90-Min HBO Max - "The Second Civil War" HBO Fails to Find Middle Ground

*Blog post started on August 5, 2020.

Well, I have gotten through the initial lab work, handled my finances at least for a couple of weeks, and made sure that everyone can watch their appropriate media in Morton, for the most part. My older sister does not own any foreign stuff, but she sees potential in the region-free DVD player. Christmas for my folks will probably be a HDMI enabled region-free DVD player because I do not want my niece and nephew to ruin the DVD/VCR combo in their room. Tape decks are such a rare commodity.

Still, I am a bit on edge in general. The knowledge that I should not self medicate every night hinders my comfort. Trying to ensure that I am not abusing the general insurance my folks are providing me leads to a less vibrant refrigerator menu. There is also the need to show my new medical team that I am attempting to treat my body better, so I need to drop a few pounds before next Tuesday.

Damn the hour lunch schedule. How much can you do with a free hour after sustaining one's energy on Jolly Ranchers? You cannot spend it eating. With that time, you can get damn near anywhere in Champaign/Urbana and be back to work on time. I suppose it is the bank just encourage commerce (Or is it for easier scheduling construction since Illinois only requires a half hour lunch.).

I hope all of you respect my decision to be sucking the life out of Hershey's non-chocolate option. If I was not doing that, the bank could not offer Dum Dums to the customers. They are a little more hesitant to ask in these unprecedented times, but most are still using drive up banking.

Those traveling with children can risk their life or their sanity. Do you give them the damn suckers or deal with the whining all the way home? If you are not local, you will be fucked as you trek back to your sub-10K hometown.

My worries also include just being bored. I will not kick the cats out of my video game chair, so yes, I have an excuse to be bored. The ex's cat seems to be the feline equivalent to me, which means (She was hedging her bets about a break up two-years prior.) I am constantly reminded of my loneliness. Talking to myself is something I do enough of. Now it feels like I am doing it in stereo.

Who knows? Skimble might be inadvertently doubling my angst. This is what I will blame for extra nervousness/reluctance to please my parents. Perhaps that may have skewed my perception of a Mom movie suggestion, "The Second Civil War".

The Second Civil War (1997; 1 hour 36 minutes)

The chaos throughout the world has become too much for most Americans to handle. For example, war in China lead to a refugee population becoming the majority in Rhode Island. When it comes to Asia, there are never an abundance of events to create asylum seekers, the most recent being an Indian nuclear assault on Pakistan.

There are now planes full of orphans who need hope and a new home. The Federal response is to ship them to Idaho. As these future Americans load their flights, the state's governor, Jim Farley, decides to close their borders. With the shelters already built, Idaho is the only place they can go, so armed forces are deployed. After this escalation, Farley lays down the gauntlet. If the feds do not withdraw their demands, Idaho will secede from the Union.

"The Second Civil War" is a poignant TV movie 23 years after its release. It is a satire about identity politics when they were just becoming a post civil rights issue (i.e. Fear of White America being lost to the values of minorities). If the film would have tried to make a statement or solely focus on hilarity, it would be worth suggesting.

This is essentially a TV movie despite its R-rating. The feature has a strong cast and a great director in Joe Dante, but aside from the performances of the adversaries (Beau Bridges and Gov. Farley and Phil Hartman as the President), no one is given a chance to shine. When Dennis Leary shows up as a reporter with Dick Miller as his cameraman, you hope for a madcap Dante film like a "Gremlins" or "Matinee". Miller turns out to be a neutral character, so his talents are wasted while Dante's chaotic touch is no where to be seen.

Without providing a challenge to the director, perennial TV-movie writer Martyn Burke's script could have been directed by anyone. This script could work very well as a play if it only focused on the goings on between the adversaries and their respective cabinets and influencers. These are the only scenarios where the satire works. The interactions amongst parties allows for blatant impolitical correctness that serves to highlight the failures of state and federal governments. Unfortunately, Burke wants you to see the events through the eyes of a news network that is only motivated by ratings.

Fox News and MSNBC had not found their footing by playing to one side of the political aisle or the other. The news network in this feature is out to please everyone which fails to work when the two important angles focus on selfishness. It ends up failing to fit between or unite the two other stories. When most of the cast that lead me to the title are part of this angle, my disappointment was massive.

I guess you might say it is Kubrickian, but you need something wild to occur to leave us comfortable with a sad perception of the finale. Stanley Kubrick wisely gave us Slim Pickens riding a bomb and Peter Cushing announcing, "Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!"

Is there anything more disappointing that a great concept for a movie falling totally flat? I cannot say that identity politics is a great concept. Anyone who preaches that is an asshole. The idea of going to war with Idaho is.

"The Second Civil War" focuses too much on the negative effects of how politics would evolve, and its failure as a satire essentially tells us to just accept that we are going to hate those who are different than us. This feature was a waste of talent and lacks the nerve to be a worthwhile viewing experience. I guess there is nothing worse than dropping the ball. This is something I should have known being a lifelong Cubs fan, but thanks HBO Films for the reinforcement of that.

 

IMDb - The Second Civil War.

90-Min. Rewatch - "Jigsaw" and Trading Control for Trauma (The @cb27words Agenda). 

90-min. Stallone - "Escape Plan 2: Hades" - Why Not Knock Off "Tron: Legacy"?

*Blog post started on August 13, 2020.

Medical appointments have passed, but with a one month follow up scheduled. Yes, I am still stressed about that. And yes, I am too honest to just cancel an appointment because it would not work with my schedule and wait till my next health scare.

Any other stress is probably undue bullshit. The Snapchat girl is sending mixed messages, going from work focus to "why can't a man satisfy me?" mode. Why do you not tell me to get over there and take care of you?

To make matters work, I at least got girls talking on three other platforms. This leaves me with three other conversations to worry about. Should I message them just to make sure they know I am still interested? Did I cross the line with some political commentary? Do they only chat from nine to five?

If you want to be totally up to speed with the life of this aspiring screenwriter/producer/pro-wrestling mind, check out "The AWESOME Disgruntled's Real Secondary Champion: Part 6".

And there are of course the blog posts that I need to all have prepared before my vacation. Because I got to justify my Netflix DVD subscription, my most recent disc had to get back to Carol Stream before the next billing period. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is next up which is good because I got to slow down my output for NinetyForChill.com. But until we get to the way I should be handling my Terry Gilliam collection (To my credit, my copies of "Brazil" and "12 Monkeys" were both purchased at heavily discounted prices.), we must tread through another post 2015 action movie starring Sylvester Stallone.

"Escape Plan" was an amusing enough movie that may have taken itself a little too seriously. With two sequels being shot back-to-back, one would suspect any other franchise to be taking itself way too seriously. Fortunately, when you realize these flicks are solely for the Chinese mainland (Free Hong Kong!), it is easy enough to relax and enjoy "Escape Plan 2: Hades" for the braid dead trash that I hoped "Rambo: Last Blood" would have been.

Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018, 1 hour 36 minutes)

Breslin Security has expanded from prison breaks to encompass rescue missions. With Ray Breslin tired of doing the physical work required in testing the effectiveness of prison security, Shu serves as his top agent. Unfortunately, the last bout with terrorists only allowed for half the assets to make it back home. If fellow agent Kimbral had skipped trying to further promote Breslin by blowing up the terrorists' weapons cache and arrived at the rendezvous on time, the results would probably have been different.

Ray fires Kimbral and puts Shu on leave to work on his team leadership skills. Shu decides to head back to Shanghai to visit his family, and make sure nothing happens to his satellite genius cousin, Yusheng, at a Bangkok bachelor party. At least being at his cousin's side means he will not have be alone when they are kidnapped to soon awake in a black op prison site called H.A.D.E.S.

The Zookeeper has been hired by a Swiss competitor to Yusheng. Shu and his cousin are there to be tortured until they give up the patent information for Yusheng's new satellite communication technology. HADES is far more complex than the last prison Ray broke out of and with the Zookeeper having inmates fight for luxuries, how long can our protagonists last?

We know Ray is going to do anything he can to get Shu out, including recruiting the towering DeRosa to give them some extra firepower, but will not make a move until he is certain of success. It is all a matter of figuring out the location and layout of the prison. Time is one thing Shu has and with Kimbral being a fellow inmate, what he has learned from Ray gives him all he needs to win the day. But after all the damage that Breslin has done to the private prison industry, things seem far too easy.

"Escape Plan 2: Hades" starts out like any silly 80's action movie, but it makes a sudden turn to attempt and capture "The Matrix" cool aesthetic that exposes all of its weaknesses. It is kind of like "Tron" without the teleporting laser and smooth incorporation of effects. With punching and kicking being your primary means of action, our characters are not in the right movie. Especially Stallone who I do not believe knows how to kick.

I suppose the concept of a computer controlled prison allows for twists to constantly occur, but the narrative is far too predicable. The idea is to make the audience to try and figure out the puzzle as they go along. Its mistake is the constant twists to mock us just when the nerds develop a theory on how the protagonist can escape. This leads the audience to just quit caring, so only the stupidity of villain(s) can the film get them reinvested. That is a whole lot of stupid.

Director Steven C. Miller is accustomed to making stupid films. He directed a fun remake of "Silent Night, Deadly Night" ("Silent Night), but that film featured a script that does not necessarily make sense as it works to a big reveal. What made the film fun was a cast of screen chewers and shocking violence. The film chewer in "Escape Plan 2" is Stallone who is essentially there only for his brand value. He is not the lead, so he cannot chew the fat off of this film.

As for the violence, you get one great fight scene, otherwise the film is too quick to resolve its scenes. This leaves the flick with nothing for Miller to catch and over expose. If it left us with graphic scenes to linger on, it would play towards Miller's strengths. It also lacks a sense of humor or clever wit that can save an action movie. All of that is reserved for Dave Bautista's screen time. Since the third film in the franchise also features him, you have to admire the writer, Miles Chapman, doing the bare minimum to leave the audience wanting more.

"Escape Plan 2: Hades" might have figured out how to make a Chinese-funded trilogy work, leaving the audience just interested enough for a third film. In this case, I think this interest stems from wanting justification for putting up with a quickly produced sequel that lacks heart. It has some fun moments, but it also wants to prove itself smarter than its audience.

"HADES" might show up the audience with its twists to indicate intelligence, but it does not change the fact that it is built on a metaphoric swamp. How smart can you be if you are still sinking? Hopefully the wreckage of this castle will be enough to serve as a sturdy base for "Escape Plan: The Extractors".

90-Min Rutger Hauer: "Surviving the Game" Before Newline Tried

*Blog posted started on April 17, 2020.

Four hours and 10 minutes left in the shift and I foolishly thought writing a movie review would get me through the rest of the day. Stimulus fever seemingly lasted for 48 hours. If you got they got their check, they cashed it out before the government knew it was gone. That had been the only story in the news, so I am back to needing to blog on and on and on.

I do have to thank the heroes at Netflix DVD.com warehouses. It is great to have the assurance that I will not pay an extra $2 to see a Rutger Hauer movie that has yet to be converted to HD.

Of course, people are surprised when they find out that I still have a DVD-rental subscription service. I may have just overblown the noble nature of this essential job. Are they having any issues social distancing in those distribution centers if 1 in 22,500 (population of Champaign divided by two) are requesting discs via mail?

I should not mock them when there are plenty of assholes who troll people just to say "Fuck you! Your wrong!" on Twitter and Facebook. They are just trying to survive, like Ice T in Ernest Dickerson's follow up to "Juice" (Please pardon that tacky transition.).

Surviving the Game - Why Can't F. Murray Abraham be Properly Billed?

Jack Mason has been down on his luck since his family died. He is homeless and both of his best friends have just joined his family. Wanting to take control of some aspect of his life, walking into an oncoming Peterbilt seemed to be a wise decision. Serendipitously, a volunteer at a food bank pushes him out of the way in time. This man wants to give Mason a reason to keep on living, so he directs him to Thomas Burn of Hell's Canyon Outfitters. Mason being able to survive the concrete jungle, surely he can be shaped into a hunting guide in the Pacific Northwest. At least, that is what Burns is selling him.

After an evening of libations with the psychiatrist, oil baron, and stock broker and son that he is to lead on a hunt, Burns and the good Samaritan awaken Mason with a .45 caliber pistol pressed against his temple. Mason will be leading these men out on a hunting trip, he just did not realize that he is the hunted. The hunters do give him a head start to get to civilization as they partake in a hardy lunch, but Mason quickly determines the best thing to do is to turn this anger management retreat back on his pursuers. Who is meant to survive this most dangerous of games?

As a child of the eighties, for some reason I think I was made aware of Richard Connell's short story "The Most Dangerous Game" during one of my lit or language arts classes in high school. Perhaps my overread sister told me about it. Maybe I was familiar with the concept because of Arnold Schwarzenegger films ("Predator", "The Running Man"). Regardless of how I was introduced to hunting man for sport, Ice T as a movie star was not going to sell me on checking out "Surviving the Game" when there were Jean-Claude Van Damme and action films with Keith David to watch.

Fortunately, HBO is free for a year with most cable TV packages, and it needed content. It is always easier to run ninety minute features when you are a programmer, so their Newline subsidiary came through with this stacked cast (It is short of a shame that F. Murray Abraham is never the true antagonist.). I am just curious how the studio were able to get this cast in the early 90's, a time when they were not known for trying.

And that is what you get from this feature, a lack of effort from those handling the money. Was it a subliminal message? You will cheer for Ice T killing off the one percentile because they are not trying to help amuse you thoroughly.

The generic and overdone soundtrack style and John C. McGinley's presence gave me a flashback to "Highlander 2: The Quickening". There are very few opportunities for the accomplished cinematographer to shine as a director. If you are a fan of "The Walking Dead" (There are just too many episodes in my opinion.) you can see what Dickerson had taken away from this film which is good, because otherwise you feel this is just a quickly produced knock off of John Woo's "Hard Target".

It is a tough task to approach a concept (JVCD versus Hunters led by Lance Henriksen) that Woo had tackled, but the action in "Surviving the Game" holds up pretty well. If "Judo" Gene LeBell is on your stunt team, the hand-to-hand will look intense. Even with that style of combat, you cannot compete with a Woo's film set pieces, so the script wisely takes time to focus on each antagonist.

All of the performers deliver when it comes to their roles with the exception of Ice T. In Ice T's defense, we want him to be Ice T. As long as he does that, you cannot be dissatisfied. Because the supporting cast delivers, you do invest in their plights as well. It is enough to make for a fun way to kill 90 minutes, and you do not have to worry about loud explosions to bother the neighbors.

"Surviving the Game" is a fun action flick that which makes me miss the time where live TV was all there was. This is a fun way to kill 90-minutes or at least serves as great ambience noise wise. Seeking out a quick take on John Woo is not something that most will partake in, but if it pops up on Tubi or Pluto, it might be that throwback you need in the time of pandemics.

WarnerBros - Blade Runner

90 min. DVD dot Com - "Dr. Chopper" and the Sad Reality of Costas Mandylor and Christmas

*Time of this passage: December 17, 2019.

How do I put the façade of giving a shit about the holidays for a living? I guess 17 years in the customer service field has just wired me that way. What other things will I do for money? I am open to suggestions. The life experience I have makes the range of options pretty vast, at least known.

Actually, I should be taking suggestions on what I can exchange for support in producing "Main Event of the Dead", my pro-wrestling themed zombie comedy. If you have suggestions in terms of promotion, let me know at russthebus07@gmail.com. I will be more than happy to email you a story treatment.

As a typed all that, the solution to why I put up with replying "Merry Christmas" to the constituents of the traitorous Rodney Davis could be a passive aggressive outlet of cursing the season to my non-furry loved one. Perhaps I should turn this into a pro-atheist rant.

Jesus sucks the life out of you under false pretenses. Take it back. The worst that could happen is Satan will accept you. Have you seen or read "Lucifer"?

Since I am letting my better quarter (Eva the Cat still gets a half) use the kitchen to bake and inevitably leave a mess for me to clean, buying a video game on sale is a deserved treat. And "Star Wars" has given me inspiration for another blog post. It was going to be featured in this one, but after my holiday disparagement opening, the post would be too long. If I do not post about my experience watching "Dr. Chopper", what was the point of it?

Really, what was the point of "Dr. Chopper" existing?

In the late 1980's, premier plastic surgeon and custom-motorcycle enthusiast Dr. Fielding went off the deep end in his search for immortality. Instead of modifying bodies to extend life, he decided to just take the best parts off healthy persons.

With a little surgical wizardry, he would replace his decrepit body parts with the parts he swiped. He thought this would allow him to live forever. Once the authorities caught wind of this, the man who became better known as Dr. Chopper vanished without a trace. But over the next 20 years, Lake Tatonka has been littered with loose body parts.

It seems law enforcement had deemed that the responsibility solving the case belongs to drunk and suicidal Forest Ranger Terrell to figure out. Hopefully, he can do that before Nick and his fiancé Jessica take their friends up to check out the cabin his late mother had left him.

Hopes that "Dr. Chopper" might be a good B-movie diminished when it was obvious that this was a direct from VHS tape transfer to the DVD format. If that seems nonsensical, let me rephrase it this way. York Entertainment produced all the VHS copies of this video, and then they connected a VHS player via composite cables to a DVD recorder to create a master DVD to distribute. I had put just as much, if not more, in creating bootlegs to tape-trade at indie wrestling shows.

At least the production of this B-movie (I cannot call it no budget because of the lead actor casting.) means I can definitely distribute "Main Event of the Dead" (ask for a treatment of this wrestling zom-com script by emailing russthebus07@gmail.com) once we complete the production. I guess that made it worth 86 minutes of boredom "Dr. Chopper" provided.

Sorry to point out the boredom. That is a bit of a spoiler because the trailer for a similar York Entertainment film, "Corpses" with Jeff Fahey, seemed to have some potential. The physical picture sucked, but it does not mean that the script and acting would be devoid of charm. Even the credits being just VHS-C font (made famous by "America's Funniest Home Vides") on a black screen could not take that potential away.

The brief, nudity-free lesbian scene in an actual trailer does that.

Once we start the murder spree, you find yourself watching the least effort that you will ever see in a B-movie. Somewhat successful actors like Costas Mandylor ("Picket Fences", "Saw (3-7)") and Chelsey Crisp ("Fresh of the Boat", regular TV guest star) at least show that they can act, but the lack of creative kills, special effects that are nothing more than moist Halloween decorations, and an overall lack of direction makes me certain that the chopper was where all the budget went.

The story feels like it was a poorly constructed one act play. Ironically, a high school stage is where the climax occurs. My biggest issue with adaptations of plays to screen is that the dialogue tends to be structured to be heard with no interruption. Adaptations can work, but the story or the dialogue has to be interesting. This is not "The Philadelphia Story".

If you had some humorous dialogue and interesting murders, you might have a precursor to "Evil Dead: The Musical". You cannot sell an audience people getting stabbed with no fighting back. Shakespeare would throw poison in to mix things up, Sondheim was a genius, and who does not like man-eating plants. If there was one of these things, I may be sympathetic to "Dr. Chopper". Then I would think about how many bad Costas Mandylor films I have seen.

Mandylor can be a solid character actor, but features never seem to write him that way. I did not mind him as the second Jigsaw, and I cannot say I minded him in the live-action remake of "Fist of the North Star". I am a fan of the "Saw" franchise and will give any Gary Daniels movie a chance. But after sitting through this and "Immortally Yours" (aka "Kiss of the Vampire"), he is just an actor who has no discern for work.

There was at least one name attached with the production of "Immortally Yours" and "Dr. Chopper". Since the production values are damn near the exact same, this indicates that Mandylor does not mind doing shit films. Michael Caine may bad movies, but at least Universal went to the trouble of bringing in as much sea water as possible to the set of "Jaws: The Revenge" to make the feature look authentic. Caine at least requires you to make an effort.

"Dr. Chopper" makes me curse the backwards compatibility of all Blu-ray players. You cannot always count on streaming. Once my VHS player dies, I cannot watch a physical copy of the Sony Distributed Gary Daniels classic "Heatseeker", but DVD.com will have no issue sending me a copy of this piece of garbage. Does that seem right to you (provided you know your opinions of Albert Pyun films do not matter)?

Just because your movie has no production values does not mean you are excused from exerting effort when you film it. "Dr. Chopper" should be watched by the director Lewis Schoenbrun friends and family only. He made a thing that is worth being put on the fridge for a week and then forgotten. This is nothing more than a macaroni painting wanting to be a film. That tells me the world has too much pasta (and they won't share it with me).

The Chopper is back, and it’s never been so cool

https://metro.co.uk/2014/08/13/the-chopper-is-back-and-its-never-been-so-cool-4831955/amp/