wife. Wait, let me write that again. He’s getting a divorce. Their systems are going down and he’s talking about his love life. Yup. I don’t know what’s wrong with the ship, because the screenwriter was sleeping on his very-easy-job again.

These astronauts apparently do nothing more than hangout in the AV room and doodle on sketchpads. If this is what the future holds, then count me in. I guess they solved their problem with the ship, because they’re running on the treadmll and doing the crosswords. The Russian’s astronaut’s accent turns from Eastern European to Sicilian at the drop of a very bad method acting hat. Also note: there is more than one reference to the Russian and vodka. It’s simply obligatory for any movie ever made.

Now the divorce is taking center stage. They threaten to pull the mission because of a divorce? Man, weird. Couldn’t they think of a better plot point than that? You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of the time when I told you about the hippies talking in Cardboard Control about pulling the mission. It’s a lot like that. The hippies must be Catholic, because they’re very adverse to anyone being divorced before landing on the Red Planet.

Then there’s some kind of explosion which is just an excuse for them to hide the flimsy sets under a haze of rave-like fog. Even during the explosion, the crew sits in the AV room, while the one man without a mask attempts to fix all of the systems.

And why even bother with the stock footage of the 1984 Olympics, huh fellas? We’ll take your word for it that lots of people want to see the Mars landing.

Man this is a bad movie. There’s no real point. It plays more like something in the background of the natural history or space museum or some such shit like that. Then two astronauts step on Mars at the same time. And this is supposed to be exciting? I suppose it’s all leading up to something big at the end there. Well, only 40 mins to go…Slowly my mind is turning to mush. I can’t see straight, I can’t think straight. Why am I watching this? It’s fifty times worse than Assault on Dome 4. At least that had some semblance of a plot (although one ripped off from Die Hard).

On the surface of the planet, some of the astronauts enter a Tuff shed where they sleep at night. Kimberly is told that her husband has died at home. I don’t need to say that it’s against regulations to do so, but is nonetheless a requirement of movies such as this. Then the meteor shower hits. It’s as cheap as you can imagine. But instead of being excited I find myself lulled into a gentle sleep. I never thought I’d write this, but I long for the fatty- kung-fu antics of Steven Segal. Escape from Mars isn’t so much a movie as a collection of cheaply shot images and bad line readings. It’s hard to make fun of something in that nether region between terrible and incompetent. Damn
you Canada. Damn you.

Movie Grade: F-

Year: 1999
Written by: Peter Mohan and Jim Henshaw
Directed by: Neill Fearnley
Starring: Christine Elise, Peter Outerbridge and Kavan Smith.
Details: 90 mins / Sci-Fi Network / Rated PG

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… it just fades away.

Spoiler Alert: I give away everything about this made for TV movie, but not like it matters. You won’t (or shouldn’t rather) watch this. It’s bad for your soul. You will go to hell if you watch this.

This is one of those fine films from the boys at TBS. Made for TV, made for fun. I don’t know what it is about these kind of movies that so fascinates me. The made for TV format usually calls for a dumbed down script and a film easily cut into a tidy-commercial-break format. That has a way of limiting what you can do. Unfortunately, what they’ve done here is even worse than usual.

Evil Never Dies stars Thomas Gibson formerly of one of the worst TV shows that ran for over four seasons, Dharma and Greg.

The basic gist: Detective Mark Ryan’s wife is killed in their home. It takes him a while, but he finally hunts down the killer and watches him as he’s put to death by lethal injection. All is well and good. Except for the fact that Detective Ryan is now drinking a lot and getting more cave-man like as the movie goes on. Thomas Gibson always seems to have some kind of befuddled look on his face, like the way a dog will cock his head to the side when they hear an unusual noise.

But of course, as we have learned from the title, Evil Never Dies. Well, in this case, it does die but it’s brought back to life by an idiot scientist and his impossibly shapely and attractive assistant (Katherine Heigl). Needless to say, this modern day Frankenstein begins wrecking havoc upon the unwary citizens of a small, Canadian-like hamlet. Note: he doesn’t go lumbering about like a proper monster should. Quite the opposite – he’s just a plain old human that likes to kill. You’d think that once getting brought back from the dead, you’d take a pretty low profile, get some hookers and go work in construction or something. Going around concocting overly-complex kidnapping and murder plans wouldn’t exactly be tops on my list.

For reasons only known to the plot gods, Gibson and Heigl end up as a team hunting down the evil monster lurking about. You know he’s evil because he has a widow’s peak and has dyed his hair dark black. Not only do Heigl and Gibson team up to fight evil (because it never dies, you know) they also team up in the sack in one of the most uncomfortable and unnatural love scenes in all of TV moviedom. They’re being stalked by a crazy, black haired freak, Det. Ryan has an warrant out for his arrest (don’t ask) and Heigl has been running around looking pretty and confused. So naturally, they must consummate their relationship in the middle of a stormy, plot-filled night.

Now the big twist. Near the end of the movie we find that…wait for it… Heigl’s character has been working with the killer all along! Oh…my…God! What a twist! What an amazing, original twist. I was so jaded and dulled by the rest of the movie that the mere reveal of her as a bad guy made me chuckle, shake my head disapprovingly and reach for another beer. Let’s just turn this movie off right now… oh… I have to watch the whole thing in order to review it. Really? The whole thing? But I know what’s going to happen ne…yeah. Journalistic integrity. I get it… but this is just a bad TV movie, I don’t have to watch that carefully right? OK. I guess I do “owe it to the filmmakers.”

The film was directed by Uli Edel – best known for other crappy TV movies, but mostly known for 1993’s fantastically naked bomb, Body of Evidence starring Madonna. Unfortunately, Evil Never Dies doesn’t feature any of the cheese that made that movie so enjoyable. And there’s no nude Madonna to drag us guys into watching it either. So we’re pretty much screwed on all fronts.

The idea with these movies should be to take the Bruce approach. You know it’s not going to be a good serious movie, so make it as cheesy and over the top as the market can bear. At least it’s fun for the audience. Why are they trying to punish us instead. No one should take something like this seriously. Not even the filmmakers. Not even Naked Madonna.

It’s not as bad as Escape from Mars, but it comes pretty darn close.

Movie Grade: D

Lucky for the film viewing public, this second installment of the Spider-Man franchise takes everything right with the first movie and improves upon it. The first Spider-Man was a great movie – a competent and exciting film, deftly directed and finely acted for a superhero movie. But it almost seemed like it wasn’t big enough.

Even though the film has some serious caliber acting talent (I’ll get to that in a second), the real star of the show is director Sam Raimi. We all know and love the man’s low budget movies, most especially Evil Dead. But with the first Spider-Man, he was forced or chose to tone down his signature style for a more straightforward blockbuster-action oriented approach. With Spider-Man 2, Raimi brings back his unabashedly frenetic style. In one tremendously exciting sequence, Doc Ock’s arms madly attack doctors in manner lifted directly out of Evil Dead 2. With no music in the background, we see huge optical zooms, blood and shaky-cam as the horror-hag screams of terror fly through the soundscape.