MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE STAR TREK: INSURRECTION

One of my New Year's resolutions for 2008 was to write shorter Foyeurisms. It's not that I don't enjoy writing long write-ups; it's just extremely time consuming. So, of course, here I am kicking off 2008 with a really long Foyeurism and, all the more fitting, it's not even dedicated to the film I originally intended to start the new year off with. One thing you can probably look forward to more of in 2008 is my doing podcasts. I've been taking part in the Dread Central Dinner For Fiends roundtable discussion podcasts for awhile now. Now I've been spun-off into my own podcast, I mean Foycast. The first one just went up right at the end of 2007 - one hour of me discussing how I got into the whole internet movie reviewing thing, clearing up some misconceptions people have about my viewing habits, running down my list of the ten worst DTV horror movies of 2007, and then telling you about one of the greatest movies you've never seen and probably won't ever get to if things stay the way they are - a film I've been meaning to write a Foyeurism about for almost two years. You can listen to the MP3 of the first ever Foycast by CLICKING HERE.

Now before we kick-off the new year with the first Foyeurism of '08 there's one final piece of business to attend to. From the feedback I got my first ever year-ending Foybles movie awards were quite popular. As a reminder, these are my own personal movie awards, my choices for best and worst cinema stuff and other such nonsense based on the 2007 movies I actually saw. Reviews of many of which can be found in the Archives section (button above & below). WARNING: The views expressed in the 2006 Foybles are strictly my own opinion and as such are indisputable. I am the man who gave THE GINGERDEAD MAN four stars. Clearly I have know more about cinema than you.

THE 2007 FOYBLES

BEST MOVIE OF 2007: I know this might sound strange but I don't have one. Nope. I do not have a pick for best movie of 2007. I saw a whole bunch of movies this past year yet I cannot say I saw anything that truly stuck with me as a film I considered to be above all others in terms of quality and entertainment value. There was no United 93 this year that left me feeling like I'd just watched a true masterpiece of filmmaking, nor was there a Borat this year that entertained me so immensely. Many a movie that's gotten a great deal of praise, such as Ratatouille, entertained me but didn't blow me away. The one film that probably came closest to taking the Best of 2007 mantle for me was No Country For Old Men, at least it did until the last 15-minutes. The cineastes argue you have to think about the deeper meaning of it all; I'm not convinced there isn't any - just a frustratingly unsatisfying obtuse conclusion to an otherwise tremendous film. In terms of pure entertainment value, Grindhouse was the most fun I had watching a movie with a live audience and 300 was a wildly inventive slab of action movie machismo. But are either my favorite film of 2007? I'm afraid not. Strange as it may sound, I saw a whole bunch of movies I really liked but nothing I truly loved enough to label it as my choice for the best must-see movie of 2007.

2007 FAVORITES: No Country For Old Men, 300, Grindhouse, The Mist, Hatchet, Breach, The Astronaut Farmer, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Simpsons Movie, Enchanted, Superbad, Juno, American Gangster, Sweeney Todd, The Host, Dragon Wars

MOVIE YOU'D PROBABLY BE MOST SURPRISED TO KNOW I HAVEN'T SEEN: Shrek The Third. I enjoyed the first two but continue to find myself with absolutely no desire whatsoever to view this third go round.

MOVIE I'M ASHAMED TO ADMIT I PAID TO SEE: Code Name: The Cleaner. I don't what came over me. I don't why I went. I must have been really bored that night.

MOVIES I'D LIKE TO SEE IF ANY DAMN MOVIE THEATERS IN MY AREA WOULD SHOW THEM: The King of Kong, There Will be Blood, Sunshine, Right at Your Door, Into the Wild, Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, The Orphanage

MOVIES THE CRITICS AND CINEASTES INSIST ARE MASTERWORKS OF CINEMA YET I STILL HAVE NO DESIRE TO EVER WATCH THEM: The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, In the Valley of Ellah, Gone Baby Gone, I'm Not There, Michael Clayton, Once, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Zodiac

THE ULTIMATE GUILTY PLEASURE MOVIE OF 2007: Dragon Wars. If you've ready my epic dissertation on the film then you already know why. Whether or not you agree is another matter entirely.

MOVIE I FEEL SOMEWHAT GUILTY ABOUT ENJOYING: Redline. God help me but this goofy Golan-Globus worthy variation on the Fast & the Furious entertained me greatly despite it being a terrible piece of filmmaking

MOVIE MOST DESERVING OF BEING FOUND GUILTY: The Number 23. The most intelligence insulting film of the year and this is coming from someone who saw I Know Who Killed Me. That this film boasted good acting and such lush production values only makes it the very definition of a well-polished turd.

WTF WAS THAT?!?!?!?!?!: I Know Who Killed Me - Seriously, WTF?!?!?!

MOST OVERRATED MOVIE OF THE YEAR: The Bourne Ultimatum. Yes; it's a pretty good movie, but one of the year's best...? I get the like; I just don't get the love.

MOST HYPOCRITICAL MOVIES OF THE YEAR: Ultra violent action flick The Condemned suddenly turns around and scolds its viewing audience for being entertained by ultra violent entertainment; and Who's Your Caddy?, in which white characters are frowned upon for being traditionally uptight and racist even when they're not while the excessively crude behavior of the black characters is championed and they blatantly cheat to win too.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE YEAR: Spider-Man 3

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: I Am Legend, Transformers, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Shoot'em Up, Live Free or Die Hard, The Golden Compass

HOW THE HELL DID THIS GET A THEATRICAL RELEASE?: Sarah Landon & the Paranormal Hour

SINGLE GREATEST ACTING PERFORMANCE OF 2007: Angus Macfadyen as the wacko Uncle Mike in Redline. I don't know what the hell he was doing but it was positively mesmerizing.

RUNNERS-UP: Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men, Josh Brolin in No Country For Old Men and Planet Terror, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Charlie Wilson's War, Chris Cooper in Breach, Ellen Page in Juno, Amy Adams in Enchanted, Sasha Baron Cohen in Sweeney Todd, the owl that kept appearing in Lindsay Lohan's mirror in I Know Who Killed Me

BEST TAG TEAM: Kevin Costner and William Hurt in Mr. Brooks

WORST TAG TEAM: The serial-killing brothers in Captivity

WORST PERFORMANCE BY AN INANIMATE OBJECT MASQUERDING AS A LIVING ORGANISM: Jason Behr in Dragon Wars and Skinwalkers

WORST ACTING OF 2007: Malcolm MacDowell and William Forsythe in Halloween, Josh Hartnett and Melissa George in 30 Days of Night, Emmanuelle Vaugier in Unearthed, Whoever played the old lady in Sarah Landon & the Paranormal Hour, Karl Urban in Pathfinder, Thomas Sangster in The Last Legion, Andy Milonakis in Who's Your Caddy?, Zachary Knighton in The Hitcher, Jessica Alba and Julian McMahon in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Dustin Hoffman in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Demi Moore in Mr. Brooks, John Turturro in Transformers

WORST PERFORMANCE BY AN ENTIRE CAST: Everyone that wasn't a CGI monster in Dragon Wars

WORST VOICE CASTING: Christian Slater as the voice of Moses in the cheaply computer animated The Ten Commandments

MISCASTING CHOICE OF THE YEAR: Timothy Olyphant in Hitman

HEY, DON'T YOU KNOW THERE ARE STARVING ACTORS IN AFRICA WITHOUT ANY SCENERY OF THEIR OWN TO CHEW ON?: Neal McDonough in The Hitcher, Ben Foster in 3:10 To Yuma, Priscilla Barnes in Thr3e, Marsha Gay Harden in The Mist

WORST MALE CHARACTER OF 2007: Kevin Smith's computer hacker in Live Free or Die Hard. Shouldn't Jay & Silent Bob show up at this guy's door and punch him in the face out of sheer spite?

WORST FEMALE CHARACTER OF 2007: Sarah Landon in Sarah Landon & The Paranormal Hour, the lead heroine who does absolutely nothing despite having the movie named after her.

DUMBEST CHARACTER OF THE YEAR: Elisha Cuthbert in Captivity. If ever the phrase "too stupid to live" applied it would be here - and yet she lived!

BEST COMPUTER ANIMATED VERMIN: Sorry, Ratatouille, but I have to vote for the CGI chipmunk in Enchanted. Even a big toughie like me must confess to having found it disgustingly adorable.

WELCOME BACK: John Goodman, for playing a legitimately menacing tough guy in Death Sentence

PLEASE GO AWAY: Stephen Baldwin. Your name in the credits ensures maximum suckage will follow

DUDE, IT'S OVER: Wes Bentley in Ghost Rider and P2. Congrats, Wes, on having played what were probably the two worst villains of the past year. One was a demonic brat looking to overthrow Satan and the other an obsessed psychopath; neither were anywhere near as creepy as the kid with the floating plastic bag obsession you played in American Beauty

ACTOR MOST IN NEED OF SOMEONE LOSING THEIR GRIP ON A NINTENDO WII CONTROLLER AND HAVING IT WIND UP IMPALED INTO HIS SKULL (AKA THE ROB SCHNEIDER MEMORIAL AWARD): Eddie Griffin - The world already has too many Wayans brothers and Martin Laurence to boost; we don't need you.

WORST SOLDIERS: The Hills Have Eyes 2. People complained about how our military was portrayed in Redacted but not this? It's one thing to be amoral; it's another to be incompetent morons.

WORST THIRD ACT PLOT TWIST IN A YEAR FULL OF TERRIBLE THIRD ACT PLOT TWISTS: Perfect Stranger, the movie boasting the shocking climactic twist that actually renders everything we'd just watched after the opening 10-minutes pointless bullshit.

WORST THIRD ACT PLOT TWIST RUNNERS-UP: Thr3e, The Number 23, War, The Reaping, Dead Silence, Saw IV, Next, Mr. Brooks, Premonition

MOST INSULTING THIRD ACT PLOT TWIST: The Brave One - A decent movie destroyed by an insultingly stupid twist that defied any and all credibility

MOVIE THAT'S ENTIRE PLOT COULD HAVE BEEN UNRAVELED HAD THE COPS JUST BOTHERED TO MAKE A SINGLE PHONE CALL: I Know Who Killed Me

MOST INEXPLICABLE MOVIE MOMENTS OF 2007: The white horse jumping off the side of the burning boat in super slo-mo in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the unsettling racist undertones of all the black characters in Transformers, John Turturro getting pissed on by a Transformer, Hannibal the cannibal samurai in Hannibal Rising, the eagle suicide diveboming the truck's windshield in Skinwalkers, the Atrox army general getting rundown by a speeding station wagon in Dragon Wars, emo dancing Peter Parker in Spider-Man 3, Eva Mendes consulting the Magic 8-Ball she keeps in her purse after being stood up for a date in Ghost Rider, the exploding doghouse in Thr3e, Virginia Madsen having no clue Jim Carrey had done time in an insane asylum despite having first met her husband on the steps outside of one in The Number 23, Sheriff Brad Douriff declaring himself a huge fan of Dr. Loomis' book and even asking for an autograph copy in one scene only to turn right around and chastize him for making blood money off the town's tragedy in the very next scene in Halloween, the use of the song "Love Hurts" in Halloween, the "Why is that Marilyn Monroe sittin' over there drinkin' a cup of tea?" line in Lake Dead, Will Smith quoting Shrek in I Am Legend, Orlando Jones running for his life from a sprinting crocodile in Primeval, pretty much the entire running time of I Know Who Killed Me

TACKIEST SCENE OF THE YEAR: Sandra Bullock's husband's head rolling out of the coffin outside the funeral home in Premonition

WORST EDIT: 30 Days of Night. Everyone is shown huddled in the attic; the movie fades to black and we're told it's seven days later. Then it fades back in with everyone still in the same exact position they were moments earlier as if they hadn't moved in a week.

BEST ACTION SEQUENCES OF 2007: The final shootout in Hot Fuzz, the monster attack on Los Angeles in Dragon Wars, the first monster attack in The Host, the Russian helicopter assault in Charlie Wilson's War, the opening Qatar attack in Transformers, most of the battles in 300, the climactic car chase in Death Proof, El Wray using his knives on the infected in the hospital hallways in Planet Terror

BEST FIGHT SCENE OF 2007: The bath house brawl in Eastern Promises. Realistically brutal and, despite no shortage of full frontal male nudity, it still boasted less homoeroticism than anything in 300. The kill ending the fight scene was one of the biggest "Oh, shit!" moments of the year.

BEST POLAR BEAR FIGHT TO THE DEATH: The Golden Compass

BEST USE OF A SHOTGUN FOR NON-HUNTING PURPOSES: Kevin Bacon during the climax of Death Sentence

WORST ACTION SEQUENCES: The incomprehensible neverending climactic battle in Transformers, ditto for virtually every action scene in The Condemned, The nothing of a final fight between Jason Statham and Jet Li in War, The climactic battle between Ben Kinglsey and the lion-masked dictator in The Last Legion

WORST CLIMACTIC SHOWDOWN: The Spider-Man/Sandman tearful, mutual forgiveness, crying session at the end of Spider-Man 3. What the hell was that crap?

LEAST CREDIBLE SPYBOT: That little Decepticon in Transformers that's supposed to be all about stealth and spying and yet it constantly made loud gibberish noises. Good thing everyone in the movie was deaf and stupid.

LEAST CREDIBLE BAD ASS MALE: Timothy Olyphant in Hitman and Live Free or Die Hard

LEAST CREDIBLE BAD ASS FEMALE: Sophia Bush's Sara Connor turn during the climax of The Hitcher

LEAST CREDIBLE MOVIE ROMANCES: Nic Cage and Jessica Biel in Next, Cedric the Entertainer and Lucy Liu in Code Name: The Cleaner, Karl Urban and Moon Bloodgood in Pathfinder, Colin Firth and Aishwarya Rai in The Last Legion

LEAST CREDIBLE BEARD: Ben Kingley's phony facial follicles in The Last Legion

LEAST CREDIBLE HAIRPIECE: Nic Cage in Ghost Rider

LEAST CREDIBLE REPORTER: Eva Mendes in Ghost Rider

LEAST MENACING VILLAIN: Wes Bentley in Ghost Rider

HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH GHOST RIDER SUCKED?: Ghost Rider sucked!

THIS IS HOW HORROR IS DONE: The Mist, Hatchet

AND THIS IS NOT: Captivity, The Hills Have Eyes 2

WORST HORROR REMAKE DIRECTED BY ROB ZOMBIE: Halloween

WORST HORROR REMAKE NOT DIRECTED BY ROB ZOMBIE: The Hitcher

HORROR MOVIE THAT 20 YEARS FROM NOW WILL PROBABLY GET HORRIBLY REMADE BY ROB ZOMBIE: The Host

90 MINUTES OF DISAPPOINTMENT: 30 Days of Night

WHOEVER WINS, WE LOSE...AGAIN!: Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

BEST MOVIE I SAW AT THE AFTERDARK HORRORFEST: Mulberry Street

WORST MOVIE I SAW AT THE AFTERDARK HORRORFEST: Unearthed

MOVIE I CANNOT BELIEVE I SAW AT THE AFTERDARK HORRORFEST: Lake Dead

WORST DIRECT-TO-DVD MOVIE OF 2007: (Insert Ulli Lommel title here)

WORST SCI-FI CHANNEL ORIGNAL MOVIE: Stan Lee's Harpies

WORST SCI-FI CHANNEL ORIGINAL MOVIE NOT TITLED STAN LEE'S HARPIES: Bats: Human Harvest

BEST SCI-FI CHANNEL ORIGINAL MOVIE: Ice Spiders - and not just because I'm quoted on the cover of the DVD

WORST ASYLUM MOCKBUSTER: Alien vs. Hunter

BEST ASYLUM MOCKBUSTER: not applicable

SPECIAL RECOGNITION FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN THE FIELD OF PHOTO-REALISTICALLY ANIMATED NAKED MAN ASS: Beowulf

BEST CLEAVAGE: Nadia Bjorlin in Redline

WORST MOVIE ABOUT A MANIAC STALKING A WOMAN'S HEAVING CLEAVAGE: P2

WORST MOVIE STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND DANIEL CRAIG: The Invasion

WORST SOCIAL CONSCIENCE ADVOCACY MOVIE MASQUERADING AS A HORROR FILM: Primeval

WORST HISTORICALLY BASED ACTION FLICK: Pathfinder

BEST FANTASY FLICK MASQUERADING AS A HISTORICAL EPIC: 300. If you look at this film as a fantasy flick along the lines of an R-rated Masters of the Universe then its great. If you look at it from the POV of it being based on an actual historical battle, frankly, it's appaling.

BEST OPENING CREDITS SEQUENCE: The Kingdom

BEST BARBER CHAIR THROAT CUTTING: Sorry Sweeney Todd, the one at the opening of Eastern Promises takes the cake

BEST SUPERPOWER: Lindsay Lohan's bionic hand and foot in I Know Who Killed Me

BEST IMPRESSION OF A MOLLY HATCHET ALBUM COVER: The evil Vikings in Pathfinder

WORST HOUSE OF PAIN COVER BAND: The bad guys in Death Sentence

MOST ANNOYING UNRESOLVED STORYLINE: What the hell became of Elisha Cuthbert's dog in Captivity?

MOST UNINTENTIONALLY HILARIOUS DEATH SCENE: The crocodile hunter character in the killer crocodile movie Primeval dying after being turned into roadkill by a speeding jeep in the African brush

DOES THIS GUY EVER NOT DIE IN A MOVIE?: Andre Braugher in The Mist and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Last year he played the doomed captain in Poseidon.

FRANCHISE KILLERS: Highlander: The Source, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, The Hills Have Eyes 2

SECOND WORST MOVIE OF THE YEAR: I'd call this a toss-up between remakes of The Hitcher and Halloween. Let me state upfront that I have no real affection for the original Hitcher; it's a good movie, but not one that I hold on pedestal. This remake, however, I would love to see on a pedestal - preferably with a noose around its neck waiting for me to kick the pedestal out from under it. Utter garbage. As for Halloween, for a guy who has practically built his entire career around horror movies, watching this remake it became sadly apparent that Rob Zombie really is pretty clueless as to how to make a movie scary. He just seems to be a one-note filmmaker only capable of reproducing that same riff over and over with every movie he makes. If his music was the same as his filmmaking he wouldn't be Rob Zombie - he'd be Firehouse! Rob, please, don't treat me bad anymore.

WORST MOVIE OF 2007: As much as I'd like to give it to Who's Your Caddy?, a film I only saw on a dare and still came away appalled at how unfunny and disgustingly hypocritical it was, the more I thought about it I came to the conclusion that the single worst movie I saw during the past 12 months was the murder mystery Perfect Stranger starring Halle Berry and Bruce Willis. A bunch of good actors playing characters that fail to behave like any human beings I've ever met, eroticism that hinges on boring scenes of cyber foreplay, even more boring suspense built around people trying to stealthfully attach flash drives to computers and get around computer firewalls, and let's not forget about dream sequences, a subplot about child molestation, and more phone calls than you can shake a stick at. And it all comes together for an asinine climactic plot twist that leaves you realizing the bulk of the film you'd just watched was completely pointless filler. I think I summarized Perfect Stranger best when I simply ended my review by writing "FUCK THIS MOVIE!" Amen.

 

AVP-F

 

Requiem: noun
1. A song or hymn of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person
2. A musical setting for a Mass celebrating the dead
3. A Mass celebrated for the dead
4. The subtitle for one of the worst movies of 2007

I refuse to believe the decision to subtitle the sequel to the much despised ALIEN VS. PREDATOR with the word "REQUIEUM" was in any way, shape, or form a coincidence. ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM is just that - a requiem for two once great franchises that are now completely, utterly, creatively dead. All you can do is watch this dreck and remember what once made these two classic modern movie monsters so great. I don't give a damn how much money AVP-R may pull in at the box office or whether or not they decide to make a third or even if they finally decide to set that third film in outer space like so many people keep clamoring for, both of these franchises are dead and buried after this abysmal film. All that remains is to bleed the corpse’s dry of every cent Fox can get out of them. Everyone involved had to know this and that's why they chose the word "requiem" as the most befitting subtitle.

Or they just couldn't come up with any other "R" words. I think "REPREHENSIBLE" would have been a better, more truth in advertising choice.

I'm also thoroughly convinced that the brotherly directors of AVP-R were fully aware of how terrible their film was and that's why they boldly attempted to shield us from the misery on-screen by obscuring the action as much as humanly possible with darkness and rain, mostly darkness. 30 DAYS OF NIGHT was better lit than this film.

Even if they didn't intentionally set about to make viewing whatever was going on a chore, one thing is for certain, these two directing brothers (who come from a background in dealing with CGI) don't seem to have a clue as to how to properly stage an action sequence. Shoot virtually every action shot in extreme close-up, rapid fire editing, and obscure as much of the combating creatures with darkness or rain: were they ashamed that they were using creature costumes instead of computer effects to bring the Aliens and Predators to life or did it just never occur to them that there might actually be people in the audience who would like to watch these battles play out?

Just imagine visually obscured action shots like this for 90-minutes, only darker

I'm so sick of this. I'm so sick of shaky cam and Michael Bay-style editing and hand-to-hand combat scenes shot in extreme close-up. I'm just fed up with it. It's like the norm has become to try and disorient viewers into believing they've just seen something cool rather than actually filming something that looks cool.

There was this admittedly awesome shot of the Predator clutching the throat of two Alien beside him with each hand. This is the sort of shot that this whole versus franchise should be about. But what happens next? No; I'm asking you. What happened next? I couldn't tell. A whole bunch of rapid edits and seconds later the Predator went flying across the screen and some rocky debris from it impacting the sewer wall kicked up. The two Aliens were shown standing there seemingly unscathed. What happened?

The big climactic showdown the film had supposedly been building to between the Predator and the Predator-Alien hybrid... About all I could discern were a whole bunch of dreadlocks whipping around while fists flew - sort of like a poorly lit catfight between two really ugly rastafarian chicks.

Most of the skirmishes between the monsters the film is titled after are surprisingly brief and relatively uneventful. They clearly took the GODZILLA: FINAL WARS approach to the action scenes.

Yet there's only so much you can blame on the novice directors. If the Japanese were to build some sort of robot that could direct movies and they replaced its computerized brain with that of the late Sam Peckinpah's, I rather doubt even it could have made a remotely watchable movie out of the steaming turd of a screenplay AVP-R is saddled with. Though it would be quite watchable when the robot eventually runs amok - as all such robots are prone to do. You know with the brain of the man who directed STRAW DOGS and THE WILD BUNCH it would be one hell of a robotic massacre.

The bigger story here - the bigger problem that is - is the screenplay for which the use of the word "deplorable" would probably be too lenient a word to describe it. If not for the name value and recognizability of the Alien and Predator and the film having a budget higher than $3 million every aspect of AVP-R from the characters to what little passes for a plot to the tired b-movie clichés to the horrendous dialogue: every bit of it was straight out of the worst Sci-Fi Channel original movie ever made. This movie was written by a guy named Shane Salerno who is hardly a novice. The guy is either one of the biggest writing hacks in Hollywood or he intentionally set about to tank this movie; that's all I can figure from writing this terrible. The scripting here is every bit as bad as that of, say, LAKE DEAD. Worse actually, LAKE DEAD's script managed to tell a more logical story, as awful as it may have been.

Things kick-off where the last one left off with the PredAlien bursting forth from the dead Predator's chest aboard the Predator vessel heading home. I think it was heading home. It seemed to just be loitering above our stratosphere for no particular reason. Somehow this PredAlien grew into a seven-foot behemoth in a matter of moments and began slaughtering the other Predators aboard. The ship crashes back down to Earth where some facehuggers the Predators were keeping in jars for reasons unknown (Perhaps they pickle and eat them for all we know?) immediately set about impregnating unsuspecting hunters and hobos and the PredAlien plays field marshal, rallying its troops for an all-out invasion.

Meanwhile, on the Predator home world, another Predator watching all this go down while relaxing on its throne/recliner/toilet/??? decides to personally handle this matter all by its lonesome. To Earth he goes. More specifically, to the town of Gunniston, Colorado where the Predator ship had crashed down, unseen by anyone I might add.

If a spaceship crashes in the woods and nobody's around, does it make a sound? Apparently not.

We never actually got to see the sign on the outskirts of the town welcoming people to Gunniston, but if we had I suspect it would read: WELCOME TO GUNNISTON, THE LEAST OBSERVANT TOWN ON EARTH. A Predator spaceship crashes down in the forest and nobody saw or heard anything. Another Predator's vessel splashes down directly into a lake and, again, nobody saw or heard anything. A Predator blows up the crashed spaceship and nobody notices that either. Hey, I saw the original PREDATOR so I know that when a Predator detonates its own personal self-destruct bomb it eradicates a fairly sizeable chunk of real estate and comes complete with a very hard-to-miss mushroom cloud. This time it was a dead Predator's wrist bomb that was blown up along with an entire spacecraft; surely the explosion would have been, should have been, astronomically larger? And yet nobody ever sees or hears anything! I know this part took place out in the woods but it didn't take place that far out in the woods. It's never even brought up again, not even in so much as passing dialogue about someone seeing or hearing something unusual the night before. Unless it's a town full of Helen Keller's this is extremely hard to believe. Makes you wonder what exactly does it take to get noticed in this town?

The first face-off between Aliens and Predator in the darkened sewers beneath the town will end with the Aliens coming up through the manholes and darting off into the night. Again, nobody saw a thing. Then the Predator explodes forth from the ground Hulk-style and nobody notices this either, despite clearly seeing a van driving past just a few feet behind it. If nothing else, I was at least hoping this reptilian humanoid's eruption from a small town sewer would be greeted by a fat kid named Horace waiting to blast him with a shotgun.

If only every shot in AVP-R was as easily viewable as this production still

The PredAlien's inexplicable instant growth spurt was the first red flag that I might be in for a bad time. The unnoticed explosion was the second. The third, and greatest red flag, came the very second we ere introduced to a rather gawky teenage pizza delivery boy with the hots for a pretty blonde classmate having to make a delivery to her house and then getting bullied by her dickwad boyfriend and his henchfriends. These were the sort of characters and the kind of situation I'd fully expect to see in a clichéd slasher flick or an 80's teen movie. But no, this was an ALIEN VS. PREDATOR sequel. What is going on here?

Let's talk about these characters. First of all, they are so underdeveloped that calling them just a random assortment of clichéd archetypes would be giving them too much credit. There's only a single character in the bunch the name of which I can recall and that's only because it gets yelled frequently.

At the center of the tale are two brothers. One of the brothers is named Ricky. I only know this because his name is yelled quite often. The only place you'll hear the name Ricky get yelled out more than this is on reruns of I Love Lucy. This Ricky is just your typical teenage outcast opining for a hot blonde. That's about all there is to him.

That hot and somewhat slutty blonde, who - rather inexplicably if you ask me - digs Ricky – practically throwing herself at him - despite the heavy poseur vibe emanating from him, has a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend who lives every waking moment of his life trying to make Ricky's existence an unhappy one. This guy... he looks like Fred from the Scooby Doo cartoon and he behaves like a cast-off from an 80's teen flick that featured an evil rich jock character. Imagine the bad guy from BETTER OFF DEAD recast as a minor supporting character in an ALIENS VS. PREDATOR movie.

What are characters like this doing in an ALIEN VS. PREDATOR movie? An uncool guy with the hots for a pretty coed with a jerk boyfriend who beats him up and is assisted in his bullying by some lackey friends: is this an ALIEN VS. PREDATOR movie or THE KARATE KID?

Wait a minute... Wait a minute... I just figured out where this went wrong. When Ricky went down into the sewer to retrieve his car keys that the bully tossed down there he should have been confronted by some Aliens. The Predator shows up and rescues Ricky, but because the kid helped him fight off one of the Aliens the Predator decides to take Ricky under his wing, like an intergalactic Mr. Miyagi, and train him in the ways of the Predator. Together, the Predator teaches him the tricks of the Predator hunting trade as they eliminate the Alien threat culminating in the climax where the Predator kills the PredAlien and Ricky earns his stripes by gutting the bully and leaving his skinned corpse hanging upside down from a tree. In the end, the Predator returns home, Ricky gets the girl and a bitchin' set of Predator wrist blades, and the skulls of the bully and his cronies adorn Ricky's dresser drawer as trophies. That's it! That's exactly the direction they should have gone! This should have been ALIEN VS. PREDATOR 2: THE PREDATOR KID! No doubt the sequel would have a recently dumped Ricky heading off to the Predator home world where his Predator mentor has to contend with a rival Predator while that old rival's apprentice challenges Ricky, who has also begun romancing a young female Predator. Screw this ALIEN VS. PREDATOR crap! THE PREDATOR KID is a whole new franchise just waiting to be made.

Alas, this is not the direction they chose to go with these teen characters played by actors that look entirely too old to be playing teens.

Ricky's brother has just gotten back into town, apparently having just been released from prison. I think. I'm not even sure what he was imprisoned for. It's all just mentioned in passing. There's a throwaway half-joking line of dialogue about him breaking and entering, but that's about it. Even the sheriff is all buddy-buddy with him the moment they bump into one another; old friends it would appear. Somehow, despite barely having any established persona aside from being Ricky's just-back-in-town brother, this guy, whose character name I cannot even recall, becomes one of the primary players, the one who gets to mow down Aliens during the climax using the Predator's gun. I ask again, "What the hell is going on here?"

Wait; I just remembered that the brother’s name is Dallas. Yep, just like Tom Skerritt’s character in the original ALIEN; one of the many homages sprinkled throughout AVP-R that’s supposed to make it all better. I’m shocked Salerno didn’t toss in a dog named Dutch or a cat named Ripley or a little girl with a pet newt.

That sheriff is just your typical town sheriff. Really nothing else needs to be said other than to at least give the writer credit for not just following the pattern of making the sheriff a disbelieving douche who complicates matters for everyone else. With a little more care this character could have turned into someone who mattered, but care is not something that ever went into the writing of this screenplay.

It's one thing when dialogue is bad, which most of AVP-R's dialogue is; it's another thing entirely when it doesn't even make the slightest bit of sense. When the remaining primary characters are dividing into two groups - one spearheaded by the sheriff that's headed to the center of town for an alleged rescue as the military has instructed and the others arguing that the military is planning to wipeout the town and are instead opting to head to the hospital in order to escape by helicopter that may or may not still be on the roof - the sheriff boldly states "I hope we're both wrong". What the hell is that supposed to mean? You hope there's no helicopter still there on the hospital roof and that the military doesn't plan to rescue anyone, possibly even dropping a small nuke on the town RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD style? Is he actually hoping they all die? I will ask one more time, "What the hell is going on here?"

And, yes, the United States military has decided to nuke the town in order to contain the outbreak of xenomorphs. Hey, that's what the military does in movies like this. It's what the Sci-Fi Channel would do.

Reiko Ayelsworth, last seen getting blown up on TV's 24, plays an Army officer just back from Iraq trying to reconnect with her now distant daughter. By reconnect I mean dragging her kid by the arm screaming after an Alien crashes through the window and eats her father right in front of both of them. That's about the extent of their bonding.

The little girl is just like Newt from ALIENS if you took away all of Newt's dialogue, any sense of characterization or purpose she held to the story, and just reduced her role to the scenes where she screamed in terror. Screaming whenever she spots an Alien or the Predator seems to be this little girl's only purpose. In that sense, she's almost like a human alarm system - if she's screaming then you know danger is in the room.

I fully realize the character Ayelsworth is playing is a trained soldier taught to suppress her emotions while in the line of fire and to save the mourning for when she's out of danger, but this woman never shows an ounce of remorse for her dead husband aside from screaming in horror when the Alien first pounced on him. Another character will ask her a bit later about how her daughter's doing and she'll answer that the child has had a rough night. No mention of she herself having a rough night, you know - what with just having become a widow and all. Husband? Given her complete lack of emotion it might as well have been her gardener that got slaughtered in front of her.

Tom Cruise prepares to impregnate Katie Holmes for a second time

Keep in mind I haven't even touched upon the PredAlien's ability to instantly impregnate women with Alien embryos or the Aliens ability to decorate a room with that icky cocooning stuff of theirs in a matter of moments or...

Okay, I have to talk about the Predator's continuous use of a blue liquid that disintegrates all evidence of the Aliens and their victims. Predator is dissolving all the evidence with these vials of glowing blue liquid that look like Dr. Herbert West's Re-Animator formula if it also came in a cool minty flavor. Fine; I can accept that. So why is it that the Predator that is trying to remove all evidence of an extraterrestrial presence the moment he's spotted by a human kills the guy and leaves his skinned body hanging upside down from a tree for everyone to find? Actually, I can answer that. Because the shot of a skinned corpse hanging upside down is iconic PREDATOR imagery and since there's no shortage of shots and scenes in AVP-R designed to pay homage to previous ALIEN and PREDATOR movies, "homages" are done just to do them regardless of whether or not there's any logic to it.

I know a lot of what I'm describing sounds like it could make for a fun cheesy film but AVP-R isn't any fun. At best it's an incredibly frustrating film to watch because it doesn't seem to have any interest in trying to be a good movie and it doesn't seem to know how to have any fun because it's trying too hard to be dark and nasty. What's on the screen, given the lameness of the stock characters and earthbound setting, has all the earmarks of a borderline campy film yet everyone involved seemed committed to making a film that was anything but. At least FREDDY VS. JASON knew what kind of junk it was.

Worse yet, it brings nothing new to the Alien or Predator lore and shows us nothing we haven’t seen before. Plus, there’s the continuing problem of no one and nothing mattering and suspense being nil. It's all just pointless.

Despite killing children and pregnant women, none of the violence in AVP-R carries any emotional impact. Too many filmmakers don't seem to comprehend when it comes to the use of gore in movie that the gore either has to just be either fantastically spectacular or it has to have some emotional impact behind it; that second option stems from having characters and situations you actually give a damn about. There’s nothing spectacular about the gore here since it’s all just a retread of stuff seen in previous films in the respective franchises.

The only moment I can think of that truly satisfied the b-movie lover in me was this one spectacularly goofy moment where the Predator, who by this time had converted his shoulder cannon into a handgun, shattered through the glass front doors of the hospital. As it stood there amid the shattered glass posing with its gun cocked in what was supposed to be a bad ass manner, into my head popped, "Oh dear lord, they've turned the Predator into Maniac Cop!"

I also have to say that when the blonde girl got KRULL'd to death - that was the only moment of the film I could describe as genuinely surprising.

By the time I sat there realizing that I was actually watching an ALIEN VS. PREDATOR movie that featured a scene in which teenagers are trying to escape out the window from a locked-up high school while being chased by an Alien - an Alien that actually dove into the school swimming pool to go after somebody, I was strongly considering walking out. Do you have any idea what it takes for me to want to walkout of a movie I paid to see? Think of all the movies I've told you about that I paid to see in a theater and sat through from beginning to end and then realize what it must mean that I was so anti-entertained by this film to the point I was about ready to say "Screw it!" and leave halfway through.

I just felt disgusted; disgusted for how what a terrible disservice has been done to both of these franchises and the fans of them and for having been snookered into giving these people my hard-earned money a second time around. I should have known better too. While I didn't fall hook, line, and sinker like a lot of people I've seen on message boards who were practically creaming themselves after the R-rating was announced and the red-band trailer appeared online, I was at least given a glimmer of hope. I thought the first ALIEN VS. PREDATOR was crap, but it was a crap film that at very least had some ideas in it and more action for that matter. I harbored no visceral hatred for the original unlike so many hardened fanboys continue to. It was just a movie that when mentioned now would elicit an "ugh" and a sense of a blown opportunity. This time, though, what's the excuse? About the only good that will come out of this is I expect a kick ass Rifftrax when the film hits DVD in a few months.

And yet there are those eating this film up. One such person posted on a message board I frequent that AVP-R was fantastic and felt like an apology for the first one. Really? If this was an apology I'd hate to see the sort of movie they'd make if they were setting out to give us all the finger. Is it a generational thing? I'm seeing people on message boards praise this film and can't help but notice the majority of them seem to be under the age of 22. Maybe the quality of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking has deteriorated so much over the past 20-years that there are people who actually watch a movie like this and believe it to be well made. Maybe there's a whole new generation who have had their attention spans deteriorated to the point that they can easily discern what's going on when the action goes all shaky cam or has shot in extreme close-up fighting or is hyper edited or is shrouded in darkness; or perhaps they've been successfully conditioned by such over the better part of the past decade to the point that they can be disoriented into believing they just watched something cool happen. I don't know what it is but clearly something has happened that a film as poorly executed as AVP-R can get a pass.

Interestingly enough, I read a very intriguing post in the Ain't It Cool News talkbacks (I know, hard to believe) from someone who sounds like they might be in the know talking about how ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM was originally a two hour and five minutes movie that Fox chopped down to barely 90-minutes in order to work in as many daily showings during the theatrical run as possible. If that's the case then that would mean there's over a half hour's worth of plot and characterization sitting on the cutting room floor. I don't know if it’s true but if you watch the trailer for AVP-R you'll see glimpses of stuff that is not in the film playing in theaters. Something tells me a much longer "Director's Cut" may emerge when the movie comes to DVD. I don't know if the extra stuff will suddenly make AVP-R a good film - I highly doubt it given how crappy even protracted story seems to be, but surely it would have to make it less of a cinematic abortion. One thing is for certain, somewhere Paul W.S. Anderson is laughing.

Oh, and the ending... I think the only way this film could have ended on a more unsatisfying note would have been if it concluded with Tommy Lee Jones sitting at a table talking about the strange dream he'd had the night before about his father riding by carrying fire in a horn.

You know what an even more surefire sign is that AVP-R sucked? What if I were to tell you that the Sci-Fi Channel premiered a similarly themed film with every bit as clichéd a script and even hokier action and dialogue and yet that film proved to be infinitely more entertaining? Hard to believe, huh? Well, sit back and let me tell you about the marvelous cheese that was SHOWDOWN AT AREA 51.

With a little more budget SHOWDOWN AT AREA 51, the final Sci-Fi Channel original movie of 2007 - originally saddled with the moronic title of ALIEN VS. ALIEN, could have achieved the truly delirious heights of a gloriously campy Golan-Globus production of yore, but instead it'll just have to settle for being a rousing sci-fi smackdown oozing with gobs of melted cheese. That's good enough for me.

Stargate cast-off vs Star Wars knock-off

Two brothers: one is named Alex and the other is named Jake. Jake is played by Jason London of "Party of 5" fame. Who plays Alex is unimportant since he’ll be dead soon – the character, I mean. What matters is Alex is in the military and Jake loves beer. The siblings are out on the front lawn engaging in such spirited horseplay that they fail to notice the leftover special effects from a Stargate SG-1 rerun entering Earth's atmosphere and engaging in an aerial laser dogfight right above their heads.

Meanwhile, the alarm sounds at the nearby military wildlife refuge; everyone's on full alert and someone yells, "Where the hell is Alex?" Not sure why Alex is so darn important, but never fear for Alex is on the way!

One spaceship crashes and the other lands; out pop two aliens to begin shooting at one another with their ray guns. Their shootout will take them to the heart of the military base where any soldier or MP that gets in their way will fall victim.

We'll later come to learn that the good alien is named Jude, a Vin Diesel look-a-like with funky pupils and sci-fi tribal tattoos on his face. The actual physical appearance of the evil alien - an “Omega Centurion” named Kronan or something like that - will never be revealed to us.

Good alien Jude is adorned in a black jumpsuit with a single silvery shin guard on the right leg for extra added bad assery. It's like he wants to send a message to all potential adversaries that he doesn't care if his costuming has a piece that doesn't match the color scheme of the rest of it and if he doesn't care about being fashionably consistent then just imagine what he could do to you when provoked.

Dr. Seth Brundle was horrified to discover afterwards that both an ordinary fly and COBRA Rattler pilot Wild Weasel were both with him in the telepod at the time

The helmet Jude initially wears looks like a cross between a gas mask and a fencing mask. When you get a really good look it almost appears as if the helmet is some sort of cybernetic fly head with an air hose attachment. He can also produce a Captain America shield that quite literally looks like a space age manhole cover.

The WWE-sized Omega Centurion's attire looks as if a stylist mixed and matched Tuscan Raider and Tie-Fighter pilot fashions to create a whole new look for the hostile alien lifeform on the go. Aside from its trusty laser gun, the Omega Centurion's favorite weapon of choice is these swanky ninja star-like throwing weapons that can sever limbs. It can also shoot these rocky spikes from its forearms and its body armor can transform it into an armored rolling orb. Is it secretly a Rock Lord inside that outfit, I wonder?

New from Black & Decker: all the cutting action of Gigan's belly now in a convinient handheld form

Jude breaks into a base warehouse and steals a metallic rod from a laser grid containment field. The Omega Centurion tries to fight him for it until Alex arrives with more soldiers to challenge the alien intruders. Jude tosses a tiny metal ball device that can disintegrate everything within a certain radius - someone's clearly seen THE ARRIVAL - in an attempt to kill his rival. Both aliens escape but Jason London becomes an only child in the process.

I must say that the first 15-minutes of SHOWDOWN AT AREA 51 rank amongst the liveliest and most cheesetacular footage the Sci-Fi Channel has ever pulled off in one of their original movies. I was gobsmacked by how much fun this was.

You do realize he's shielding himself with the lid to Oscar The Grouch's bomb shelter?

Jake has traded in his beer for a freshly microwaved Hot Pocket when he hears on the news that something terrible has happened at the "wildlife refuge" his brother works at. How does this concerned brother get into a top secret military base after all hell has broken loose and the place is on indefinite lockdown? He hops a fence, of course, silly. And how does he escape from heavily armed military police escorting him from the base after he's caught trespassing? A little elbow action to the face, some vigorous shoving, and jacking a jeep is all it takes. A car chase worthy of the finest episode of "18 Wheels of Justice" follows, concluding with Alex shooting out the pursuing jeep's engine and laughably exclaiming, "Thank you, Playstation!" I kid you not.

Would this be a good time to mention that the character of Jake is himself supposed to be ex-military, someone who has worked on some of the base’s top secret projects? I only bring this up because several circumstances seemed to hinge on what a nimrod Jake is. He also struck me as a tad young for the part given the character’s resume. Did Costas Mandylor pass on the role or what?

And rest assured there's much more cornball dialogue where that came from. A few other notable quotables:

The angry military security chief reacting to news that Jake has escaped barks, "Go find his ass, you pack of geniuses!" A bit later that same angry military chief having figured out where Jake and company is heading begins talking to himself, "Left us a little trail to follow, Little Red Riding Hood. And I am the big bad wolf."

Despite such non-sequitors that sound like something a cracked-out Ed Wood would come up with, the real humdingers come out of the mouth of Lee Horsley's retired military UFO scientist turned Fred Sanford wannabe. The first words out of his mouth will be "Holy crapsticks!" That's shortly followed by, "Never question a man who owns a junkyard. I'm in touch with the past… like dialing a 1-800 psychic." Think you'd ever hear Bob Lazar say something that screwy?

The clincher though comes when Alex asks him if he has any guns on the premises, to which he'll respond, "I may be smart but I'm still a redneck." I do believe the screenwriter plagiarized that line directly from Harlan Ellison's original draft of "City on the Edge of Forever".

Dialogue such as that is about as close as the movie ever comes to winking at the audience; too many Sci-Fi Channel movies resort to that tactic to the point it's started feeling like a cop-out deflection for otherwise crappy filmmaking. The kind of familiar tale this film tells with such straightforwardness usually results in a boring Sci-Fi Channel original, but SHOWDOWN AT AREA 51 has the schlock factor going for it that only a movie with a straight face gone this dopey can achieve. And, unlike AVP-R, you can actually follow the action.

This is, after all, a movie where an alien warrior will take a woman hostage by shoving her into a very earthly muscle car and speed away.

This is, after all, a movie where Jason London's heroic character will commit vehicular homicide and yet it's supposed to be okay because the guy he ran down was a jerk.

This is, after all, a movie that tries to briefly fool us into thinking the Omega Centurion is actually the good one and Jude evil even after we’ve already been shown a detailed flashback of it slaying Jude's wife back on their home world.

This is, after all, a movie where despite having all these fancy, extraterrestrial, magically protracting weapons at their disposal, whenever these two warring aliens enter into close quarters combat it almost always comes down to the two of them punching and kicking at another as if they're extras from ROADHOUSE.

This is that kind of schlocky movie.

It won't be long before Jake and Jude meet up in a seemingly random encounter that results in Jude requesting Jake's help almost as if he knew this was the specific earthling he needed to talk to. The English-speaking spaceman needs Alex's help in finding an obelisk called the "Omega Seed", a super weapon that acts like a thermometer monitoring a planet's development until it is ripe for conquest at which time it will release a lethal pathogen into the atmosphere that'll extinguish all life; the evil Omega race will then waltz right in and plunder the planet's resources; only that rod can be used to switch it off.

One big problem (aside from the evil killer alien that’s after them and the rod): this heroic alien protector never bothered to learn how to decipher the glyphs written on the rod revealing the location of the Omega Seed. Thank goodness Jake happens to have an ex-girlfriend who specializes in linguistics. Truth is this is really just an excuse to give the film a female lead and someone for Jason London to kiss. I suppose they could have had London making out with Jude but that probably would have put an odd spin on things and I'm not sure the world is quite ready for BROKEBACK ALIEN NATION.

The Omega Seed: can also be used to power a ReTardis

The Omega Seed, as we'll come to see, looks something like a large glowing Fisher-Price ring toss game. It also just happens to be located directly below a farmhouse where it was left 60-years ago the last time the aliens visited our world. The finale will take place down there amid what looked like leftover sets from the original Star Trek. I really wanted an explanation for what looked to be either dinosaur bones or alien rhinos.

Why do I suddenly have a craving for goofy golf?

Remember that whole Roswell incident? All turns out to have been military misinformation to keep people off the trail of the real alien encounter that took place in Missouri where "the real Area 51" is located. That one line about "the real Area 51" is also the only time the term "Area 51" is ever used in the film and that opening sequence is the only time a showdown takes place on the base. I'm left to assume SHOWDOWN AT SOME RANDOM MILITARY BASE IN MISSOURI WHERE VAGUE TALK OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL RESEARCH GOES ON was just too long a title for the Sci-Fi brass to approve.

The biggest knock against SHOWDOWN AT AREA 51 in my book is that it suffers from a distinct lack of Hasselhoff. Jason London is no Hoff; the way he plays his character's determination and moments of stupidity just lack that Hasselhoffian earnestness a corny b-movie like this desperately needs.

This is, after all, a movie where the very moment the good guys plug the rod into the obelisk the vast Omega armada that's been patiently waiting above in orbit for the past half hour for the Omega Seed to signal the start of their Earth annihilation scheme immediately cancel their plans and bid a hasty retreat - no questions asked.

It's a damn shame they didn't stick with the film's original title because then if a sequel ever came about it could have been called ALIEN VS. ALIEN: REDUNDANCY.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I'D PAY TO SEE THE PREDATOR KID