The Neon Demon (2016)

"When aspiring model Jesse moves to Los Angeles, her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to get what she has."

Imagine, if you will, "Zoolander" without the intentional comedy, or "Starry Eyes" without the horror. Got those fixed in your mind? Good. That's pretty much what "The Neon Demon" is, but it's not as good as either of them. In fact, it's just not good.

There are two major problems with "The Neon Demon" which render it absolutely worthless even for the Millennial dripsters who would normally gush over similar products. First, it's slower than molasses going uphill in January. Second, Elle Fanning has neither the looks, height, or demeanour to be a fashion model. The latter would make the whole movie unintentionally hilarious, but for the fact that it's also tedious as shit.

If this movie is really supposed to be a horror movie, Nicolas Winding Refn has no idea what a horror movie should be. Granted, it's a horrible movie, but there are no scares, no surprises, and not really much of anything of interest once you take out the mildly titillating lesbianism and necrophilia.

While boobs and blood used to be all that was needed for a movie to qualify for the genre, things have moved on a bit in the rest of the real world. Audiences now like subtle things such as a compelling story and decent characterisation too, neither of which you'll find here.

As "The Neon Demon" is contrived to be very Elle Fanning-centric, it's a pity that she doesn't have the "X Factor" or any screen presence whatsoever. As a girl-next-door type, I'm sure Elle has her devoted, horndog fans, but based on her performance in this movie, I'm not likely to ever be one of them. It's hard to tell if her acting is good, bad, or horrendous because every character in "The Neon Demon" is unlikable and seems to be affected by some kind of Asperger's Syndrome anyway.

Keanu Reeves stands out in his two minutes of screentime, but he's last-billed for good reason. In what can only be described as an extended cameo where he's still channelling John Wick, he's not much more than a miserable so-and-so, albeit with all the best lines. I would say more, but I've already written more words than his character has. If you're a big Keanu mark and want to see "The Neon Demon" purely because he's in it, be prepared to be disappointed.

If you're looking for a movie which satirises the fashion industry, you would obviously be better off with "Zoolander" or even the unfairly maligned "Zoolander 2" (which is almost as great as the first one). Sadly, "Showgirls" did all the seedy stuff better many years ago, and both "Eat" and "Starry Eyes" did the horror properly.

I was asked if I had seen this movie last night, and my reply was, "Seen it, hated it." That doesn't make for much of a critique, but it's all that really needs to be said when anyone mentions this pretentious arthouse crap in future. I wasn't even going waste my time reviewing it because, like most new movies, it's not worth the effort of sitting through in the first place, but I suppose I've done it now. "The Neon Demon" is complete and utter shit.

Ghost Team One (2013)

"Two roommates deathly afraid of ghosts both fall in love with a girl who believes their home is haunted."

I don't know why everyone is calling "Ghost Team One" a "comedy". It isn't funny, and it doesn't even have a particularly happy ending. What it does have is lots of awkwardness and the same atmosphere as the American version of "The Office" (which also isn't funny), and of course, a hot chick (or two) to ogle.

"Ghost Team One" is essentially another completely unneccessary "Paranormal Activity" parody which brings the number of such abominations up to an unlucky 13. How and why this has become a subgenre in itself is undoutedly due to the YouTube generation who can't seem to get enough of webcams, shakycams, and mediocrity. For those of us who prefer a real movie, these faux found footage movies are mostly an annoying waste of time.

There are a couple of neat effects in "Ghost Team One" which you don't often see in a glorified YouTube video like this, but it isn't a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination either. In fairness, though, I don't think it was ever intended to be. It's not "found footage horror" per se that this movie is lampooning but the whole "amateur-looking footage" subgenre in general. Even YouTube gets targetted!

The downfall with this, however, is that "Ghost Team One" is as tame as its targets when it comes to the adult situations: Punches are pulled everywhere, e.g. pornographic images on a bedroom wall are pixellated, and the "jokes" (if you can call them that) are little more than schoolboyish. Think Benny Hill but less creepy with it. For a movie which uses the promise of "horny ghosts" as its selling point (especially as the only ghost in it is supposed to have been a Vietnamese prostitute!), it's very disappointing.

Two guys I've never heard of and Fernanda Romero.

As I have no sense of humour when it comes to comedy-horror movies, spoofs or otherwise, I hate to say it, but I was slightly entertained by "Ghost Team One" in a low-rent "Men Behaving Badly" (British version, naturally) way. It's well written, the drama is nicely done, and the characters are stupidly amiable but harmless enough. Once you get used to the awful camerawork, the whole purpose of "Ghost Team One" is only an excuse to lust over Fernanda Romero anyway. If Fernanda wasn't in it, I doubt that I would have made it to the end.

Fernanda Romero (who keeps her real first name and clothes on throughout) steals every scene she's in to such an extent that "Ghost Team One" is best described as her "vehicle". If anyone else involved in this movie is deluded enough to think otherwise, they need to grab themselves a reality check next time they go to 7-Eleven for their taquitos and slushies, and understand that, apart from a few infantilised adults (who were born in the '80s and '90s) and their friends, the majority of people who will eventually buy this movie on DVD or Blu-ray are just going to skip to the parts with Fernanda in and crack open another box of tissues. Yes, she really is that hot!

Putting the novelty value of "Ghost Team One" as a "latino" movie aside, since I often tend to overrate any kind of Spanish or Mexican movie even when they are filmed in Los Angeles, I don't recommend this one. I'll give everybody credit for having a go, but "Ghost Team One" would have been better as a series of webisodes.

Fernanda Romero is the centre of attention.

Elysium (2013)

"Set in the year 2154, where the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth, a man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds."

Using key plot elements from "Johnny Mnemonic" (1995) and "In Time" (2011) may not be enough for the general public to hate "Elysium", but the "critics" have certainly gone out of their way to bash this movie with those reasons already. Consequently, I have very little to add to their arguments except that I didn't like the predictable self-sacrifice ending either.

What? Have I just ruined the movie for you? Too bad. You've had over a month to watch it, and it's not playing in cinemas now anyway. On top of that, "Elysium" is just another generic sci-fi movie set in a dystopian future which looks good but you've seen dozens of times before. Admittedly, you probably haven't seen one with Jodie Foster's mouth movements out of sync with her words, but that's a dubious bonus which you can now avoid until the DVD is released.

Unlike the "critics" (even though I'm one of them), I'm not going to hate "Elysium" for being aesthetically similar to "District 9" (2009) since it's by the same director, but it's disappointing that poor people (and "prawns") living in scrapyards have become Neill Blomkamp's trademark. As a South African with a bee in his bonnet about apartheid, Blomkamp also seems destined to repeat the same "rich vs. poor" storyline—with the underdogs always representing good—for the rest of his career. Maybe things will change in his next big sci-fi movie "Chappie", but I doubt it.

"Elysium" isn't without some merits, however. It's nicely paced for one thing, and Matt Damon might not be everyone's cup of tea as Max, but he's not bad in the action scenes, even if those scenes are worse than the Bourne trilogy for making it impossible to tell who is doing what to who. He certainly looks the part once all the robotic enhancements have been done to him, although how he managed to get his dirty t-shirt back on afterwards is anyone's guess. I didn't dislike his character, but there's not enough there to feel anything for him either.

"Everything I found out, I wanna forget."

South African Sharlto Copley, on the other hand, steals the show as psycho-mercenary Kruger, albeit with Alice Braga coming a close second by providing splendid eyecandy as Max's former love interest. Both are far more interesting characters than the doomed Max despite being as stereotypically two-dimensional. William Fichtner (aka Sheriff Tom Underlay from the cancelled "Invasion" TV series) has a small, very important (and extremely typecast) role, but is the only other actor worth taking notice of. Everyone else is either just there playing dress-up or in bit parts which are instantly forgettable.

As a sci-fi "popcorn flick", it's not worth reading anything into "Elysium" apart than what's right in front of you. The lapses in logic are so obvious that there wouldn't be a story at all if they didn't exist, but if that's what some people want to waste their time arguing about on blogs and message boards, good luck to them. I must admit that I read a few of the oh-so-serious nerdy debates before writing this review and had a chuckle over them.

There's definitely entertainment to be had here for teenagers or anyone with low-intelligence and expectations who enjoyed "Oblivion" or "Pacific Rim", but having said that, I enjoyed a few of the gorier action scenes too. I'm not ashamed of leaving my brain outside the movie theatre occasionally, especially when I don't have that much interest in the sci-fi genre to begin with.

Sharknado (2013)

"A freak hurricane hits Los Angeles, causing man-eating sharks to be scooped up in tornadoes and flooding the city with shark-infested seawater."

Since I mentioned it in my last post, I suppose I ought to say something about "Sharknado". What better movie to review for "Surprise Sunday" especially as the biggest surprise is that I actually liked it?

Yes, I can find very little wrong with "Sharknado" other than the obviously awful effects and scientific impossibilities. It's very nicely paced, has some amusing gore, lots of action, and even a couple of decent moments of suspense. As far as disaster movies go, "Sharknado" is as exciting as any of the Summer blockbusters. In particular, there's a sequence with a Ferris wheel which is really outstanding considering the low-budget.

I didn't get bored, although I nearly did during the school bus rescue scene and a bit of superfluous family drama near the end, so I'm going to rate "Sharknado" as one of the best movies from The Asylum that I've ever seen. Take that with a huge pinch of salt though because I've only seen half a dozen of their products anyway. Clearly some talent was accidentally allowed to sneak in which I doubt will ever happen again. The Asylum have been trying for years to make an intentionally "so bad it's good" cult movie, but more through luck than judgement, they got the balance right this time.

Enough said!

Having got the praise out of the way, it's time to look at the more negative aspects.

"Sharknado" is, of course, a "B movie". Worse than that, it's more like a C, D, E or F movie, but it's certainly not "Z grade" like most of the theatrical films that I've reviewed recently. There's entertainment to be had here if you are in the right frame of mind, or even if you aren't. A lot of message board snobs have said that they'll only watch "Sharknado" with a load of beer on board, but there's no need for that unless you want to make a party out of it.

The acting is TV quality which is in keeping with this being a TV movie, but some of it is uncommonly bad. The biggest name in the film is John Heard, and he's beyond awful. Maybe it's his age or the fact that he just didn't care that much, but his performance is painfully embarrassing to watch.

Ian Ziering does a fairly decent job as the annoying lead character named Fin (geddit?) who doesn't realise the "no good deed goes unpunished" rule no matter how many times it slaps him in the face. That surprised me because I absolutely loathed him when he used to play Steve in "Beverly Hills 90210". What a difference almost a quarter of a century makes! Mind you, I only used to watch that show for Shannen Doherty so I barely registered Ian Ziering and didn't ever know his real name.

I still don't really know who Tara Reid is. I know she's in a couple of movies which I have on DVD ("The Big Lebowski" and "Urban Legend"), but I can't say that I recognised the name or was able to put a face to it even with that information. Apparently she plays Fin's equally irksome ex-wife, but if you'd told me that she was the daughter I wouldn't have been any wiser. Neither of them do much in this movie so Tara Reid's status in my mind isn't going to change.

You're going to need a bigger bookcase!

Cassie Scerbo, the pretty, shotgun-toting brunette with a slightly wonky nose, steals every scene she's in, so if anyone will be remembered from "Sharknado" in a 100% positive way, it'll be her. She alternates from cute to sexy in a heartbeat and may be someone to look out for in the future. It seems that she was in "Bring It On: In It to Win It" (2007), but I don't remember too much about that or if I ever watched it. She'd probably be great as a final girl in a real horror movie.

There's not much else to say about "Sharknado" as it's just a bit of fun. Apart from a couple of stunts, all the action was done with CGI and green screens, plus some models and a couple of latex mock-ups, so make of it what you will.

I think there was more talent shown with this computer generated silliness than in movies with a far bigger budget so I'll not-so-grudgingly give out praise where it's due. The stars of the show are the often incongruous effects, but getting the movie to look half as good as it does with the budgetary contraints and schedule must have taken some doing. Realistically, I can imagine that it was a lot less fun for everybody behind the scenes. Whoever did the post-production editing had such a great sense of timing that they also deserve some kind of award.

I have no hesitation in recommending "Sharknado" as the "must see" SyFy channel movie of 2013. Since I'm an "elitist prick" rather than a hipster, I'm definitely not saying that to be ironic. I couldn't care less if it makes me look like a hypocrite either. There's an exception to every rule and liking "Sharknado" serves me right for making rules for myself in the first place.

"Sharknado" isn't something that I'm ever going to buy on DVD (unless it's in a multipack), but it's certainly worth a rental once it comes to Redbox in September. I'm sure it'll be reshown ad nauseum before then though.