Inception is the type of movie where spoilers are non-existent; it becomes such a personal experience that your outcome will be different from mine. I can tell you the entire plot (which I won’t) and you still won’t get it, and I can tell you the plot and conclusion that I came up with and you will go in there, watch it and come back and tell me I am wrong. For this you may look at my damn near fully loaded score and tell me that I am just a fanboi for the crappiest movie of the summer and you would be just as right as me giving it a near perfect score. It is all about what you take away from Inception, while I do judge many movies that seem cut and dry as to why they were deemed good or bad, aside from technical things, the story itself is one that cannot be easily judged. Now doesn’t that make you want to at least give it a watch?

I will share a little secret with you folks that are still on the fence about seeing Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio may be plastered all over the trailers and posters but the true action star of Inception is Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). While the DiCaprio/Page scenes will force you to think and put the pieces of the puzzle together, Arthur’s scenes will keep you action junkies in your seats with his skills and combat smarts. Ken Watanabe of The Last Samurai fame and Letters from Iwo Jima plays Saito but I was unable to understand him much throughout the movie due to his low voice volume clashing with the music. You may or may not remember Ellen Page (the young woman who played Juno) but she was a delight to watch as Ariadne. Her scenes with Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) seemed very genuine even more than the ones Cobb shared with Mal (Marion Cotillard).

After seeing movies like Jonah Hex, my eye has gotten somewhat ready for CGI influenced scenery. However, watching the world of Inception and the people running, gunning and dreaming within it seemed so refreshingly different. It felt real, as if they were there on location, and for good reason being that Nolan had his world built outside of a computer generated framework. Inception uses the computer to assist the reality, not have it create the reality. It is something to marvel at in this rough summer of lackluster movies. The other positive to having the scenes look so real is in the immersion that you are able to experience within the world. There is nothing more distracting than watching a movie and in the back of your mind the little voice goes “wow that looked reaally, reallly bad”. Inception had me leaving the theater thinking about our very existence. It has made for interesting roundtable discussion with other viewers and it is a movie I expect to watch several times over.

Inception is a must-see, it is Spicy, it is intelligent and it is the type of writing we can appreciate for years to come. It has been a bland summer and I know your tongues are salivating for the Spice, so go see Inception and give your palette a treat.

  STAR RATING: (9/10)   ★★★★★★★★★

Originally posted at: SpicyMovieDogs.com

The plot of Salt is not easily summarized without offering up spoilers so I cannot go there. I will say however that it involve the CIA, a super-spy named Evelyn Salt, her fellow spy Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) and a plot involving Russia, North Korea and terrorism. Angelina Jolie does her thing as Evelyn Salt, with the action looking very much like she did the stunts herself (which she did). Speaking of stunts, unlike the Bourne series, the fighting and action in Salt was done extremely well. When Evelyn fought bigger guys she would use objects and moves that made sense for a smaller woman. I have grown tired of seeing small, slight women throwing roundhouses, jabs and fancy moves to drop big 300lb muscle men in action films. Salt takes guys out by kicks to the groin, trapping the knee, breaking bottles across their faces and choking them out with chains. If anything, this really impressed me with the action.

What I didn’t like about the action was the tired, incorrect and convenient knockouts that occurred when people got beat up. Movies tend to lean on this to discard bad guys who they don’t want to have the hero kill. The hero will punch baddies in the gut and step on their hand and they will lie on the ground knocked out no matter where they were hit. Salt did a good job on the choreography but guys were getting knocked out from subtle blows and it really bothered me that they took this route. Film quality fluctuates at times especially during the traffic scenes but it isn’t enough to distract the viewer from the scenes that are playing out.

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Peabody and is a strong presence as he always – which leads me to wonder when he will headline his own picture. Salt starts out a bit uninteresting and scarily bland until 30 minutes in then it turns into a bullet train ride of action. Angelina is a Jack of all Trades in the acting profession having played the tender damsel and the hardcore action heroine. I believe that after Tomb Raider, Angie was bitten by the action bug and not only loves playing the femme fatales but does a damn good job at it too.

Go out and check out Salt if you are an action fan and wish to see one of the better movies this summer.

  STAR RATING: (7/10)   ★★★★★★★

Originally posted at: SpicyMovieDogs.com

Suddenly the Asian guy, who has spoken maybe 2 lines throughout the entire movie stops and settles himself. Looking back the team wonders why he hesitated and he motions them to keep moving… they do so without anyone caring to question his suicidal motives. Not even the pragmatic but empathetic Isabelle (Alice Braga) gives a thought to saving Hanzo the Yakuza (Louis Ozawa Changchien). I thought to myself, here we go again, the sole Asian, a Japanese equipped with a katana, stoic, suicidal and prepped to take on a Predator… solo. I tend to believe that I may have been the only one in my theater that was bothered by this all too familiar scene.

Predators manages to channel James Cameron’s Aliens with the feeling of dread and fear placed upon a team of military people placed within the habitat of a superior and mysterious enemy. Much homage is paid to the original Predator as we get people from different walks of life being hunted by the alien(s) and a familiar jungle backdrop unlike the recent installments which had the fighting within city limits. Predators was refreshingly good and will become a favorite for fans of the series, comics and older movies. In terms of this year and the horrible run of pictures that have been bombing in the Box Office, Sci-Fi has been holding up and with this being the second Brody helmed movie this year, I can safely say that the nose plays.

Adrian Brody, an actor that I have followed closely since the Pianist, has his share of negative critics (myself not being one of them) but manages to stay busy with a broad variety of roles. I really appreciate his character acting and this movie really sells him well as a hardened military badass. Alongside Brody are a few familiar faces like Topher Grace (Spiderman 3), Alice Braga (Repo Men) who I teasingly refer to as the bootleg Michelle Rodriguez, Danny Trejo (Machete) and Laurence Fishburne (Matrix).

The cinematography left much to desire as I hoped for the beautiful, lush forests of the original Predator but was made to settle on a nastier rain forest with the one shot of the horizon appearing more Boris Vallejo backdrop than exotic, alien landscape. The music was reminiscent of the original however the tune at the beginning when the shock and awe of dropping on the planet was presented did not fit at all. To be honest the score was more distracting than complimentary and it took me watching till near the end to warm up to the soundtrack.

Plot-wise it was no Sixth Sense (this is my attempt to uplift the beaten down M. Night) but it is a Predator movie, seriously it is what it is. The same story as always without spoilers is that you have a collective of military talents scattered on a planet as prey for a group of Predators to hunt and prove themselves. These Predators are intriguing and after seeing this movie I would love for them to make a movie that shows us their civilization and methodology so that we can understand why it is they setup these hunting grounds. AVP gave us some insight into this with the ascension of proven warriors to lordship but we still don’t know these aliens and why hunting is even important.

Nolan (Laurence Fishburne) and Stans (Walton Goggins) were my favorite in terms of acting out their respective parts and Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov) gets the badass award for the movie. This is a must-watch folks, and a necessary boost for those of you who have wasted money to see bad movies this year. Support Sci-Fi, Predators did not disappoint and I look forward to owning it on Blu-Ray.

  STAR RATING: (7/10)   ★★★★★★★

Originally posted at: SpicyMovieDogs.com

It has been a long road to the launching of this movie, as a non-fan I sat on the sidelines observing the build-up and the hope that M.Night would knock this one out of the park. Controversy over the races of the main characters plagued it from the beginning but the confidence of the Director reassured people that it would do justice to their beloved show. As a movie watcher I was appalled by the acting of Jackson Rathbone as Sokka, the kid managed to channel both Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker and Ben Affleck’s… hell anything Ben Affleck has done, all in one character. Channing Tatum would rival Robin Williams in animation compared to this guy. I think the term is wooden, but in this case I will say he was iron, an emotionless waste of screen time and a laughably distracting reminder of Anakin from Attack of The Clones.

While Sokka was making me wonder whether or not he was trying to singlehandedly ruin the movie, I found Aang (Noah Ringer) to be an extremely likeable kid. Having him being the focus was not a bad thing at all as his martial arts katas were impressive, his acting was tolerable and the emotions of Aang were played out well upon his young face. Katara (Nicola Peltz) was a little better than Sokka (not saying much) and we all know that Dev Patel (Prince Zuko) can act after kicking ass in Slumdog Millionaire. These main players are who we stare at throughout the movie and the terrible dialogue they were given did not help things as they traded off lines with little care for authenticity.

The pacing was rushed, and I haven’t even watched the series to make this judgement. By the time the movie ended the only people I gave a crap about was Prince Zuko and Aang. There was no background given on the weird flying bison that Aang rode, his flying monkey or even his friends. The people who were supposedly downtrodden by the fire nation did not evoke any emotion or care from me and the might and threatening power of fire did not come off as convincing as I thought it should. I hate to draw comparisons, but the sheer scale of this movie gave me flashbacks to Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings. In that movie you felt the impending doom of The Eye, you worried for Middle Earth and you gave a damn about the main players. The Last Air Bender could have used some lessons from that trilogy to being about some sort of ownership of the characters from the audience.

This movie felt as if it was a homage to the series assuming that you already knew what everyone had going on, already know what will happen and already like individual players. It rushed through the tale of Aang and ended without much explanation, leaving me with questions and wondering if it stunk because I didn’t view the source material. My questions were along the lines of “was Sokka that wooden in the cartoon? Cause if he was this guy needs an Oscar”, I also wanted to ask about the flying monkey and bison. The Last Airbender should really have been three movies, split up realistically to allow for character development, strong pacing and a more dynamic display of what Aang could do.

Protesters of the movie will boycott it due to the previews looking like evil Desi people being mean to a bunch of white heroes… well that’s not too far off of what I saw but there are people of color scattered throughout the nations (thanks for throwing us a bone M.Night). While your boycott will prevent you from seeing it anyway, let me assure you are not missing anything worthwhile so clutch your Nickelodeon Avatar Blu-Rays closely and don’t you sweat. I am not sure whether to feel sorry for Mr. Shyamalan or chalk it up to the fact that maybe he just isn’t all that great. It was a visually beautiful movie for what it’s worth, but it lacked a soul and that my friends is why it fails.

  STAR RATING: (3/10)   ★★★

Originally posted at: SpicyMovieDogs.com

Being a lifelong hip-hop fan and one of the kids of the eighties that worshiped Kung-Fu Cinema, Enter the 36 Chambers by the Wu-Tang Clan revealed to me a sound that echoed many flashbacks of the movies I so love. From the production days for the Wu-Tang clan all the way up to being one of the most wanted music producers in Hollywood, Robert Diggs aka RZA has become a cultural icon along with his friend Quentin Tarantino. On this alone I put my trust that this movie should not disappoint!

I dunno folks, with Black Dynamite’s success, this coming out and The Karate Kid doing as well as it did, I am going to wager that black and yellow makes for some good Kung-Fu creativity… and to think we thought that the love of Kung-Fu died sometime in the 80s. Somebody pinch me, I think I’ve fallen into fanboi paradise.

Originally posted at: SpicyMovieDogs.com

Well it had all the makings of a special movie: cool looking hero, sexy side-kick, machine guns strapped to a horse and John Malkovich. It had the Western flair, the civil war and Ulysses S. Grant yet it somehow forgot that movies need to be interesting in order to work. Jonah Hex was so bland that words cannot describe how disinterested I was throughout the entire movie. Based on a DC comic book which I am very unfamiliar with, I will go on the assumption that fans of the graphic novel will have a different level of appreciation for it than I did, that level of course being none.

Josh Brolin stars as the infamous Jonah Hex, a terribly scarred bounty hunter who gets hired by the United States president to stop a very bad man from exacting Confederate revenge on the unified states. With a summary like that, you can image a Clint Eastwood type riding through towns, shaking down the simple Sheriffs for info and taking the bad guy out in a one on one cross of six-shooters. Smoke settles and he emerges victorious to hop on glorious steed and ride off into the sunset, a hopeful damsel in tow crying for lack of keeping him. Not this flick, we get a sort of crossover between real life events and comic book fake-dom. Jonah is one part The Crow, one part The Man With No Name from Clint’s Spaghetti Western era (think The Good The Bad The Ugly). He is a wraith with one weakness – a beautiful prostitute named Lilah, played by the fox herself Megan Fox.

You can go ahead and skip this one being that for all the efforts of John Malkovich as Quentin Turnbull and Brolin’s Jonah Hex, the movie has absolutely no crescendo. Megan Fox, who probably thought this would be a good movie to gain back some of her fans (those who joined the anti-Fox bandwagon) must be quite frustrated at her agent. While people will go on about her accent, her acting and her looks, I did not find her to be bad at all as Lilah, quite the opposite really – femme sidekicks of Western badasses are notoriously glorified arm candy. See not much to expect, but Megan shot guys, sexied it up (despite hard censorship) and delivered the cheesy lines as well as she could. I noticed you Megan, no worries, heres hoping you land a good movie one of these days (raises Tanqueray glass).

No Jonah Hex is not the second coming of The Dark Knight, hell it isn’t even Superman Returns. It was a bland movie, with ridiculous explosions, Dragon Balls (you’ll get this joke if you see it) and non-existent violence. Which makes me wonder – had it been a bit more adult, would it have worked? Every sexy scene, violent scene or anything beyond a G rating was squelched by a cut-away. This happened so much it actually annoyed me, I mean why have Megan Fox as the sexy arm candy if we aren’t even allowed to look at her? Riddle me that Jimmy Hayward. Anyway folks, it’s sad to say but Jonah Hex sums up 2010’s summer of movies. Wait until something Spicy comes out before wasting your money on a Jonah Hex.

  STAR RATING: (4/10)   ★★★★

Originally posted at: SpicyMovieDogs.com

This will not be a popular review for 2 reasons, the first being that most people are not martial artists, and the second being that little Jaden Smith already has a ton of haters for whatever reason.

Foreword – My Feelings on The Karate Kid series (lengthy)

Before getting into the review I must explain a bit about myself. I am a martial artist, have been all my life and will continue to be until I die. I grew up watching Kung-Fu theater (hence the ongoing reviews I still do on the classics).  So when I saw the original Karate Kid I was excited at first about the movie but the excitement grew into bitter cynicism as I got older and wiser into what was martial arts versus what I saw in that movie. I strongly dislike the original Karate Kid (there I said it), I thought it was a campy mess of real philosophies being played out poorly by people that obviously had no martial training.

Going into this movie, this new “Karate Kid” starring a boy who has annoyed me in former movies (The Day The Earth Stood Still) and the setting being China with Kung-Fu not Karate, I was thinking “here we go again” with the bull. The difference however was that I knew Jackie Chan was involved and instead of the standard cast of players, this would have a different feel to it based on the setting and the actors. I avoided it for as long as I could until the blaringly good reviews kept pouring in and I became way too curious to not go give it a watch.

What Was So Good About The Karate Kid

The number one thing that I loved about The Karate Kid is the message, yes the same message that was given in the 1984 version, but a great message nonetheless. The message is that beyond all the MMA, K1, action stuntmen, Bruce Lee worship that we have of today, Kung Fu is a way of life and the real reasoning for its being is for “self-defense” and a betterment of life. While we have the fancy dojos that drain money for the purpose of seeing kids go through the motions towards promotion, this key philosophy is the Karate Kid from beginning to end.

Beautiful cinematography (the Forbidden City scene was all that), honest acting and well choreographed fight scenes made the presentation quite pretty. Jaden’s Dre Parker grows on you as the plot goes through and Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) is as tremendous as he is impressive. There are flaws yes, and it is heavily clichéd and predictable – This latter critique of course falls hollow for a summer movie, since I deem most movies predictable especially one that borrows the formula and title of an old 1984 classic. Yet it has that “it” which makes you feel it, none of us saw this coming from the weak trailers that were made for it.

Who Should See The Karate Kid

Biased, angry and closed-minded, adult nerds should sit this one out (I was one but I’m being serious, haters gtfo), especially if martial arts is foreign to you. It may seem like a kid’s movie at first but by the time it ended I thought to myself that parents need to see Karate Kid as much as their children. I thought the evil Dojo master (no it wasn’t Cobra Ki) was a great example of the wrong kind of teacher for any martial student. His calloused tutelage exemplified how a trainer can be worshipped by his students to the point where they will do morally questionable actions in order to garner favor. It isn’t a caricature so much as a reality warning for parents to sit in on classes and know who it is that teaches your child karate/kung fu.

Taraji P. Henson did a decent enough job as Dre’s loving young mother and while Jaden wasn’t terrible, he was a bit hard to believe in the scenes across from her. This is of course balanced out by his time with Jackie Chan whose master/pupil relationship with Dre takes on a patriarchal type of bond. In the end, as in the end of the movie there is the big tournament (as you already know). My theater cheered as if they were in the movie watching little Dre prove himself against the best. By the time the credits rolled, I saw one little girl bawling her eyes out from the violence and the whole theater cheering as if they were watching the Super Bowl.

Karate Kid is surprisingly a sleeper hit, and unlike its predecessor I can at least appreciate it for both the philosophy and the martial arts. The film is also a bit of an advertising brochure for the country of China since the views of the Great Wall, Forbidden City and architecture are breathtaking, in contrast to older movies which showed the country as old buildings, ruins and rice hats. Go and check out the Karate Kid, you will not be disappointed – no nerd rage here, just intrigue and then there’s Nocturne by Chopin pounding away in my skull unwilling to leave – damn you Meiying (Wenwen Han)!.

  STAR RATING: (9/10)   ★★★★★★★★★

Originally posted at: SpicyMovieDogs.com

So The A-Team wasn’t the steaming pile of garbage that everyone expected it to be. Even I was guilty of uttering the words “The Losers looks more true to the A-Team than the A-Team does” back when they were flashing the trailers before every movie, but I was wrong and the A-Team didn’t fail. I had no idea that Sharlto Copley was such a funny individual (he plays Murdock), his timing and intentional/unintentional switches in accents made for quite a time whenever he was onscreen. After seeing him in District 9 and now this, he is quickly growing to be one of my favorite celebs. In the original television show it was a toss-up between Murdock and Faceman in terms of who was the least talked about individual – well when you see A-Team the movie, you will be talking about Murdock and chuckling at his antics throughout.

The cast was phenomenal – yes this means newcomer Rashad (Rampage) Jackson too, dude wasn’t fumbling his lines or failing the way you would expect any MMA turned actor to do. Not only did Rashad pull the B.A. Baracus character off, he found a way to be likeable while doing it. We all know that Mr. T’s shoes are of a size that cannot be easily filled, hell any 80’s icon being “emulated” is a difficult feat, but seeing Rashad you saw “B.A. Baracus” not Mr.T and for this movie, this was a good thing. Liam Neeson was good, but he always is isn’t he? And Bradley Cooper was the PERFECT pick for Face. Not only does he play the douche bag with ease (remember him in Wedding Crashers) but I’m sure dude’s time in the gym got some panties wet in the audience – no homo.

The one downside to the cast is my beloved Jessica Biel. Now Spicy readers, if you have seen many of my reviews you know me to be a HUGE Biel fanboi (looks not acting) but she was odd as hell in this movie. She felt forced, unnecessary and to top it off they go on about how beautiful she is yadda, yadda, yadda but this wan’t Jess at her finest. The good thing is her screen time is limited and while I was disappointed in them casting her across from Faceman (ScarJo would have nailed this role), she did not bring the score down overall. The real downer to the A-Team was the god-awful writing…

Spicy Hater: Erm Greg, the original show had crappy writing too, how does that even add anything to this review? The show was campy and pretty silly given the violence and lack of death therein.

Well SH, this movie is not the television show, while it may come close with little things that bring about nostalgia, it is far from the television show so I warn nostalgic fans to go in there with this in mind. The A-Team is on the level of Crank where the stunts they perform, tactics they come up with and situations they survive is so far beyond reality that you may as well consider it to be a cartoon. Seriously, they were using projectiles from a tank to guide it as it fell from 20,000 ft in the air towards a body of water. Murdock pulls off loop-de-loops with ease in a helicopter, oh and Hannibal (Liam Neeson) escapes a cremation chamber… if you’re looking for reality this is not the movie for you.

Overall the A-Team is simple, action-packed fun. What’s the term… popcorn movie – there ya go. It’s the “sit back, turn your brain off and watch things blow up” type of movie, sans the offensive rape of the mind that a Transformers was. I highly recommend you check it out, not for the killer story (rolls eyes) but for the awesome characters. And oh ya… stay for the credits.

  STAR RATING: (6/10)   ★★★★★★

Originally posted at: SpicyMovieDogs.com

At All Saints, new nurse Sam (Arjun Gupta) is depressed and admits to Coop (Peter Facinelli) that his girlfriend broke up with him. Coop has no remorse and tells him he dodged a bullet as the girlfriend wants to be with a doctor. Since Sam is just a nurse, he deserves much better. In true Dr. Cooper fashion, he talks way too much about how she’s a hippie and how he hates her cat to the point that Sam figures it out that he slept with her. Cooper doesn’t deny the accusation. With absolutely no hesitation Sam punches Cooper dead in the nose, breaking it for the second time. Cooper tries his best to get Sam fired for it, but Akalitus (Anna Deavere Smith) refuses due to the shortage of nurses on the floor. She tried to console him by presenting him with the invoice for the cost of another six weeks of advertisement of him as the face of All Saints.

While securing Coop’s nose, Jackie and O’hara (Eve Best) are forced to work together prior to resolving their issues from the night before (episode 11) where Jackie would not take O’hara’s call. O’hara admits that she went to see the ortho and Jackie apologizes, explaining that she had a lot going on, and O’hara accepted it. They met in the entrance to the chapel where they resolved their differences. However, they were interrupted by some odd noises in the chapel and opened the door to see Zoey (Merritt Wever) and Lenny (Lenny Jacobson) making out in one of the pews.

Kevin is eating breakfast with the girls when Fiona notices that Jackie left her keys in the lock of the door the night before. She cringes at the thought of someone possibly breaking into the house and harming them and Kevin assures her that he would not let that happen. Only problem, as Grace (Ruby Jerins) pointed out, is that Kevin was not there that night. He takes the keys from Fiona and notices a key that he hasn’t seen before. Once the girls are away at school, he conducts a mad search around the house for anything that would shed light on the miscellaneous key. He hits the jackpot as he comes across the address for the place named on the key – the post office where her PO Box is housed.  He later goes to the box and finds Jackie’s latest bank statement showing her withdrawals at various pharmacies.

The drug dealer that Jackie stole from ($12,000 worth or roxicodone) finds Akalitus while she is with God (Michael Buscemi) and asks her where Jackie is.  She tells him to check the nurse’s station.  As he leaves, God admits that he gets a bad vibe from the guy.  She questions him as he is supposed to accept all his people. God replies “he’s not one of my people”.  The man finally corners Jackie in the hallway and threatens her. She told him he’s crazy and if he does anything to her there will be so many cops that will be after him. He calls her bluff and asks how many. Before she can answer, Thor’s big ass comes out of nowhere using his whole body to throw the guy into the ground, knocking him unconscious.

Kevin calls O’hara to tell him what he found out about Jackie. He sends the kids to his sisters house so he and O’hara can stage an intervention. Jackie comes home from work and immediately freaks out yelling at both of them and telling O’hara she has to leave. Kevin admits that he asked her to come over. Jackie gets even louder as she is cornered and yells that he doesn’t even like her so why would he invite her over to gossip about her. As they remain calm, Kevin hands her the bank statement showing her pharmacy transactions. She calls them both pathetic and goes upstairs to lock herself in the bathroom. In the mirror, she tells her reflection “Hi, I’m Jackie. I’m a drug addict”. She stares at her own face. Then she bursts into laughter and tells her reflection “Blow me!”

Highlights – those scenes that make the show so great

• Zoey and Lenny get caught by Eddie just as Eddie and Jackie were caught by Zoey in season 1.
• Lenny brings Zoey two eggrolls. She looks at him “what, no duck sauce??”. He playfully searches his own pockets to reveal about 15 different packets of duck sauce hidden on him in various places. He finishes by presenting her with napkins.
• New nurse Sam is depressed to the point of drinking a gallon of Hawaiian Punch and vodka while on the job. For the first time, Jackie and him are on the same side as she rushes him to the basement in order to sober him up as quickly as possible. She enlists Thor for assistance. In an attempt to keep Sam from falling asleep (into a coma), they stick EKG electrodes to their shoes and perform a tap dance to keep him awake.
• Akalitus goes on a search for the smoker in the building. Following her nose, she finds God in the air ducts claiming to be watching over his people. When told to come down, he admits that he is ‘not ready to walk among you”. She bribes him with candy in her office and he quickly agrees.
• Jackie tries to take refuge from the day in the pharmacy with Eddie. She finally thanks him for bringing Kevin home and he tells her that it’s weird that he is starting to care about Kevin as much as her. He asks if she will be okay and she tells him “you know me”.  He responds matter of factly, “anybody who knows you, knows they don’t know you”.
• Cooper admiring his old nose as he passes one of his adds while he is bandaged up from new nurse Sam’s iron fist.

Originally posted at: SpicyMovieDogs.com

A mid-level thriller with an excellent cast and decent writing, Splice started off slowly then quickly sped up into a race of emotions for this viewer. I went from bored, to empathetic, to disturbed upon the final scene. Splice left me impressed that the premise of the story had actually gone “there”, the “there” being a rather dirty place which most movies would not venture to. I must give props to the special effects team and the CGI, which made the creature Dren (Delphine Chanéac) attain a balance of innocence and sexiness all while maintaining the primal characteristics of a creature that isn’t all human.

The basic story behind Splice is based on experimentation with DNA to come up with a new element to cure some of the world’s harshest diseases such as cancer.  Fellow scientists and lovers Clive Nicoli (Adrian Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) have created two monstrosities (through the DNA splicing of many organisms) nicknamed Fred and Ginger. The two creatures have the protein data along with other goodies to help create cures etc. once sold to the mainstream world of science. Elsa is excited about their progress and suggests to Clive that they take the next step into their experimentation and use human DNA. The concept is denied by their boss William Barlow (David Hewlett), and investor Joan Chorot (Simona Maicanescu) who asks that they procure the protein and nothing else.

Elsa isn’t happy with the refusal of her superiors to delve into human DNA so she urges Clive to move ahead with it secretly and the two start working nights to try and realize their dream. After many failed attempts and the like, Elsa creates a creature from the human and animal DNA, and once it is born and into the world she quickly realizes that it might have been a dreadful mistake. The creature is feminine and walks on animal-like legs, she starts out without arms but soon develops them and a tail which ends in a deadly, retractable stinger. It is ugly and formless at first, but soon grows into a beautiful young woman, one that Elsa treats like a daughter and Clive shuns as an abomination.

The creature’s growth is unnaturally rapid and when a reveal of Fred and Ginger goes dreadfully wrong for the science team, the couple are forced to hide the human experiment on a farm away from the lab. On the farm Elsa and Clive grow closer as a couple, with the creature, now named Dren as a sort of daughter for them to raise in secrecy as they pick up the broken pieces from the Fred and Ginger disaster. What they don’t realize however is that Dren, like any young girl will go through puberty and curiosity and the lock on the barn door in which they keep her will begin to feel like a prison that she must escape to spread her wings (no pun intended).

The pacing of Splice is slow at first but quickly finds it’s rhythm once Dren is walking around. While the chemistry between Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley was virtually non-existent, the scenes between Adrian and Delphine Chanéac are quite convincing. It must be Polley’s acting that wasn’t selling me on the concerned mommy thing but when she gets angry she is definitely at her best, all fire and intensity. Splice has many WTF (what the f—) moments in it, enough to make me cringe and ask why when certain things are done that should not be done. I will say that the disturbing scenes are what make the movie special and without them I would not have liked it as much.

You should check out Splice if you are a fan of Sci-Fi or thriller type movies. The sex is a tad explicit so I will warn you and the last few scenes may shock the prudish audience members into swearing off science fiction. Still it is an enjoyable experience and I do urge you to check it out.

  STAR RATING: (7/10)   ★★★★★★★

Originally posted at: SpicyMovieDogs.com