This Week: Animated hit Home comes home, cult fave Miracle Mile, and a documentary on a doomed Dr. Moreau remake.
► With shades of ‘Lilo & Stitch,’ the Dreamworks animated flick HOME finds a small girl trying to avoid capture after an alien invasion by a race called the Boov, and she’s on the run with one of the fugitive aliens. Steve Martin, Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez provide some of the voices, but what it really needed was something to set it apart from the countless kiddie flicks it borrows from. You can pencil in movies like this to make between $150 to $200 million. This is still in the year’s Top 10 box office hits.
► There is something perversely fascinating about documentaries on trainwreck movie productions. David Gregory’s LOST SOUL: THE DOOMED JOURNEY OF RICHARD STANLEY’S ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU revisits a movie that was astounding in its dysfunction. After the eccentric Stanley convinced the studio to sign Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, it was a non-stop nightmare of egos, incompetence and tropical storms. Stanley was eventually sacked and a pissed off John Frankenheimer was brought in to finish a movie he clearly hated. The rest of the world would soon join him. Seriously, by this point Brando was arguably insane, and Kilmer wasn’t far behind. Three-disc edition includes some insight from Stanley and a concept gallery for a film which looked so cool at one point.
► Like so many gems from the ‘80s, Steve De Jarnett’s MIRACLE MILE was completely ignored in theatres but earned plenty of admirers on VHS. Anthony Edwards plays a dude in L.A. who picks up a ringing pay phone and is told that nuclear war will begin in less than 70 minutes. As he seeks out his new girlfriend (Mare Winningham), he realizes the warning was real and Los Angeles is about to get annihilated. Offbeat and creepy, with the type of ‘what the hell?’ ending cult classics are made of. Nice batch of blu-ray extras includes director commentary, alternate ending, and interviews with Edwards and Winningham.
► Want to go batshit crazy with DC characters? Just call it an ‘alternate’ timeline. In JUSTICE LEAGUE: GODS AND MONSTERS, Zod is Superman’s dad and Wonder Woman is the daughter of the God of War (that’s Ares, not Kratos). Oh, and Batman is a vampire. They’re basically a terrorist organization, but when they’re blamed for crimes they didn’t do, it’s time to assess what they really are and choose between good and evil. DC is releasing prequel comics to coincide with this.
► It’s a two-fer from director Steve De Jarnett this week. A year before ‘Miracle Mile,’ he made the sci-fi curiosity CHERRY 2000, which has Melanie Griffith as a bounty hunter helping a business executive (David Andrew) find parts for the female android he was boning. To get them they have to venture into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.. Orion never knew what to make of the movie and didn’t bother putting it in theatres. Blu-ray has De Jarnett commentary and a making-of doc. De Jarnett has directed plenty of TV since ‘Miracle Mile’ in 1988, but never another movie.
► It took Tobe Hooper three years to make his follow-up to ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ and 1977’s EATEN ALIVE was hardly worth the wait. Cheap drive-in fare has Neville Brand as a disturbed hotel owner deep in the swamp who is fond of feeding visitors to his pet (and incredibly cheap looking) crocodile. After a prostitute goes missing, her parents poke around, along with a couple and their young daughter. ‘Chainsaw’ alum Marilyn Burns co-stars, along with a young Robert Englund in one of his first movies. For such a trashy flick the two-disc blu-ray is loaded with good stuff, including a new introduction by Hooper and the story of the Texas bar owner the movie’s loosely based on.
► SyFy tried offsetting their Sharknado shit with more upscale stuff like HELIX, in which Disease Control scientists discover the world on the brink of ruin after investigating a viral outbreak at an arctic bioresearch station. Season 2 has the survivors relocate to a remote island inhabited by a religious community, with a new outbreak to deal with. Ratings didn’t pick up enough to green light Season 3.
► Doggies have their day in WHITE GOD, which has more in common with 1982’s ‘White Dog’ than its title. When a mixed-breed poochie is abandoned by his owner after he moves, he gathers his four-legged friends for an uprising against their human oppressors while looking to reunite with the little girl who raised him. Oh there’s plenty of symbolism here if you want on racism, cruelty, etc., but it’s mainly dogs dishing payback against their asshole owners. And who can blame them?
Also out this week:
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