Just like I did with Silent Hill for Dex, I promised Smash a review of a movie and didn’t deliver until it hit the DVD shelves. Razy Jess is razy.

I
realize that most people find comfort in the familiar, but we’ve had
over 40 years and 20 films’ worth of James Bond, most of which follow
the same basic formula of international intrigue set against a
revolving door of baddies and babes. Casino Royale
isn’t so radical a departure, but it’s enough of one to inspire
enthusiasm and debate; it’s also one of the strongest entries in the
entire series. Now any new actor playing the iconic role of 007 is
certain to receive serious scrutiny from the worldwide legion of fans,
but Daniel Craig encountered unwarranted criticism before even one
frame of film had been shot, all because he’s blonde? Come on…

As it turns out,
Craig’s intense portrayal of Bond might be the best thing about this
movie. Abandoning many of the cartoonish clichés of Bonds past, Craig
is in immaculate physical shape but still gets the bloody crap kicked
out of him left and right. Instead of an nonstop parade of crazy
gadgets and gizmos and watch lasers and invisible cars aiding Bond in
combat and spycraft, here the focus is on stone-faced smarts,
determination and raw mano-y-mano physical violence, and with minimal
special effects these action scenes are outstanding. So yeah, there’s
no Q or Moneypenny and the leering quips are kept to a minimum, but
frankly they are not missed. Despite the new direction, in many
respects, Casino Royale recalls the look and feel of Connery’s ’60s
films. Thrill at the way it opens, as Ian Fleming’s spy/assassin makes
his first kills and the recognizable beginning of every Bond movie is
recreated in shadowy black & white. I’d love an entire Bond film in
a noir style, but Casino Royale is impressive enough that I’m
thoroughly psyched for the future of the franchise as it is.

Ask
any B-movie die-hard what movie they’re most looking forward to seeing
this year and you’re bound to hear a lot of excited talk about a
certain Samuel L. Jackson thriller called Snakes On A Plane.
But while fanboys cream their boxers for CGI serpents and
motherfucker-laced dialogue, writer/director James Gunn’s
horror-comedy (hormedy?), Slither, worms its way into
multiplexes with enough old-school horror style to knock “SOAP”
supporters right off their soapboxes. Featuring a cast loaded with
talented up-and-comers, such as Nathan Fillion (Serenity…yumb) and Elizabeth Banks (40-Year Old Virgin)
and veteran character actors like Michael Rooker and Gregg Henry, as
well as a humorous, tongue-in-cheek script that’s funny when it wants
to be, and scary when it needs to be, Slither is a cult classic in the making.

I’m
fairly sure someone, somewhere has addressed the fact that most of
these films seem to always take place in small, rural towns, but Gunn
(who wrote the fantastic remake of Dawn Of The Dead)
doesn’t seem to mind. He sets our story in East Bumfuck, USA (a.k.a.
Wheelsy, SC) during the opening of deer season. At the center of things
is our happy couple, Grant Grant (Rooker) and his wife Starla
(Banks), however it’s not exactly wedded bliss because Starla seems to have developed a perpetual bedtime headache. Sexually
frustrated hubby goes for a nighttime stroll through the woods with a
local trollop, and it’s here that he discovers a huge alien grub
slinking along, and after curiously prodding it with a tree branch
(never a wise move), is
pierced by the slug’s hidden stinger, and that’s when the party gets
started. Grant then impregnates his slutty neighbor Brenda (Brenda
James), who in turn gives birth to hundreds of slimy slugs who would
like nothing more than to jump into your mouth and zombify you.

As
more townies get turned, Grant continues to evolve into a nasty giant
tentacle beast with a soft spot for Air Supply. The only survivors are
Starla, police chief Bill Pardy (Fillion), a teenage girl (Tania
Saulnier), and the town mayor (Henry) – whose rant over his missing Mr.
Pibb is one of the best pieces of dialogue in the entire film. It’s up
to them to stop the alien invasion, and honestly, none of them are
really up to it. Giant slugs try to overtake your body, designated
breeders want to eat your flesh, and all of the other zombies have
green, acid spit. This is a job for a hero, and unfortunately, Bill is
the unlikeliest hero that you’ll ever meet. What he doesn’t know is
that this is actually really good news. The hero of the story never
dies, so he’s got something to look forward to, right?

The five
lead actors all do a fine job with their respective roles, but Fillion
and Henry are the real standouts. While Nathan Fillion continues to
prove he’s leading man material, Gregg Henry manages to steal pretty
much every scene he’s in. Newcomer Saulnier and rising star Banks also
offer some nice eye candy throughout, as does Gunn’s wife (“The Office”
co-star Jenna Fischer in a cameo), but sadly fellas, none of them
get naked as might have been expected in a movie of this type. On the
one hand, it’s bound to be a disappointment for many of you pervs, but on the other,
it just means that the film is smart enough to not have to rely on
gratuitous boobie shots (*cough* Hostel *cough*) to sell tickets.

To
be perfectly honest, I thought Slither was likely a major
disappointment waiting to happen, but it never once failed to keep the
audience entertained with a combination of comedy, action and horror.
Any fan of classic B-movie creature features like The Fly and The Thing will absolutely love the gross-out scares, while its humorous side is more akin to films like Night Of The Creeps or Eight Legged Freaks.
It also shows traces of the Romero zombie films, not to mention the
low-budget Troma movies in which Gunn first got his start; but when it
comes to a genre such as this, the more influences the merrier. Slither is sick and twisted, slimy and gory, and oh yeah, it’s also quite funny. I had a blast.

Pause a moment the next time you are in
a public place, be it campus, mall, arena, highway, etc., and take
notice of the number of people with cell phones pressed to their ears.
Now imagine for a second what would happen if some sort of signal could
be transmitted through all those phones that would instantly turn the
user into a ravenous, bloodthirsty animal akin to the zombies from a
George Romero film. Not a pleasant thought, huh?

This is precisely the scenario that Stephen King lays out in his most recent novel, Cell. After hinting that he might be retiring following the completion of his magnum opus, The Dark Tower
saga, King returns with a horror story that harkens back to some of his
earlier work when he wrote riveting tales of common things (car,
dog, clown) that took on unexpectedly horrifying qualities. The book
grabs the reader by the throat in the riveting first chapter as the
Apocalypse begins in a way we could never have expected, and the Master
weaves a tale of terror which asks, what might happen if the veneer of
thousands of years of human civilization were stripped away from the
majority of our population in a single moment?

I bought this book on Wednesday, and just like The Da Vinci Code, finished it in two nights of reading…it was that hard to put down. I highly recommend it.