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Friday, March 17, 2023

SHAPE-SHIFTING BATTLEDOGS, NIGHTMARES IN SLUMBERLAND, COWBOYS & ALIENS, SEA BEASTS APLENTY, AND WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE BESIDES??

 
Publicity posters advertising Battledogs, Slumberland, Cowboys & Aliens,  The Sea Beast, Upside Down, and The Adjustment Bureau (all © as given in these movies' respective second images below)

Time for another sizzling six-pack of movie mini-reviews, methinks, so here we go!

 

 
Face to (very close!) face with one of the werewolves in Battledogs (© Alexander Yellen/Infectious Films/The Asylum Productions – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

BATTLEDOGS

On 17 March 2023, I watched a werewolf movie with a difference – Battledogs,  directed by Alexander Yellen, and released in 2013 by The Asylum Productions. For a werewolf movie, Battledogs has an unexpectedly scientific premise – namely, a devastating modern-day NYC-originating virus (no medieval, superstition-inspired Ruritanian setting here!) , which turns anyone who contracts it (by being bitten by someone already infected) into a shape-shifting werewolf. While the medical world attempts to counter this malicious microbe before it can attain pandemic proportions and infect humankind on a global scale, the military is more interested in how its terrifying effects could be weaponised to yield an army of invincible werewolf soldiers – Battledogs. Bearing in mind that Asylum movie budgets are not known for their largesse, I feel that the werewolf transformation scenes are acquitted very satisfactorily, and the werewolves themselves are suitably distinct in appearance from normal wolves, as they should be, to denote that these uncanny entities, albeit outwardly canine, are intrinsically human. (A criticism of mine concerning the 1981 movie Wolfen, whose titular forms constitute a hitherto-undiscovered species of human-paralleling canid, is that they are simply played by visually-unadulterated wolves, which thereby diminishes the wolfen's supposed separate taxonomic identity – click here to read my review of this film). No blockbuster stars appear in Battledogs, but it makes thrilling viewing nonetheless, and offers an interesting twist upon the more typical lycanthrope movie theme. Click here to view on YouTube an official trailer for this movie or here to view the entire movie free of charge.

 

 
A second publicity poster for Slumberland (© Francis Lawrence/Chernin Entertainment/Netflix – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

SLUMBERLAND

My movie watch on 22 February 2023 was the fairly recent fantasy film Slumberland (inspired by the early 20th Century comic strip Little Nemo In Slumberland). Directed by Francis Lawrence, and released in 2022 by Netflix, Slumberland features a motherless girl named Nemo (but a boy in the original comic strip), played by movie newcomer Marlow Barkley, who loses her lighthouse keeper father Peter (Kyle Chandler) at sea, so has to go to live with her uncle Philip (Chris O'Dowd) in the city. When asleep, however, she enters the dream world of Slumberland where she meets a bizarre piratical outlaw named Flip (played by Jason Momoa in typically restrained, understated mode – yeah, right!), sporting a pair of cat's fangs, goat's ears, and ram's horns (in the comic, conversely, he was a circus clown). Flip takes Nemo in search of magical pearls in the Sea of Nightmares, whose wish-granting properties may help her see her father again. Flip himself is trapped, albeit not unhappily, in Slumberland because he no longer remembers who he is – but I'll leave you to work out his waking alter ego from what I've written above – and is being sought by a dream cop named Agent Green (Weruche Opia) decked out in groovy 1970s outfits of retina-ravishing emerald. It's a strange film, no doubt about that, but is visually sumptuous, if oddly uninvolving, I felt. The most eye-popping scene for me takes place in a dream ballroom, where a closer look at the dancers reveals that each one is actually a human-shaped multicoloured mass of fluttering butterflies – Salvador Dali would definitely have approved! Click here to view on YouTube an official trailer for this movie.

 

 
One of the aliens from Cowboys & Aliens (© Jon Favreau/Dreamworks Pictures/Reliance Entertainment/Relativity Media/Imagine Entertainment/K-O Paper Products/Fairview Entertainment/Platinum Studios/Universal Pictures/Paramount Pictures– reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

COWBOYS & ALIENS

On 17 February 2023,  I watched the Dreamworks sci fi/Western mash-up movie Cowboys & Aliens. Directed by Jon Favreau, co-produced by Ron Howard, featuring Steven Spielberg as its executive producer, and released in 2011 by Universal Pictures (in the USA)/Paramount Pictures (internationally), this film has a nothing if not apt title, because that is exactly, and entirely, what it is about – cowboys and aliens. However, it swiftly specializes into cowboys vs aliens after alien ships start attacking a 19th-Century New Mexico frontier town and abducting its inhabitants. Amnesiac outlaw Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) and ornery cattle baron Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) establish a reluctant alliance in order to rid the land of these extraterrestrial varmints, aided by a very different but no less extraterrestrial alien in the very lovely shape of mystery woman Ella (Olivia Wilde), and further assisted by a devastating alien weapon strapped to Jake's arm when he was earlier albeit only temporarily abducted by these selfsame ETs. Cowboys & Aliens takes a while to get started, but once it does finally enter into its stride this is an entertaining if somewhat oddball action movie, featuring some seriously good SFX and some seriously badass aliens! Click here to view on YouTube an official trailer for this movie.

 

 
Battling the brickleback, from The Sea Beast (© Chris Williams/Netflix Animation/Netflix – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE SEA BEAST

My movie watch on 19 February 2023 was the superb animated movie The Sea Beast, directed by Chris Williams and released in 2022 by Netflix. This is a true cryptozoological cartoon feature film if ever there was one, brimming with spectacular sea monsters, including one, the brickleback, that reminds me of the cryptozoological con rit or sea millipede (click here to read all about it on my ShukerNature animal anomalies blog), but with added pincer-terminating tentacles. The principal monster featured, however, is the red bluster, an enormous mammalian entity with a rhino-like nasal horn. The story is all about how generations of hunters have gone to sea to slay and slaughter its multitude of marine monsters, inspired by their rulers' longstanding dictum that such creatures are deadly, causing wanton destruction of human lives and livelihoods. But what if it has all been a lie, a sea monstrous lie, in fact? Brave monster hunter Jacob Holland (voiced by Karl Urban) and determined young orphan girl Maisie Brumble (Zaris-Angel Hator) encounter the greatly-feared red bluster, and discover it to be very different from how the histories portray it, which in turn changes their beliefs, and lives. At a minute short of 2 hours long, The Sea Beast is a lengthy watch for an animated movie, but the story's pace never flags, the action is intense, and the animation so scintillating that this truly magnificent movie was deservedly an Oscar nominee for Best Animated Film at the Academy Awards ceremony held earlier this month (but lost to another superb animated feature, Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio – reviewed by me here). Click here to view on YouTube an official trailer for this movie.

 

 
Another publicity poster for Upside Down (© Juan Diego Solanas/Onyx Films/Studio 37/Warner Bros. Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

UPSIDE DOWN

On 4 February 2023, I watched the sci fi movie Upside Down, directed by Juan Diego Solanas, and released in 2012 by Warner Bros. Pictures (et al.). Upside Down has a very unusual premise. Two planets orbit one another in such close proximity that they are deemed two halves of a single world featuring dual gravity. The upper planet (Up Top) is powerful and prosperous, its inhabitants rich and happy; the lower planet (Down Below) and its inhabitants are poor, unhappy, and cruelly subjugated by Up Top. Up Toppers can travel to Down Below if they wish, but no Down Belower is ever allowed Up Top, unless they work for Transworld, a company whose vast tower block uniquely penetrates both planets. All seems unchanging, until a Down-Belower teenager named Adam (played by Jim Sturgess) and an Up Topper teenager named Eden (Kirsten Dunst) meet by chance and fall in love... This sci fi Romeo and Juliet movie has incredible visuals, especially within Transworld, where the Down Belower workers are seen walking on the floor whereas simultaneously the Up Topper workers are walking on the ceiling. This is because all matter is only pulled by the gravity of the world from which it originates – unless matter from the other world is utilised, but that is both illegal and highly dangerous. However, these are risks that Adam is willing to take in order to be with Eden Up Top. Upside Down is a truly mind-boggling, fascinating film, unlike anything else that I've ever seen. Click here to view on YouTube an official trailer for this movie.

 

 
Cover of the steelbook version of The Adjustment Bureau's DVD (© George Nolfi/Media Rights Capital/Gambit Pictures/Electric Shepherd Productions/Universal Pictures– reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU

Finally, and going right back to 29 May 2021 when I watched it but never got round to writing about it afterwards until now, the last movie mini-review by me today is The Adjustment Bureau. Directed by George Nolfi, and released in 2011 by Universal Pictures, The Adjustment Bureau stars Matt Damon and Emily Blunt as a couple of not so much star-crossed as supernaturally-separated lovers, but what a great film it is, extremely engrossing throughout. Its intriguing premise is that from the moment of birth, every person's entire life has already been mapped out, down to the tiniest of details, yielding a supreme divine plan of inordinate complexity that is continuously monitored for any potential issues by an unseen heavenly organization or Bureau whose numerous agents are, for want of a better term, angels. Within this Bureau's grand plan, Brooklyn congressman David Norris (Damon) should never have re-encountered Elise Sellas (Blunt) following a brief chance meeting with her earlier, but thanks to one of the angels sent to prevent any such re-encounter falling asleep on the job, literally, David and Elise do meet up again, and, worse still for the Bureau, they fall in love, thereby causing havoc to the Bureau's grand plan. Some serious adjustments need to be done in order to restore it, especially when David and Elise start to realize what is happening. So one of the Bureau's leading troubleshooters, Thompson (Terence Stamp), is assigned to the David/Elise case to do whatever is necessary in order to achieve this end – whatever is necessary! I certainly recommend The Adjustment Bureau to anyone who enjoys a novel, imaginative storyline. And Terence Stamp's voice is just as suavely sinister as it's always been! My only issue is why Elise's character has to blurt out the F word – its usage is totally superfluous to the plot and in my view taints what would otherwise be a thoroughly charming, captivating, romantic movie of the highest quality. Click here to view on YouTube an official trailer for this movie.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them. 

 
Another publicity poster for The Sea Beast (© Chris Williams/Netflix Animation/Netflix – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

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