Arena Wars (2024) - Death Games, Bloody Mayhem, and Fun!

Humanity has always been fascinated with the concept of competitions where the participants risk mortal injuries or even fight to the death. In ancient times, cultures like the Roman Empire had their gladiators, while Aztecs sacrificed prisoners of war in similar game-like events. In the present day, such practices are either non-existent or highly illegal, but the fascination remains, especially when modern technology is thrown into the mix. That is why films like the legendary Running Man became cult classics. Now, a new feature film takes on this concept, but does it in a fresh and unique manner. That film is Arena Wars and it comes out very soon with its hellish version of death games. 

Gravitas Ventures is well known for bringing innovative independent films to a worldwide audience. On June 25th, Arena Wars will bring the battle to the big screen in North America and on VOD in most geographic regions. Be warned, folks, Arena Wars is not for the faint of heart as it places our heroes, who happen to be freedom-seeking convicted criminals, on a live television show "Arena Wars" to engage in mortal combat for your evening entertainment! Think the masked singer meets WWE but with knives, sludge hammers, convicted murderers, and chain-saws.

Our protagonist Luke Bender (John Wells) is a wrongfully convicted Marine serving a life sentence, who leads a group of ragtag convicts through a series of arenas in the ultimate quest of good vs evil, freedom vs certain death. In Arena Wars, convicted criminals can fight their way to freedom against seven of the world's most dangerous masked gladiators. Enter our masked gladiators in full combat armor: Master Blaster, a chain-saw-toting psychopath; Cutie-pie, whose machete is sure to capture your heart; Calypso, who is ready for a fight in some scary WW2 riot gear; Meat Wagon, and many more. 

 

 

 

Arena Wars also stars its TV host, Michael Madsen (Kill Bill, Hateful Eight), and Robert Lasardo as Perez (The Mule, Death Race), Eric Roberts as Admiral Jordan (Runaway Train, The Dark Knight). The very capable Brandon Slagle is at the helm, directing and capturing the action of the Arena Wars mayhem (The Flood, Battle for Saipan). Mark your calendars for June 25th, folks; that's when Arena Wars slashes, punches, and kicks its way to select theaters and VOD! Arena Wars is not to be missed!

The film is a must-watch for all fans of genres like action, gore horror, and thrillers, especially those that involve the tech aspect, seen here in humanity’s insatiable hunger for TV and online video violence. However, Arena Wars doesn’t shy away from dark humor, which is a great counterbalance to the somber note of death games. Here, a great cast, including Roberts, Lasardo, and Madsen, is a perfect fit, as veterans who can effectively dabble in both serious characters and those roles with a comedic twist. Also, as the trailer shows, the movie features a high level of polish, seen in editing and color correction, as well as other elements that make it big scene-worthy for sure.

Arena Wars will hit theaters and video-on-demand services on June 25, 2024. All who find this setup intriguing should pre-order the film on Amazon right now, but every action movie fan out there should be aware - when the 25th comes, be ready for your bloody dose of Arena Wars!

Two Paragraph Review: Plane (2023)

 

Flying is often scary and Plane is at its best when it tackles this idea. The film begins as a very grounded drama of a south Asia flight going badly wrong, but then the second part mutates into a hostage action flick. Here, the level of quality and believability also drops, despite the fact that the main characters, played by Gerard Butler and Mike Colter, do a solid job with their roles of the airplane captain and a convicted criminal, now bound to work together to survive.

However, it is the plot that meanders and presents a very lackluster main villain, here in the form of a Philippine island warlord who loves violence as much as his crisp curly hairdo. The director, Jean-François Richet, still resuscitates the film at the very end with a satisfying nail biting finale, which places the entire experience of watching Plane in a more interesting thriller action category. Seeing how much more expensive films like Rebel Moon fail at countless more things than this movie, it can be said  that Plane is overall a good action piece.

Civil War (2024) - Conflict Origin Explained and Ending Implications

Alex Garland's Civil War is an incredible feat of cinematic accomplishment, offering an unnervingly realistic insight into the possible massive conflict that could envelop the real United States of America and how the society at large, seen through a photo lens of a journalist, tries to document and make sense of it. Everything Garland learned in films like Annihilation and Ex Machina is in this film, but there is so much more. At the same time, its depiction of the balance of power at the end of the war (or its first phase anyway) can be somewhat confusing. So, here's the chronological breakdown of the same timeline as far as I understand it - heavy spoilers ahead!

The film's premise begins somewhere in the present period - all of the technology shown in the film, including armaments, is contemporary and there's no hint that the plot is set even 10 or 20 years in the future. Instead, the film takes place in the form of a slightly alternative political reality, but with massive and horrific implications.

In that timeline, Nick Offerman's US President takes on his third term, somehow overriding the US Constitution. After that, he disbands the FBI, likely forcing additional police state rules on the citizens. This results in some form of citizen uprisings, but which, thanks to the US accessibility of weapons, turn deadly in no time at all. Here is where the tyrannical President authorizes the military to engage the uprisings with direct force, including very indiscriminate aerial bombings. This means that the Posse Comitatus Act - which bans federal troops from any kind of law enforcement activities - is no longer active. The US dollar implodes into inflation, becoming near-worthless and Washington D.C. becomes a fortified island of an ever-shrinking old USA. Uprisings turn into open warfare.  

Here, the civil war commences, but it still has a political dimension. The central and eastern US remain loyal to the President and others succeed instead of trying to bring down the regime from within a unified country. That includes three major new powers. Western Forces, made up of California and Texas, were now united despite their previous huge political differences. The New People's Army controls the Northwestern states, while the Florida Alliance is mainly focused on the Southeast region.

The Loyalist forces quickly begin to lose ground and initiative. The tide of war turns against the President mercilessly and without any chances for a reversal of fortunes. The start of the film’s plot showcases the moment when all three sessions factions flood into the central Loyalist states with the simple aim of killing the President. The suicide bombing at the start of the film shows that even states like New York, still loyal formally to the President, see him as a dictator who does not represent the actual USA.

The main characters too believe that the President is as good as dead. Over the course of the film, both Western Forces and Florida Alliance troops (which are present in the sequence where a squad of Hawaiian shirt-wearing soldiers kills a group of loyalist soldiers) slowly saturate the approaches to the D.C. area, facing little formal or well-organized resistance. At the same time, at least the Western Forces are equipped with serious logistics and armaments, including tanks and gunships. They could be the saviors of the USA, but clearly, the same faction doesn’t want anything like that. Instead, they are fighting for their own, new country.

The Battle for D.C. doesn’t change anything, apart from bringing more death to all included. In the end, the US President lies dead at the hands of Western Forces and Washington D.C. is now no-man's land. However, his killers are not there to liberate the USA of its tyrant. Instead, they’re simply fighting their enemy to the death. That means that the winning sides are just that - several sides, where no one wants to reestablish the old country. Western Forces already have their flag with only two stars. As the character Stephen McKinley Henderson notes, with the death of the common enemy, these sides will likely turn on each other.

Throughout the film as well, many instances, like the sniper battle on the winter fairground, imply that the process of everyone fighting everyone else has already begun. The mass grave scene underlines this with an additional dose of ethnic hatred that is now free to define new parties of the old US however anyone likes, echoing real-world horrors like those of the breakup of former Yugoslavia. Here as well, the blank term “Americans”, just like the term “Yugoslav” in 1993, for example, no longer means anything.

That’s the final concept of the film. The brutal end of a clearly tyrannical President didn’t solve anything. In essence, the situation is similar to the moment Muammar Gaddafi was killed in Libya or Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The boogeyman might be dead, but the nightmare doesn’t just end, it even intensifies. In the film, each of the winning sides now has a lot of territory from the former Loyalist states that are right there for the taking. But, their borders and intentions are unclear and all are heavily armed - including the “neutral” civilians and many micro-factions that will only come about.

That is why the end of the Civil War film is not the end of the same fictional conflict. Instead, the state of war where some individuals (usually living on farms as the main character notes) could pretend is not happening will now engulf all of its participants. In the next phase of the civil war, there will be no quiet little towns and safe, isolated farms. They will all be swept into a Lebanon-like, all-against-all war status and with it, the last step of the complete destruction of the USA.

Film Review: Nope (2022)

Jordan Peel is probably one of the best-known relative newcomer directors in the US that emerged in recent years. If other similar filmmakers who got into Star Wars and similar mega-franchises are excluded, then Peel is likely without any competition. Yet, for me both Get Out and Us strangely missed the mark of greatness, whatever that mark might be. Most of the necessary stuff was there, but ultimately, they ended up being something that is utterly forgettable. That fact stood despite having so many great ideas and effective executions, except when it comes to the same artwork as a whole.

Nope is a completely different beast, which is something I’m more than happy to report. While I was always rooting for Peel only to feel let down, the latest film broke that streak in a fantastic manner. Like the previous two times, the film begins with a somewhat odd setup of an African-American family running a multi-generation horse ranch for the film industry. There, challenges are constant for a brother and sistem team, but one day, an extremely fast-falling coin coming from the sky and a case of the wrong place at the wrong time collide, leading to a deadly outcome.

Suddenly without their father, they have to pick up the pieces of a failing business. At the same time, the official verdict for the death is an object that accidently fell from an airplane. But, the brother, OJ doesn’t buy it and instead believes that an UFO located above their ranch might be responsible. From this premise a very interesting film arises completely spontaneously. Like other films from Peel, this too is a mixture of social commentary, drama, thriller, science-fiction and fully fleshed out horror. Here, these elements are supplemented by a healthy dose of neo-western and all of it works.

The cast does a great job, especially the toned-down OJ played by Daniel Kaluuya, as they all together progress through a very unlikely but also very scary story. Parallel to that, the nature of celebrity news is also examined and what can and could do those that are in the spotlight, especially if they lack the biological setup to process it on a human level. Also, unlike both older films from the same director, the ending on offer here is complete and resonates strongly with all of the numerous themes in the film. Nope shows, through this weird but functional mixture, that Jordan Peel’s artistic mind is maturing and forming into one of the definite cinematographic voices in the global film industry.

Film Review: Bull (2021)

 

Paul Andrew Williams, the director of Bull, takes very little to move from an ordinary-looking British drama-thriller to something very bloody and disturbing. The plot, which begins with a man called Bull, played masterfly like always by Neil Maskell, returning to his old criminal crew. After ten years, he's simply seeking his son, but the method of his search mainly involves bladed weapons and murder.

In no time at all, the film descends into a mundane version of Crow, where a man is apparently back from the grave and ready to do almost anything to complete his self-assigned objective. Here, the film shines in the form of a strange crime thriller, where the main character is a somewhat melancholic psychotic murderer from hell.

Through a series of flashbacks, we see how Bull came to his predicament and what actually took place a decade before. The past is just as violent and detached as the present, apart from the fact that everyone agrees that Bull cannot be really alive. Here, the cast of Bull 2021 manages to do a lot with not that much, being that the film's locations are as exciting as a regular UK kitchen sink drama from the 1990s. Below all of that, we also witness Bull’s true and undying (literally) love for his son.

But, to watch Bull 2021 is, at least somewhat, to descend into a dark and unscrupulous place mixing crime and family in equal measure. The very end of the film introduces a weak horror twist which was completely unnecessary, but fortunately it doesn't manage to spoil the whole experience. Vengeance, no matter how desirable by the wronged individual, is pointless and brutal, says Bull 2021, but redemption can come nonetheless. Yet, it will not come from a blade or a gun, but from saving someone.

Film Review: Smile (2022)

 

The photography of the opening of Smile is anything but horror-like, which is why it has this instant appeal for anyone who is both into and not into the same genre. Instead of dark, brooding, and partially lit spaces, Smile offers strong colors and crisp, airy environments, reminiscent of an IKEA showroom. If, that is to say, IKEA furnished mental institutions for potentially dangerous patients.

Here, not long after that, the first suicide takes place. With that, along with strong visuals and with too much meandering, the first-time feature film director Parker Finn and the movie itself establish an atmosphere of almost nightmare-like reality for its main character.

That setting is the basis of one of the more interesting horror releases in recent years. As the plot follows a psychiatrist who witnessed a violent death and becomes infected by the potential for a similar fate, the director focuses more on the feel of the movie and less on its internal logic or its progression.

That formula works marvelously well most of the time, especially in tying into concepts like personal trauma. A decade before, films like The Babadook did something similar but with a more conservative budget. In the case of Smile, money was there and some of it did go to elements that we regularly see in horror films. But, for me, it made no difference that the plot used a lot of time-is-running-out tropes present in films like The Ring or The Final Destination. It also helps that throughout the film both Sosie Bacon and Kyle Gallner do a great and convincing job as the lead roles.

The world of cinema learned time and time again that for works that embrace a genre strongly, the level of manifested originality is often irrelevant. But, it also has to be said that Smile somewhat struggles at the very end, where a simple script modification would have allowed for a much more satisfying and logical finale. However, we also have to forgive that to Parker Finn, knowing that there is a squeal in the works. After all, what is more appropriate for the horror genre than the idea of turning a single film into a series?