All right, folks, we’ve got a real doozy to take a look at today, an actual genuine honest to goodness WAR PICTURE from the folks at MTI.

If you’re worried right now, you’re not alone.  MTI has, as I’ve said in the past, always been a feast or famine sort of studio.  When they’re good they can do amazing things, but when they’re bad, they outright suck.  Always the question with an MTI movie will be, is this going to be great, or will it be horrible?

Today’s choice, Brother’s War, proves to be mostly horrible.

Based on a true story, Brother’s War features a British solider attached to the Red Army who discovers that the Russians have been committing war crimes against the Polish government-in-exile.  Naturally, the Russians don’t want this getting around, so Stalin’s intelligence service, feared throughout the Soviet Union,  is dispatched to capture the British soldier.  Naturally, they catch him, and lock him up with a German captain.  The Brit and the German both share something important, however–they’re both Freemasons.  When they escape, along with a nurse named Anna, they’re pursued by the Russians, in desperate hope of extinguishing the secret that the three now carry with them that could irrevocably alter the world.

So no, these are not actual brothers you’ll be hearing about, but rather the figurative brotherhood of Freemasonry.  Say what you will about them–and pretty much everything that can be said has been said–they consider themselves (or at least these two do) to be as thoroughly brothers as any blood relative.

It’s hard to call a movie with regular amounts of gunfire and explosions boring, but somehow, Brother’s War manages to be exactly that.  The tension created by the suspenseful scenes was minimal at best, and the action sequences fell flat due to a lack of coherence.  The scenes in the Russian prison suffer from a horrendous excess of acting, though sadly, not acting SKILL.  Watching the German escape was particularly sad as the interrogator managed to go down just by the German swinging his fist in front of him.  I know, it’s supposed to be a punch, but it definitely didn’t look like one.  It’s as though someone forgot to include basic stage combat courses in the curriculum for these actors. And the escapes aren’t that much better, really–the whole thing comes off as lacking.

Frankly, there wasn’t much exciting going on here.  And that’s a particular insult if this is actually based on a true story, because I’m pretty sure the ACTUAL affair was vastly more exciting and vastly more terrifying than this sad little wreck was.

About the only high point of this misery was the background music.  They really went all out with the strange Russian psuedo-hymns–you ever heard the Red Army Choir sing the national anthem?  That’s the kind of thing I’m hearing on this one.  It’s got a weird kind of eerie grace to it, and that’s what you’ll be hearing in the background throughout Brother’s War, should you actually decide to subject yourself to it.  Though I will admit that the second half is somewhat better than the first, it, much like war itself, isn’t really worth what you had to go through to get there.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Brother’s War a three out of ten for being only an occasional auditory pleasure, and failing to remember that it’s supposed to be a movie rather than a soundtrack.

What happens when you give Vikings science fiction weaponry and send them to do battle with a creature straight out of a horror flick?

Well…it probably wouldn’t actually look much like Outlander, but hey; at least they tried!

Seriously, though–as glib as my description sounds, it’s actually not too far off from the truth.  An alien, played almost inexplicably by former Jesus analogue Jim Caviezel, flees an interstellar war only to land on Earth.  He’s crash landed on the shores of Norway, circa, oh, seven hundred AD or so.  But he’s brought company along for the ride–a huge murderous alien called the Moorwen, who immediately begins tearing holy hell out of the immediate Norwegian area.  Thus, it’s left to our alien buddy to recruit some good old fashioned Norse help and go hunt up the Moorwen before it turns Scandinavia into the biggest all you can eat buffet on Earth.

First off, as science fiction-based action epics go, Outlander is both terribly predictable and yet at the same time not bad for it.  It’s a lot like, say, Beowulf or The 13th Warrior or any of a dozen other hack-and-slays just like this except with the added twist of having aliens involved.

Second, the plot additions do trend a bit toward the far-fetched.  I’m amply familiar with the panspermia theory–frankly, I think it’s a load–and so every time I see a movie that uses the plotline that Earth is just a seed colony of some alien race I find myselfscoffing contemptuously at the very idea.  However, this is a small point, and really won’t interfere with the movie itself.

The movie itself, meanwhile, is really quite fun.  They’ve added some really novel twists to it–like the Shields game–that definitely caught my attention.  I’ve seen my share of movies like this, and this might well be one of the best of the lot I’ve seen in some time.  They really did play up the “epic” side of this one, with some infighting and some outfighting and even just a little bit of the old political intrigue just to round things out.  It’s really not just “alien humanoid goes hunting up alien monstrosity”.  There’s quite a bit more to it than that.

Regrettably, the “sci-fi weaponry” I mentioned above will be in short supply, at least when it comes to doling them out to the Vikings.  You’ll get to see some of it in action, and it’s downright awesome, but frankly there’s not much of it involved here.  And that which is actually involved is only involved in the most roundabout of senses.  I’m perplexed as to how this giant, clearly military ship was only carrying ONE GUN.  And while I’m at it, what happened to alien boy’s clearly superior armor?  He took it off at the crash site and then just sort of forgot about it.  Was it carried away by animals?   In that sense, it’s somewhat of a disappointment but there’s still plenty of joy to be had here.  Thus, the disappointment is scarcely too graphic.

The Screenhead Ten Scale,therefore, gives this one a seven out of ten for being an engaging if flawed action thriller, that’s so very much like that which has come before it, and at the same time, offering some fresh new features that make it well worth watching.

I have to admit, I’ve always held the MTI video lineup at arm’s length.  Sometimes, they manage to get some really effective pieces clocked out, and other times, they don’t succeed so well.  It’s a real “feast or famine” situation, and the only difference is whether or not they managed to find a script that works with their generally low budget standard.

Moscow Chill, one of their newest, works.

Featuring Norman Reedus, the actor who brought us some really sweet performances in both The Boondock Saints and The Messengers 2: The Scarecrow, Moscow Chill introduces us to a downright uber-hacker (who is in fact so leet that he can cause ATMs to jackpot via remote) who’s been recruited from prison by Russians who want him to use those magnificent skills to recover forty million dollars for a Russian mob figure.  Of course, it’s hardly as easy as it sounds–is it ever?–and so our hacker and his newfound Russian buddies will have a lot of problems on their hands.

Yes, this is an action movie.  Sure it is.  It’s also got a little bit of crime drama / thriller element on its side.  But, much in the same way as Ocean’s Eleven did, it also packs in a healthy slug of comedy.  I was downright astonished with how often I found myself chuckling at the antics of Moscow Chill.

There really is a lot to like here–the scenery is beautiful and widely varied, if a little on the gray side, the performances are solidly done and highly believable, the plot itself is taut and well done.  There’s just so much to enjoy it’s hard to walk away from Moscow Chill feeling dissatisfied.

And when I even managed to spot some romantic entanglements going on in here, I couldn’t believe it.  It was downright unsettling to discover that this, which I thought would be just another action flick going in, turned out to be a possible date movie.  Fellas, remember this one: Moscow Chill has plenty for not only you but also for the lady in your life as well.  Rent this one and you’ll get a night’s entertainment that she’ll enjoy too.  And there’s never anything wrong with that–plus it gets you brownie points next time you want to see Face Slicers 17.  Not that there really is such a thing, but you get the general idea.

Okay, granted–it’s low-budget and a smidge predictable, but only a smidge.  You can pretty much see coming how things will go for Ray, and it won’t be much of a surprise how the whole thing turns out.  But that’s all right–we’re not here for twist endings.  We’re here for a fun little action movie with some good laughs and a little Russian flavor on the side, like sour creme on borscht.

Moscow Chill proves to be effective on a whole lot of levels, and is surprisingly enjoyable for its low budget.  The Screenhead Ten Scale rewards effort, and thus is happy to hand it an eight out of ten.  Low budget, sure, but low class?  Never.

I did not watch a lot of Torchwood.  It was mostly on BBC America, and the few episodes I saw on the Sci Fi Channel showed up so sporadically in both time and date that I didn’t even know when it was on half the time.

But the few I did see, well, I have to admit there was something there. Especially when I got my hands on an advance copy, which is only just available on DVD today, of Torchwood: Children of Earth.

In Torchwood: Children of Earth, the Torchwood crew is going to go through five really, REALLY unpleasant days of an alien invasion by a race that calls itself the 456.  The 456 wants only one thing–Earth’s children.  Further complicating matters is that there’s one lone survivor of the 456′s last invasion, and he knows they’re on their way.  But can Torchwood manage to defeat the 456 before the children of Earth are lost forever?

It resembles nothing so much as a really, REALLY dark version of Men in Black but for England.  And it almost seems badly out of place–most Torchwood episodes involved the handful of Torchwood employees tackling that week’s Special Guest Villain / Paranormal Oddity.  And if you haven’t seen a lot of Torchwood before, you’re going to be just a little lost on some of the finer points of who’s who and what’s what.

But–and this is the really interesting part–if you haven’t seen a lot of Torchwood, you can actually go in blind on this one.  It functions just as well as a stand-alone as it does part of a greater series, if somewhat differently.  I have to admit that I got taken up with the whole thing, watching the interestingly-laid paths of science fiction and action with plenty of thriller capability.

It’s pretty solid, and a little chilling.  This is, as I said, a much darker iteration of the normal Torchwood series.  Longtime fans may be put off by this and may even go so far as to wonder if this is a whole new direction for the Torchwood series to go in.   Even the DVD menu was a chiller, frankly–the first time I heard the 456 speak I got the willies something fierce.  In fact, I don’t know what it is, but calling an alien race “the 456″ is somehow the most ominous name I’ve heard in a long time.  I’ve heard a lot of alien race names that carried plenty of fiendish glottals–the K’Klikkit, the K’Tang, the Ur-Quan (both Kohr-Ah and Kzer-Za)–but somehow, something as simple as a race that goes by three numbers in sequence (those of you who remember Star Trek: Voyager and Species 8472, you have to admit that’s somehow not so foreboding.  Maybe it’s the addition of “species” or the lack of sequence, I don’t know) is just the creepiest thing in some while.

Oh, and special advance warning for those who haven’t seen the show: brace yourselves in advance for some homosexuality and naked men.

The critical thing to remember is, Torchwood: Children of Earth has a lot going for it, but you’re going to have to clear your schedule.  Like FIVE HOURS of your schedule.  But if you do, you should enjoy the results. The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Torchwood: Children of Earth a seven out of ten for managing to be accessible to the newcomers and yet valuable to those who’ve seen some episodes before.

There are phrases you never want to hear people say.  You’ll hear several of them in Big Stan.

Despite a really, REALLY unpleasant beginning in which Rob Schneider talks an elderly woman into buying a time share by alluding to the neighborhood in which she’ll be surprisingly popular, Big Stan, one of Schneider’s newest titles and one of David Carradine’s last, is going to bring a whole lot of laughs.  This is despite the fact that it’s one of the crassest titles released in some time.

Big Stan is all about Stan Minton, a shady real estate shyster who finds himself doing a three to five year stretch in prison for fraud.  With six months to go before his sentence begins, Minton turns to a man, The Master, to teach him how to be a kung-fu badass.  Thankfully, The Master is played by David Carradine, so you know that Stan’s going to be taught right.  When Stan finally reaches prison six months later, he becomes an agent of change…until the warden decides that Stan’s OLD talents are much more valuable to him.  Will Stan take the easy way out?  Or will he serve his time in peace?

I hadn’t expected so many laughs to come out of this one.  I really hadn’t.  In fact, I was expecting yet another godawful Deuce Bigalow or something else to come boiling out of this mess.  The fact that it had gone, pretty much, direct to video was scarcely encouraging.

But if you didn’t know about it before, you do now–direct to DVD is not the trash heap it once was.  In fact, it’s becoming rapidly the wave of the future.  Cheaper, faster, easier–and we get solid product in rapid order.  Big Stan is an excellent example of how the industry is moving.  Fairly big names (let’s be honest here, most people recognize the name “Rob Schneider” when they hear it) making solid if low-budget titles.

Okay, sure–no one’s ever going to mistake Big Stan for Oscar material.  There are metric tons of rape jokes in here, and other, much less savory topics.  But there’s also plenty of action and lots of choice top-rank comedy.  There’s lots to love about this truly surprising charmer.  And I mean surprising–I was caught completely off-guard on this one.  I never expected I would laugh like this at a Rob Schneider film, and yet, laugh I did.

Most of us who remember Rob Schneider’s early career, back before the full-page ads and the relentless screaming at critics and other assorted garbage that he willfully cluttered his career with, remember him as a stand-up funnyman, the kind who could deliver laughs regularly and with great force.  Of course, that all started to fall apart about midway through, but perhaps the whole direct-to-video thing will be good for Rob’s career.  Maybe it’ll let him get that old funny back, and give us all reason to keep watching.

Maybe…but I’m not holding my breath.

The key take-away here, however, is that Big Stan is going to prove to be an excellent experience, with plenty of laughs, and once you get past the outer shell of crass humor, you’ll find all those laughs and be glad for every one.  Big Stan takes home a seven out of ten on the Screenhead Ten Scale for doing what it set out to do, if not necessarily in the best way.

You know, I expected a certain amount of imitators to crawl out of the woodwork with the recent resurgence of Fast and Furious.  I expected them to be on the low end of the old quality scale.  But I never expected the British version of Fast and Furious…Octane.

Octane gets us nice and acquainted with Brent Black, who is the current king of the Brighton street racing scene by virtue of having a really incredibly tricked out vintage Ford.  Apparently, no one in England can match the sheer power of Ford, which the crew at Top Gear would LOVE to dispute.

Anyway, Black runs the circuit, and as such, gets an offer to tangle with some SERIOUS racers from, well, I’m not sure where exactly they’re from, but they’ve got some cars that can actually give Black and his Ford a race.  These guys are also the kind who really, REALLY don’t like the thought of losing.  So it’s not really surprising when Black’s shop burns down and takes the Ford with it.  So will Brent be able to pick up and win his most dangerous race?  Or will he lose it all?

You might expect a movie like Octane to have lots of hot cars, hot chicks, and hot action.  What you get is cars that crawl along, doing occasional “burnouts” as though someone’s in the background screaming about how the price of replacement tires just isn’t in the budget.  You get a pregnant girl who happens to be Brent’s girlfriend who seemingly will not stop smoking and drinking despite the fact that she’s very pronouncedly pregnant (later to be replaced by a more attractive crackhead, which in itself is saying a lot).  And you get some really, REALLY halfassed action sequences that are a lot more like comedy than they are like action, just incredibly unintentional.

Oh, and poetry.  Let’s not forget the poetry.

I’ve seen some real wreckages in my day, but man, this may be one of the saddest, sorriest attempts to cash in on a much more popular title that I’ve seen in recent memory.  Octane might well be a whole new standard of craptacular that the British moviemaking industry should be downright ashamed of.

Packed with cliches and other assorted failures, Octane is nothing so much as a pathetic waste of a movie.  It’s clearly struggling to do, well, something…but I really can’t tell what.  Is this some kind of commentary on youth?  The underground race scene?  I have nary a clue what they’re out for and frankly, I could not possibly care less than I do right now.

Octane, to be perfectly honest with you, is utter garbage.  If you’re looking for a really unpleasant way to spend an hour and a half that at least peripherally involves auto racing because you can’t stand to wait for Fast and Furious to hit, well, this is the movie for you.  Also, if you want a movie that’s a really easy MiSTie bait, this one’s king.  I had a great time mocking it because it takes itself so seriously.

It only seemed appropriate that I should get something like enjoyment out of this gigantic misery tour of a movie, and that was the best there was.  The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this flaming car wreck a three out of ten, because there’s fun to be had here for the creative.

So we’re back in the MTI trenches for another upcoming title–you’re getting an advance look at a DVD that won’t be hitting stores for about another three weeks, August 11.  It’s called Safehouse, and it’s a low-budget action romp this time.

When former FBI agent Cooper O’ Neal settles down into civilian life, maintaining a boat in a partnership with his former coworker’s attractive daughter, he thinks he’s got a chance at a quiet life.  But when another FBI agent comes rolling into the marina he works at, dead, in a boat with a clandestine thumb drive on his person, O’ Neal finds his old life coming back to haunt him in a very big way.  Now, he’s got to protect his new partner and keep himself alive long enough to figure out what’s on that thumb drive, and when he does, he’ll discover it’s just one part of a larger plan engineered by a madman with a serious missile fetish.

The first thing that got me laughing about this movie was the first time O’ Neal took on an assassin.  Even O’ Neal notices that the guy sent to take care of him is old and fat, but it got just a little pathetic when the two started brawling over a dropped gun and the assassin–get this–started PULLING HAIR.  No, seriously.  This guy, who’s supposed to be a hired gun / assassin sort, was pulling hair in an effort to get O’ Neal away from the gun.

And that was just the first thing–believe me, I had plenty of probably unintentional chuckles at this thing, from the unaccountably high skill of the goon squad involved (how do they get the drop on multiple armed FBI agents so very often?) to the cheerful rounds of Fun With Stereotypes including the homosexual hacker Teabury, to other hackers with such amazing skill that they can spew technobabble at preposterous rates that will, somehow, allow them to steal money DIRECTLY from the Federal Reserve.  Frankly, from what I’ve read about the Fed, anyone who even THINKS the word “theft” in relation to the Federal Reserve has their firstborn vanish in a puff of blue smoke.

And don’t even get me started on the bad guy’s chief computer guy who either can’t or won’t stop blotting his face with his little orange handkerchief.  That guy drove me nuts by the end of the movie.

But anyway, yeah, sure…it’s a little bit overblown and the premise is downright unbelievable even working the suspension of disbelief engines as hard as an action movie generally requires.  But I have to admit, as action movies go it’s still got a little bit of that spy-thriller sort of fun to it.

No one’s ever going to mistake this one for anything involving Jason Bourne, but there’s still a little bit to it.  You’ve got to give a movie like this credit for trying and not sucking too hard in the process.  Thusly, the Screenhead Ten Scale is going to give it what little due it has, a five out of ten.  It’s not going to be the top of your spy thriller list, but it’ll at least take a run at it, and you’ve always got to give points for effort.

Now, this one’s got me a little freaked out because it’s working two sides of the quality fence all at once.  One, this is actually a Sci-Fi Channel movie.  It was actually on before I got my hands on a copy of the DVD.  I know, I know…it’s SyFy now, but frankly, I find that name both ludicrous and wrong.  Anyway, SyFy movies in the past have trended toward the “depressing wreckage” category and mostly rip off old monster flicks.  I spent years referring to them as Sci Fi Channel Not So Original Pictures, because frankly, their name, Sci Fi Channel Original Picture, was generally an outright lie.

And yet…and yet, I find myself encouraged, because this one, Merlin and the Book of Beasts, is an ANCHOR BAY release.  I’ve seen a LOT of Anchor Bay releases and I’ll tell you this much:  precious few Anchor Bay releases suck.  Anchor Bay is almost always good.

So what happens when “almost always bad” meets “almost always good”?  Let’s find out right now–however, you’re going to have to wait until August 25th to get this one.  That’s right, we’ve got another one fully a month ahead of schedule for you, so you can make your renting decisions well in advance!

This time, we’re looking at some pretty medieval badness here in Camelot–King Arthur’s gone missing, the Round Table is a lost cause and evil sorcerors are running riot all over the land.  With only a handful of knights left to defend the land, they’re going to be counting on legendary wizard Merlin to take charge and help restore Camelot to its former glory.  The downside, of course, is that Merlin’s pretty much had it with the whole wizard thing, and would rather be left alone.  But will he recover in time to answer the darkness sweeping Camelot?

I found myself wavering back and forth quite a bit on this one–both feeling the sweet Anchor Bay goodness in the fairly unique plot and solid special effects, and the cheesy SyFy rottenness in the overblown dialogue.  There’s greatness in this movie, and also plenty of unpleasantness.  They’ll add incredibly convenient, almost deus ex machina sort of plot effects to the whole thing, and frankly, nothing irritates me so much like a handy little macguffin that can solve everyone’s problems quick, easy and out of hand.

Even though I spent at least a little time gravely annoyed by this, I also spent a lot of time happy and entertained.  Merlin and the Book of Beasts is a downright exciting movie, with plenty of swords and sorcery action to be had.  Anyone who has even a vague interest in fantasy fare is probably going to be downright enamored with this.

At least up until the end, anyway, when more deus ex machina solutions come bursting forth and everything is rather conveniently solved by applications of things that had never been before mentioned.

So much of Merlin and the Book of Beasts is high-quality stuff, but there’s plenty of it that’s downright low-grade too.  It’s hard to dislike it for its failings, and yet, just as hard to like it for its successes.  It’s a downright mixed bag, and if you’re prepared to forgive some serious plot deficiencies, you’ll likely enjoy the deep fantasy action feel of the whole thing.

Merlin and the Book of Beasts takes home a six out of ten for having almost every one of its virtues canceled out with an equal part of flaw.

For all of you out there who’ve wondered, debated, and otherwise obsessed over the idea of getting Jackie Chan and Jet Li together in the same movie, well, guess what, folks–this one’s for you. Especially if you ever wanted to watch the two of them fight, because they will, and it is awesome.

The Forbidden Kingdom brings together your two favorite martial arts action heroes in one handy package, but it also does more than that.  It’ll take a kung-fu movie buff and let him find one day, in a mystical pawn shop (for those of you who are already thinking Mogwai, NO, but don’t I wish?) , a STAFF.  But this is no ordinary staff…no sir.  This staff transports our martial arts buff back to what might well be Three Kingdoms-era China.  And when he gets there, he’s going to become part of a much greater war than he ever saw coming.  Now he’s going to have to use that staff to free–get this–the Monkey King.  And along the way, our kung-fu buff is going to learn something about himself, as is the standard for this sort of thing.

One, it’s absolutely SPECTACULAR to see Jackie Chan at least partially reprise one of his greatest roles ever as the Drunken Master.  He says he’s using Drunken Fist style,  but I’ll tell you this–the guy he plays fights better when he’s hammered, and that’s the modus operandi of the Drunken Master.

Two, while they’re plenty of spectacular action in this, there’s also plenty of great laughs.  Watching the Monkey King fight is just a riot, and Jackie Chan is, of course, one of the greatest action comics EVER.

There’s a lot to love here–you just got two points worth above–and there’s plenty more where those two came from.  Watching this is just downright amazing.  The immersion level is almost criminally high–it’s too good not to pay attention to.  The action, the comedy, the occasional drama…it’s just plain wonderful.

The Forbidden Kingdom may well be one of the best martial arts movies I’ve seen in quite some time, possibly ever.  Bringing together some of the greats in the industry like this is no small feat, and giving them a sweet storyline to work within is even better.  They’ll even manage to pack in a whole slew of surprises.  Frankly, watching Jackie Chan duke it out with Jet Li was easily the biggest one of the bunch, and the best part is, that’s only the beginning.  Pay careful attention to the dual roles–that’s a REALLY big one.

The effects are spectacular, riots of color and light shows for days, the music is tailor made, the performances are just spot-on and I really don’t believe that I can say enough about this movie.  It’s great fun and seemingly without flaw, at least without any flaw that I could spot.

At it’s root, The Forbidden Kingdom is just great martial-arts movie fun.  If you’ve enjoyed pretty much anything Jackie Chan or Jet Li have done, from Drunken Master to Wong Fei Hung, then you’re going to get as big a bang out of this as I did.  The Screenhead Ten Scale knows a good thing when it sees it, and hands out its first ever ten out of ten.  It’s just entirely too good to not.

I admit that I’ve been looking forward to writing this one up also–ever since I heard it was making its grand return, I’ve wanted to grab a copy if for no other reason than to experience the sheer lunatic joy that is Corey Feldman actually back acting in a movie.

That movie, of course, is called Lost Boys: The Tribe, and it represents something long, LONG, awaited for a lot of people–a sequel, albeit a direct to video sequel, to the original Lost Boys movie.  Some will actually call it a “reimagining” or an “homage”, though the prevailing thought appears to peg this one as a sequel.

This time, we’re back with the vampires that made the original great, except this time we’ve got Angus Sutherland instead of Kiefer Sutherland–and yes, they’re related.  And we’re going back to Luna Bay, where the sun never seems to really shine and the people are a mixed bag of outcasts and lunatics (no pun intended).  Worse, there’s a whole lot of missing persons cases in Luna Bay, and those who disappear never really seem to turn up again.    And when a former champion surfer arrives in Luna Bay with his sister, they might well wind up on the list of missing persons…unless they can stop the vampires infesting Luna Bay.

This movie was a lot more than I expected, really–I love the subreferences contained in this little puppy, for one.  They’ll reference THE GOONIES.  Wow, says I.  It’s not every movie that actually references The Goonies.  In fact, I can’t remember the last movie I saw that referenced The Goonies. I love some of the baffling non sequiturs this movie generates, like when one of the vampires takes a knife to the stomach and complains about his shirt being ruined.  That’s just one of them.  Even better, bonus credit goes for the “no vampire dies the same way twice” angle–this yields a lot of really sweet vampire death sequences that keep you guessing.  Will this one turn to ash? Will that one burst into flames?  Who KNOWS what’s going to happen next?

Okay, sure, maybe it’s a little pedestrian.  Maybe it’s just a little TOO focused on working that “x-TREEEEEM sports!” angle.  That’s all really rather debatable.  But coupling the vampirism angle onto it is a little extra spice that lends an extra note of quality to the whole thing.

I’m somewhat torn on this one.  On the one hand, I hate most every vampire movie I get my hands on with only a few exceptions, because they’re all too much alike.  Too many Clan Ventrue-wannabes mincing around and talking about angst and whatnot.  Too many fanboy wish-fulfillment cases who live the life pretty much every fifteen year old wants to live before he realizes that such a life would have probably killed him at a young age.

There are some differences, some exceptions–John Carpenter’s Vampires, Salem’s Lot and 30 Days Of Night come immediately to mind.  Lost Boys, and of course Lost Boys: The Tribe, sadly do not fall into that category.  This is more of the same, but with a couple of different twists and a few laughs.

I’m not personally very wild about this movie–it’s not really a BAD movie, and if you’re into vampire flicks then chances are good you’re going to like this one.  Me personally, however, this sucker just grates too hard on a lot of my pet peeves as horror movies, as vampire movies, go.

Thus, I’m giving it a six out of ten on the ten-scale:  not particularly bad, not particularly good either, and if it IS your cup of tea, you should be all over it.