Well I can’t think of anything better to debate this weekend than straight up action movies. Live Free or Die Hard has finally arrived, and Transformers is opening early next week. We’ve also got Rambo 4 on the horizon, which has a lot of people wondering if the old school action genre is coming back… with a vengeance, as it were. I know a lot of people seem to hold the original Die Hard as the best action movie of all time. Do you agree? If not, what would you pick as the best action movie of all-time? Do you notice a difference between those iconic action flicks from the 80’s, and the action flicks coming out today? Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday.

No it’s not another remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it’s Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, written and directed by Zach Helm! Helm wrote last year’s enjoyable Stranger Than Fiction, but I have to admit, this looks kind of wack. Dustin Hoffman plays the zany inventor and shopkeeper Mr. Magorium, but he just seems miscast in a role that was meant for someone like Jim Carrey (Lemony Snicket’s anyone?). Natalie Portman and Jason Bateman also star, but the real focus of the movie will be the special effects… which honestly looked a bit spotty. It also takes an accomplished director to attempt such an ambitious visual style, and this is Helm’s directorial debut. I know it’s just another fantastical tale for kids (and surprisingly it’s not based on an existing children’s book) but I just thought it felt pretty bland and uninteresting. Maybe it’s because the trailer didn’t really show the “dark and ominous change” that supposedly happens to the store once Mr. Magorium passes it on to Natalie Portman’s character. Check out the trailer below; it hits theatres on November 16th.

Well it looks like Live Free or Die Hard is off to a decent start from its opening on Wednesday, taking in $9.1 million… but will the PG-13 rating keep people away? Sounds stupid to say, I know. PG-13 means more people can see it, so I honestly don’t think it will hurt them, and reviews have been good too. On the other hand, we also have the latest movie from Brad Bird and Pixar opening this weekend. I’m still a bit unsure how Ratatouille is going to do, considering every other Pixar movie has completely dominated, but I feel like this one has been underpromoted. The biggest surprise is that Michael Moore’s Sicko opens in a measly 441 theatres… even Focus Features’ indie flick Evening has been given a bigger opening. What gives?

Evening (limited)
Live Free or Die Hard
Ratatouille
Sicko (limited)

As far as the Transformers go, there have been a lot of different incarnations over the years, but I think most people would agree that the only one that’s ever been worth its salt is the Generation 1 cartoon. I watched the CG Beast Wars and Beast Machines series when they were on, I even tried to watch that Japanese import Transformers: Robots in Disguise series, but it was all essentially crap. There have been other animated shows since then, but I kind of lost track. Now with the Transformers movie coming out, and the target audience seemingly being a little bit older, you’d think they might try to bring out a revamped cartoon that at least maintained the tone and characters found in the movie. Instead, they will be launching a new show called simply Transformers Animated, with some of the worst character designs I’ve ever seen, and not to mention a key change to the premise. And I quote: “Autobots fight evil humans in Superhero fashion much more frequently than they battle the Decepticons”. So somehow giant robots fighting puny bank robbers is going to be interesting to watch? What a joke. This has to be the worst Transformers incarnation yet. You can check out a bigger version of the promo artwork over at Forever Geek.

Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg is known for delivering twisted tales of horror and supernatural chills, but his last feature film was a far cry from those genres we’ve seen him help define. A History of Violence found him adapting a graphic novel about small town man whose former life of crime comes back to haunt him. By and large, critics ate it up, and now he is reteaming with that film’s star Viggo Mortensen for another crime flick that delves into the Russian mafia instead. Eastern Promises co-stars Naomi Watts as a midwife who accidentally crosses path with an organized crime family in London. Based on how much I enjoyed A History of Violence, I am already on board for this; we all know Mortensen can deliver some kick ass performances, and the trailer does a great job of setting up the mystery without revealing too much. Eastern Promises opens on September 14th; check out the preview over at Yahoo! now.

“Whoppers are the right of all sentient beings.” Hey, finally a Transformers clip where we get to hear Optimus Prime speak! This is almost as good as those McDonald’s commercials from Batman Forever where The Dark Knight tells Alfred, “I’ll get drive-thru”. CLASSIC.

The title of this one says it all. National Lampoon is trying to beat the Wayans Brothers to the punch with an upcoming parody of sword and sandals epics called National Lampoon’s 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Wallace Leonidas. As we can deduce from the title, at least three of the movies it will be poking fun of are Gladiator, Braveheart and 300. Frankly I have no idea what they might find funny about any of these moving portraits of courage on the battlefield! I’m kidding obviously, all of these movies leave themselves pretty wide open for ridicule, which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy them. But isn’t this basically just Epic Movie 2? The movie was written by a guy named Jason Burinescu and focuses on “Awesomest, an out-of-shape Spartan general who fails forward on a path to greatness”. The movie starts production in the fall, and I’m sure it will be pretty hilarious. No really, it will. (Seriously.)

We all love reading lists right? Well here’s a weird one that may be worthy of some discussion. It seems British news site Guardian Unlimited polled their readers about the most memorable movie moments of all-time. And guess what movie topped the list, compiled from some 15,000 votes? Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects. That’s right, apparently that twist ending is still blowing people’s minds 12 years later. I was certainly surprised to find anyone still remembered the movie at all, as I think in retrospect it may have gotten a little more credit than it deserved. But maybe I’m wrong there. It’s also one the more recent movies on the list, which seems to consist of a lot of older classics. Here’s a rundown of the Top 20 moments; you can read the rest at the Guardian site (linked below). Which ones do you agree with? Which ones do you disagree with?

1. The Usual Suspects - Keyser Soze revelation
2. Psycho - The shower scene
3. The Third Man - Harry Lime appears
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Flying bone to space ship transition
5. Apocalypse Now - Dawn helicopter attack
6. Blade Runner - Batty’s dying speech in the rain
7. The Great Escape - The Cooler King escapes on his motorbike
8. Casablanca - Rick and Ilsa say goodbye at the airport
9. Planet of the Apes - Statue of Liberty discovery
10. Some Like It Hot - “Well, nobody’s perfect.”
11. Singin’ In The Rain - Gene Kelly singin’ in the rain
12. The Deer Hunter - Russian roulette
13. Ben Hur - Chariot race
14. Don’t Look Now - The hooded figure
15. Saving Private Ryan - Normandy landing
16. The Birds - Crows gather outside the school
17. Platoon - Sergeant Elias staggers out of the jungle
18. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Mothership appears
19. Lawrence of Arabia - Entrance of Sherif Ali
20. Taxi Driver - “You talkin’ to me?”

With 80’s cult classic Monster Squad finally set to hit DVD next month, director Fred Dekker has seemingly been inspired to consider bringing back the characters for another adventure some 20 years later. He recently told Dread Central in an interview that he had been kicking around some ideas with the cast members. Not that it necessarily means this will amount to anything.

“At Monster Mania, I was sitting around with the Squad and we started talking about ‘where are these characters today?’… I got really excited about it the more we talked about it; imagine Rudy as an auto mechanic in Detroit with a crumbling marriage and an alcohol problem, and he gets a phone call from his old pal Sean who tells him they gotta get back together. That’s a movie I would go see!”

I guess enough DVD sales could truly make anything happen, but I have a hard time believing there’d be much of an audience for this. Maybe you could convince Anchor Bay to release it direct to DVD or something though. Dekker really hasn’t been doing much lately, and it would certainly be nice to see him to direct again. His most recent gig was as a writer and consulting producer on Enterprise, and before that it was the ill-conceived Robocop 3 back in ‘93. Eeesh.

This is Matt comin’ back at ya with another Must-See-DVD review. The film of choice this time is Lamberto Bava’s Demons and boy is it sweet. Demons, produced by Dario Argento, is my all-time favorite Italian horror movie. This film contains all the necessary elements for a classic 80’s horror movie: ensemble characters, heavy metal, blood by the bucket and breasts (although the lone breast-shot is very unattractive).

A number of people have been invited to a movie premier by a strange man with a metal mask. This zombie-STYLE movie also includes Giallo slasher elements through the film the crowd views. I’m not sure but I assume what is viewed on the screen was made for this movie. A woman puts on a strange mask which scratches her face. Soon after, the woman is running to the washroom where she mutates into a demon. Terror ensues.

The characters are part of what makes this movie classic. Included are lovers (the male and female protagonists), a pimp with his women, a blind man with his niece, a dirty old man who pursues the young niece and a bunch of cocaine-snorting, Billy Idol loving punk teens. Until he becomes a Demon, the pimp is the leader of the pack as he orders people around. This guy is so badass that when someone tells him not to dispense of a dead body over a railing he delivers the line “Aw man, you aint worth shiiiit!”, he’s obviously seen a zombie film or two and knows what to do.

The gore in this film is very cheesy but gratuitous enough that you laugh every time. Another trope of Italian horror films is the gory close-up shot. Anytime someone is sliced open, their eyes are ripped out or their fingernails and teeth pop-out during transformation you can bet that the camera is in nice and tight…..you can almost taste the fake blood and polyurethane. And what Italian horror would be complete without what I like to call a G.E.T. sequence. What is G.E.T. you ask? Well if you’ve seen Lucio Fulci’s famous film Zombie you’ll remember the cringe-inducing scene in which a woman’s eye is pierced by a splinter of wood (complemented by a close-up shot of course); another example of a Gratuitous Eye Trauma sequence (always fun to watch!). In Demons, the victim is the creepy guy who was handing out movie tickets at the beginning of the film and the wood splinter is replaced by a metal rod.

Now I would like to take a moment and describe to you what may be the most bitchin’ scene in cinematic history. If this doesn’t peak your interest in this movie then you cannot call yourself a fan of horror, the 80’s or anything awesome (just kidding). Near the end of the film most of the people have died or become demons. The two lovers are fleeing from a horde when they come across a display featuring a dirt bike and…….wait for it…….a samurai sword! The two hop on the bike a ride around the theater slicing and dicing to the heavy metal track Fast as a Shark by Accept. What more could you ever want? How about a heap of other great songs to make the Demons soundtrack second-to-none. Bands included are Billy Idol, Accept, Motley Crue, Saxon and Scorpions.

Have you seen this movie? Will you see this movie? Tell me what you think……………